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On Monday this week United Airlines in the US experienced a 75% drop in their share price (from $12.30 to $3.00 per share).
This was due to a 6-year old news story on a newspaper website that was accidentally tagged as current and distributed across the US financial press through Bloomberg's online News Service.
The story has received widespread US coverage, such as this report in Wired, Six-Year-Old News Story Causes United Airlines Stock to Plummet.
An accident some would say - but a very disruptive one. The stock price rebounded when the error was uncovered, but only to $10.19 by the end of Monday. That's a 20% loss in investor money (much more for investors who had sold in a panic) because of old news. The longer term damage will include a loss of reputation and trust in the news provider.
What's the learnings for government - or for any organisation?
One of my takeaways is that it is critical that your website and intranet content remains current. Out-of-date information can lead to financial loss for customers as well as media and political pain for organisations.
It has always disturbed me how poor most organisations are at maintaining current information in their websites.
Senior executives get extremely concerned if staff are providing out-of-date information to telephone or face-to-face customers on a one-to-one basis.
No reputable media team would release material to media outlets that they knew was out-of-date.
Printed publications are regularly assessed to ensure that they provide the right information. If they don't, and the mistake is critical, they are recalled, pulped and replaced quickly - costing tens or hundred of thousands of dollars to do so.
However organisational websites often remain dank swamps of old and inaccurate information.
This is despite their ability to be publicly accessed enmasse and have the information they contain trusted and acted on by any customer, citizen, media representative, community group, corporation, public agency, Minister or Head of State in the world with internet access. That's over 90% of Australians and over 1 billion people who can access your website information at home, office or public location.
Intranets are not much better. Your staff rely on having access to the correct information to make the correct decisions. Mistakes can have serious impacts on peoples' lives, on the organisation's reputation and on peoples' careers.
Organisations place enormous attention on training customer-facing staff - the intranet is a critical tool for the between times, for managing ongoing job training and information dissemination that is difficult and expensive to deliver on a periodical basis.
In the communications stakes an organisation's website and intranet are, in my view, the most important tools for presenting accurate and timely information to outsiders and to insiders.
No organisation can afford to rely on having the media publish releases, or fund a dedicated team of face-to-face communicators in every office to answer staff questions.
We rely on digital tools to communicate outwards (and increasingly to collaborate inwards). So let's use them appropriately, rather than half-ticking boxes and creating a larger and more dangerous mess.
Outsiders and insiders alike rely on an organisation's website and intranet for a clear picture of its activities, intentions and approach. People judge an organisation's commitment to openness and honesty from what they see as well as what they hear.
So if an organisation's website is evasively written, shallow or out-of-date, that's the message customers and media take-away, act on and react to. Silence breeds contempt.
Yes it is hard work to keep organisational websites and intranets up-to-date and it requires significant awareness, engagement, support and appropriate resourcing across an organisation.
Business areas need to be aware of where (and when) their material is available and be held accountable for maintaining it.
Executives must appreciate the importance of communication as a concept and specifically of the online channel as a delivery tool for communications - and collaboration, but that's a different story.
This doesn't require just a change in processes or business rules. It is a cultural shift in mindset - a challenging change for many people and possibly a generational one.
But it's one we must make, and the pain caused by not changing continues to grow with time.
Friday, September 12, 2008
A compelling reason to ensure government website and intranet information is current | Tweet |
Thursday, September 11, 2008
US public invited to review proposed patents in egovernment Peer-to-Patent initiative | Tweet |
The US Patent and Trademarks Office (USPTO), is trialing opening the patent examination process to public participation.
This allows members of the public to review pending patent applications and provide input and feedback into the process of assessing patent claims.
In effect, the patent office is acknowledging that the US public has the capacity to improve the US patent process by providing due diligence and scrutiny that the USPTO is unable to provide.
Via the website Peer-to-Patent, members of the public are able to register to review a select set of 400 pending US patents, in an initial pilot program to assess the feasibility of inviting public comments on patent applications.
While I've only just become aware of it, this isn't a new initiative - the pilot has been running for over a year and has generated enormous interest across the patent community.
The Japanese opened their own version of the peer-to-patent site in July 2008, titled Community Patent Review.
This type of project reflects the crowdsourcing potential of the internet, inviting the community to participate, comment on and support (or indicate lack of support) of government-run initiatives, rather than being held at arms length and only consulted according to the government's preferred consultation medium.
Another example I have previously discussed is the New Zealand Wiki Policing Act 2008 which used an online wiki to suggest contents.
Monday, September 08, 2008
Getting the basics right - US presidential hopefuls fail website navigation | Tweet |
Forrester Research has released a report critiquing the navigation of the websites of John McCain and Barack Obama, claiming that both fail basic navigation tests by potential voters.
Nextgov reported in the article, Web sites of both presidential candidates fail to connect with users, that,Forrester used five criteria in its evaluation: clear labels and menus; legible text; easy-to-read format; priority of content on the homepage; and accessible privacy and security policies. McCain's site passed two of those benchmarks: clear and unique category names and legible text. Obama's site succeeded in one area: straightforward layout making it easy to scan content on the homepage.
This came on the back of another report by Catalyst, which tested seven criteria. The Nextgov article quotes that,
Neither site gave priority to the most important information on the homepage, or posted clear privacy and security policies, Forrester concluded.Catalyst asked individuals to perform seven tasks while evaluating each campaign site, including donating money, reading the candidates' biographies and finding their positions on specific policy issues. Obama's site stood out for its design and navigation, but users were confused about certain labels on the homepage, such as "Learn," which contained links to information about the Illinois senator's background and policy positions.
What were the lessons for all government sites?
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Ready for the Google Chrome web browser? | Tweet |
Google is releasing the beta of its first web browser on Tuesday 2 September - US time, and if the media information Google has released is accurate, the product could reshape the face of web browsing over the next few years.
Google Chrome is the company's first foray into the web browsing market - but represents a step to the left and a jump to the right of previous web browsing technologies.
The fully open source browser implements a range of new features to speed up browsing, reduce the impact of malware and prevent browser crashes - it's more of an operating platform for web applications than a window for viewing web pages.
Google's media release (shaped in the form of a comic) explains the features extremely well for a lay person, and has me quite excited as to the possibilities the browser opens for web developers.
The beta, set to be released on Tuesday - US time - appears to me and to others to be aimed squarely at Microsoft, taking the wind out of their build-up to Internet Explorer 8, which went into public beta last week.
Strategically, in my view, this is a great move for Google.
What does this mean for government web managers
More options requiring support
The first thing it means is that there are likely to be three major browsers to support over the next few years, Internet Explorer (in various versions), Firefox and Google Chrome - with some minor players including Safari and Opera.
Later note: Google Chrome is using the same (open source) rendering engine as Apple's Safari, which should simplify part of the process of supporting the browser.
Need to quickly review and align code to preserve user experience
Given Google's search dominance I expect a fast initial take-up rate, with up to 15 percent of website users trialing the product in the next few months (I'll reflect back on this in two months to see how accurate I was).
This means that website managers need to take a look at the rendering engine used by Google (WebKit) and ensure that their sites are compliant. Otherwise they may see falling traffic or increased help desk calls as users struggle to use forms and other functionality.
More ability to move functionality online
The new browser opens a number of new possibilities for website managers, with multi-threaded javascript allowing more complex and faster web applications. This opens the playing field for better web-based tools, allowing more functionality to move online.
It also, in part, ensures that Google's own stable, including Google Docs, Gmail, Blogger, Youtube and Gears, will run faster and more efficiently (sound familiar? Microsoft has a similar ecosystem with Windows and Microsoft applications).
Monday, September 01, 2008
How Internet Explorer 8 beta performs - new features to add to toolkit | Tweet |
I installed the public beta of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 on my personal laptop last week to look at how well my agency's sites were reflected in the browser, and to get more of a feel for the new features it adds to the mix.
I'm pleased to say that just about all the sites I looked at using the browser performed well, with only a few minor issues with form field lengths and div handling.
The browser has certainly played catch-up, taking on all of the great features I am already using in Firefox 3 (such as the smart address bar), making them available to a broader audience who have not tried other browsers before.
A couple of new features may also provide benefits to organisations innovative enough to use them. I'll be feeding some ideas back into my agency to see where we can get to, as below.
Web Slices
This features is a way for websites with frequently updating content to enable users to subscribe to be notified when content changes.
The user benefit is that they do not have to scan through their favourite sites regularly to see whether anything has changed, they can get on with higher priority activities and allow a visible notification in their web browser to let them know when content on a favourite site has been updated.
It works well for news items, stock quotes and other frequently updating content, providing a soft in-browser alternative to RSS feeds (which remain underutilised by the broader online community).
Time will tell how popular this function becomes, but as a way to push market website content, rather than relying on people coming back, it may be beneficial to organisations who have a need to distribute information rather than passively wait and hope their audience returns.
Accelerators
Accelerators are tools to allow users to right click on website content and access specific functionality from third-party online providers. For instance, right-click an address and choose to view it in Google maps, or right-click on text and translate the language using another website.
This adds to current right-click functionality that supports functions from local applications, extending the user's operating system onto the web.
Organisations can add specific functionality, such as legal definitions, purchase information or who to contact for more information.
I would be particularly interested in functionality that can be added on a site-specific basis, such as providing links and definitions from the Child Support Act when on the CSA website, and from Centrelink legislation when on the Centrelink website, however this may not be supported in Internet Explorer 8 - though there might be ways around this.
Use the right online metrics for the job | Tweet |
One of my mantras in professional life is 'you can't manage what you don't measure'.
Therefore it always worries me when I encounter organisations or individuals with a less than firm grasp on how to measure the success or failure of their online properties.
Depending on the type of web property, different metrics are most important for regular tracking and I believe it's the responsibility of top managers to understand the online metrics they use - just as they need to understand business ratios or balance sheets.
After more than twelve years of trial and error, below are the metrics I most and least prefer to use to track different types of online media.
What are the best metrics to use?
Standard websites
Visits
This tracks the total number of visits by users to a website over a period of time (month, week, day). This can include the same unique visitor returning to the site multiple times - which is the same way calls are commonly tracked for call centres.
Visits gives you an overall view of website traffic and, when divided by Unique visitors, provides a measure of 'stickiness' - how often people return to your site.
Note that for an unauthenticated site, a visitor is essentially an IP address, a computer. As multiple people can use a single PC, or a single person can use multiple PCs and it also may track search spiders and other bots, visits doesn't provide a perfect measure of human traffic but it's sufficiently good for trend analysis over time.
In addition, caching by ISPs or organisations can also influence visits - reports based on AOL from a few years ago indicate that visits reports may under report website traffic by as much as 30 percent due to caching - though this is less important today.
In comparison 'readership' is a much looser metric, but is often held in high regard in the print trade.
Unique visitors
Unique visitors tracks the individual IP addresses used to visit a website and as such provides a rough count of the number of actual users of a site, no matter how many times they visit.
This equates to 'reach' for a site - with growth in unique visitors indicating more people are coming to a website.
This is affected by the same IP versus human issue as visits, however is again still far more accurate than 'readership' figures provided by the press or 'viewer' figures provided by TV and radio - which are based on a sample rather than a population (as unique visitors is).
Pageviews
Pageviews are a more specific measure of the views of specific pages within a website, and is most useful for tactical website tracking, allowing the identification of high and low traffic pages and the impact of different navigational or promotional approaches.
Looking at pageviews also provides a psychological view of your audience's top interests - allowing you to quickly prioritise content to be expanded and which can be downplayed.
Pageviews is becoming less important as technology cocktails such as AJAX are more widely used to load part of a page's content automatically or in response to user actions. In these cases a single pageview may not track what the user views in the page.
Authenticated website (transactional services)
Active users
Active users tracks the actual use by authenticated users (real humans) in a time period.
This is the best measure of an authenticated site's success as it tells you how well you've encouraged ongoing use of a website, rather than simply how good a job you've done at getting people to sign up.
Many authenticated sites prefer to talk about Registered users as this is a much larger number, however if a user has registered but never returns, your organisation gains no value from it.
A low ratio of active users to registered users can indicate site problems, and should prompt website managers to ask the question why don't people come back?
Transaction funnels
Transaction funnels track the completion of transactions step-by-step in a service - and isn't necessarily only for authenticated sites.
This provides a website manager with tactical insights into any issues in a transactional process (or workflow), allowing them to diagnose which steps have the greatest abandonment rate and redevelop the process to improve completion.
Generally improving transaction funnels results in more transactions and more active users, which means greater utilisation of the service.
Multimedia (video/audio/flash)
Views
For any type of rich media, the number of views of the media is critical in determining success. However it has to be weighted against the Duration of views to determine if users spent long enough viewing in order to take away the message, or just viewed the first few seconds.
Duration of views
The duration of media views is a more granular measure of the effectiveness of the presentation - tracking whether the media actually communicated its message to users.
Looking at the average duration viewed, compared to the actual duration of the media (where such exists) provides a very strong effectiveness measure.
Shares
One of the keys with the success of media content is how much it is shared with others online - the word of mouth factor. For media with a 'refer to a friend' tool, tracking the use of this will provide a strong indication of how positively users view the material, and therefore how viral it will become. Media that is rarely shared is probably not getting the message across in a memorable way, whereas highly shared material is correspondingly highly memorable - at least for a short time.
Documents (pdf/rtf/docs)
Views
Often 'downloads' is used to track documents. Personally I prefer views as there are some technical issues with tracking downloads of files such as PDFs. In effect the two measures should be identically, but as PDFs, and sometimes other documents, download by segment, they can significantly overreport downloads (which becomes almost as useless as 'hits'), whereas views is a more accurate measure.
There are ways to fix this within reporting systems - which I've largely done in my Agency's system - however this is not possible in all systems.
Social media
Activity by user
Like authenticated sites, the goal of social media is to encourage participation - whether it be forum posts/replies, wiki edits or social network updates/messages.
Each of these represents activity - which may need to be tweaked by the type of social media.
The more activity by users, the more engaged they are with the site and the greater the prospects of longevity.
Views
The other useful measure is views, measuring the passive involvement of users with a social media site. Not all users will actively post, however if they return regularly to view, they are still engaged to some extent with the site.
Commonly the breakdown between active and passive participants is divided as 1/9/90 (Very active/active sometimes/passive observer), however in practice this varies by medium and community.
While that 90 percent doesn't add to the content of the site, they are vital for the other ten percent to participate.
Search
Top searches
Search is also an important area of sites, with the top searches providing another insight into what people want from your site - or what is not easily findable in other navigation.
Tracking this over time provides another perspective on the psychology of your website users. It helps you understand their terminology for navigational purposes and can help prioritise the content you should modify or add to in the site.
Zero results
Any search terms which result in zero results in your site should be looked into as a high priority.
Generally this reflects areas where your website lacks content or uses the wrong context or different language to the audience.
What are the wrong metrics?
Hits
Probably the least useful metric of all time, Hits is still the best known measurement for websites, despite having no practical business uses.
Hits measures the number of files called from a web server, with each separate file accounting for a single 'hit' (on the server).
On the surface this doesn't sound so bad - however webpages consist of multiple files, with the base page, style sheets, graphics and any database calls or text includes each accounting for a separate hit.
A webpage might consist of a single file, or it might consist of 20 or more - meaning that there is no clear relationships between hits and actual page views or user visits to a website.
To increase the number of hits to a website it simply requires the website owner to place more file calls in the page - potentially calling extremely small (1 pixel square) images, therefore hits can be easily manipulated with no effect on the actual number of website users.
So while hits figures are frequently impressive, even for small websites they can easily reach millions each month, they don't provide any useful business information whatsoever.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Australia rated 6th in global egovernment study | Tweet |
Brookings University recently released its report Improving Technology Utilization in Electronic Government around the World, 2008 (link to PDF).
This ranks the government websites of 198 nations, reviewing 6-10 sites in each nation.
Australia ranked 6th, behind South Korea, Taiwan, the US, Singapore and Canada, up from 8th position last year.
As a benchmark this is great - it's better than our Olympic ranking (on substantially less funds per website than we spend on medal winning athletes), and substantially better than our global population ranking of around 50th.
However this study compares governments against other governments, rather than with citizen expectations.
While I do use other governments' initiatives to stimulate my thinking, I'm more interested in what our citizens want.
I also regularly refer to AGIMO's fantastic work on the use of government services online, and the 2006 e-Government Strategy, Responsive Government. There was also the (now superceded) Guide to Minimum Web Site Standards.
However none of these provide a citizen-centric view of what government sites need to provide that can be used to provide numerical ratings for each government site.
I'd love to have such a ranking available as I used to have in the private sector - using Global Reviews - to provide guidance as to what our citizens want, and the relative importance of different functionality. This would greatly assist my team and I'm sure other online groups, to prioritise online developments inline with citizen desires.
Has anyone seen a study in Australia or elsewhere on the community's expectations of how citizens should be able to engage government online?
The blind leading the sighted | Tweet |
I've just been reading the State of the eNation report on the Beijing Olympics website, where they invited disabled web users to test the accessibility features of the site.
While they found a number of the worst issues commonly reported by these users had been addressed, the remaining accessibility problems still made it very difficult to use some parts of the site.
In my past roles, and from what I've witnessed across other organisations, in many cases while companies might engage Vision Australia or a similar organisations for 'spot checks' of websites when they had the funds for it, companies have often relied on interpretations of the web accessibility standards by web professionals rather than referring to staff with first-hand experience.
My team is currently building an internal reference group to oversee the accessibility of our website and intranet, drawing on staff with vision, hearing and movement impairments.
I wonder how many other government agencies could - or already are - doing the same.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Website/intranet redesign or realignment - is there good reason for change? | Tweet |
My team's web designer forwarded me the article Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign from A List Apart earlier this week.
It looks at the justification behind design decisions - whether to change the design, layout and information architecture of a website or product - dividing it into two camps.
Redesigners - who base their decision on emotional responses to aesthetics.
It’s been 2 years since our last redesign.
Our current stuff just looks old.
A redesign would bring new traffic to the site.
Realigners - who based their decision on strategic objectives and user needs.
Market trends have shifted. Should our website be adjusted accordingly?I don't believe the line is ever that clear cut, sometimes aesthetics are used to sell strategic changes and sometimes vice versa. I also do not agree that realigners are 'better' designers (for whatever value of 'better').
Our users’ needs have changed. Do we need to adapt?
We’ve added 3 new sections and a slew of new content to the site over the last 12 months. Are we presenting content as effectively as we can?
Our current website does little to convey the strength of our product offering.
Does our online presence enhance or devalue our overall brand perception?
However I do feel the article does touch on a key factor for management, of websites or any other system or people, perceptual versus objective truth.
Often as web managers we are the closest to our own sites, seeing blemishes that are less visible to others. On the other hand we may also accept and overlook fallacies and faults that others perceive as major flaws. It's a little like being in a relationship. We often simultaneously see more and less in our partner than others can from an external perspective.
Therefore when deciding whether to make design or IA changes it is crucial to step outside our own emotional engagement and seek the views of our audiences, our peers, management and neutral parties.
Otherwise we may - knowingly or unknowingly - be primarily driven by our own personal views or emotional responses, while publicly justifying changes based on organisational goals or audience need (or simply on the ultimate reason that 'it looks better').
I can think of times in the past where for personal or organisational reasons I've redesigned a website or intranet simply due to aesthetics. I can think of more times when there were reasons driven by audience needs or organisational realignment.
I can also remember times when I made aesthetic choices, but justified them as strategic decisions.
These are the decisions to be guarded against as they are, in my view, the most likely to lead to errors of judgment.
It's about being honest with yourself and understanding your own drivers.
Do you operate as more of a realigner or redesigner?
What would your peers say?
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Driving egovernment services after they launch | Tweet |
Next Monday (25 August) I'll be speaking at the Ark Group's conference on Driving Interoperability and Collaboration in eGovernment in Brisbane on the topic of Driving ongoing improvements in online services provision.
If you're attending, please come and introduce yourself at some stage through the conference.
If you won't be there, I'll be making my presentation available after the event at my Slideshare site.
Thank you to everyone who contacted me with suggestions on my presentation via my blog post, email or in conversation.
Based on the feedback I've shifted the focus from eMetrics to a broader look at the importance and process of drive ongoing improvements after an egovernment site is launched.
I will make mention of a few points raised by people, such as,
- why launching a site doesn't mean lasting success
- the importance of factoring in an ongoing development/improvements budget
- the importance of establishing (realistic and measurable) goals
- appropriate use of metrics to assess site performance to goals (and why not to use Hits)
- cross-channel measurement - how web influences other channels (to meet goals)
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Website media sections are old news | Tweet |
Humans love news.
While the channels we use to find out the news continue to change, most of us still need our daily news fix - details on what is happening in our organisation, our country and our world.
When I first became involved with the online space in 1995, an 'about us', 'communications', 'PR', 'In the news' or 'Media' section was already a common feature for many websites. Placing media releases online made sense as a method of distributing and archiving an organisation's news.
Today it is accepted practice that organisations include their media releases on their website. In fact, not much has really changed. Journalists go to an organisation's website media section to review media releases, or subscribe to a 'push' service such as an email list or RSS feed to get alerted whenever something newsworthy is released.
Some organisations have added press kits, official photos and executive bios. A few include transcripts of speeches or video. However for the most part there's been little innovation compared to the rate of change for other aspects of websites.
This lack of innovation was brought home to me in an article by Maish Nichani of Pebbleroad, Designing the Online Newsroom.
The article questions the traditional role of a website media section, today's audience is much broader than journalists and the needs of the audience have changed.
It makes the point that a website media section is no longer simply a feeder for media - it is an online newsroom in its own right;
The newsroom section in corporate and government websites is not just about press releases anymore and nor is it just for the press. The demand by a broad spectrum of customers to be updated on what’s happening at every front of the organization combined with the organization's need to promote and educate customers about new directions has expanded the role of the newsroom.
Maish suggests that organisations rethink the purpose of their website media section to address and engage a broader audience, and provides some examples of the types of content and features leading organisations are adding, such as,
- In-depth features
- Latest news stories
- Interviews or customer stories
- Speeches
- Podcasts
- Blogs
- Videos
The article provides some excellent examples of organisations across the public and private sector who have developed online newsrooms, such as the United Nations, Nokia and Cisco.
It also provides a roadmap of how to rethink a media section and turn it into a more useful online newsroom.
I've passed on Maish's article to our media team to help support them in how they think about our online media section and are beginning to think myself about how we can use our media section more effectively to speak to our broader stakeholder and customer audience.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Benchmarking government websites, intranets and egovernment services | Tweet |
I've found it quite difficult to benchmark my agency's online services against those of other agencies in Australia.
Besides AGIMO's annual report on Australians' use of and Satisfaction with e-Government services and some of their past case studies, there's limited information available across Australian agencies regarding different departments' online experiences.
Over in New Zealand they recently benchmarked local government sites (PDF) and also benchmark government use of ICT and accessibility every few years.
In Europe they benchmark the supply of online public services (PDF) and a document from 2004 provided a very keen insight into why and how to benchmark public services.
In the US there is a quarterly review of government sites for user satisfaction.
So if anyone from another government agency is interested in benchmarking their online services, drop me a line.
Saturday, August 09, 2008
Lessons to be learnt from the Grocery choice website | Tweet |
The last few days have seen a number of media reports criticising the new Federal government Grocery choice website.
Amidst the noise there are several key takeaways for public sector website managers.
Note that I'm not involved with the Grocery choice website or program. I'm commenting from the perspective of a public sector web manager who needs to meet the same level of scrutiny for the sites I manage.
What is Grocery choice?
The purpose of the grocery choice website, in its own words, is to provide practical grocery price information to help consumers find the cheapest overall supermarket chain in their area. It does this by publishing prices for typical grocery baskets across supermarket retailers in different areas of Australia, updated monthly.
The website was launched on 5 August this year, at the same time as the ACCC Grocery Inquiry report was released.
The main criticisms of Grocery choice
Putting aside politics, criticism has fallen into several areas;
- Accessibility - whether Grocery choice is usable by vision-impaired people, as reported in the Brisbane Times, Grocery price watch website under fire,
- Usefulness - whether the information is sufficiently timely to be useful for consumers, as reported in the Daily Telegragh, PM's Grocery web of deceit,
- Channel choice - whether the online channel can reach the appropriate audience, as in the ABC's report, GroceryChoice criticism: Seniors 'don't use' internet.
What should government website managers take away from this?
- Accessibility is crucial - failure to meet the government minimum standards can place your organisation at risk.
- Usefulness is a function of both information and presentation - web managers need to consider how to best present and explain information and services within the capabilities of the online channel to convey maximum meaning and understanding.
- Select channels based on desired outcomes - web managers need to be able to convey an understanding of the online channel's capabilities and advise other managers when it is the most important channel, a supporting channel or should not be used.
Unpacking the takeaways
Accessibility
Accessibility is a legal requirement for government agencies. Compromising website accessibility, whether due to tight deadlines or changes in design or requirements, can expose a government agency to legal action and should be considered as a risk in any web project.
On that basis accessibility is a very important area for government website managers to understand and manage. Government agencies are required to follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.o) developed by the W3C in 1999 in meeting the Disability Discrimination Act 1992.
This is detailed in AGIMO's Web Publishing Guide within the Accessibility section.
The minimum standard for a government website is an 'A' rating, with 'AA' rating recommended (personally we're gradually shifting our agency websites to 'AAA' level). There are some great tools available to analyse sites to ensure they meet the standard, such as the VisionAustralia web accessibility toolbar and, as I've discussed previously, a list of tools from AIM.
Web managers should also note that the W3C's update to their guidelines, WCAG 2.0, is nearly here. There are already a useful reference on how to meet the WCAG 2.0 guidelines available from WIPA.
The criticism of Grocery choice is clearcut - if the site doesn't meet the 'A' minimum level then it does fail to meet Australian government standards and this needs to be addressed as a priority.
If it remains unaddressed then legal action is possible, similar to the accessibility court case around the Sydney Olympics website, well described and documented by Tom Worthington.
Usefulness
Does the website serve a useful purpose? Does it provide relevant, timely and usable information and/or services for citizens and customers.
This is something all web managers should be considering when building or developing websites.
In meeting the goals of a government agency web managers need to consider the needs of multiple groups of stakeholders and audiences. We also need to consider the capabilities of the channel itself - online is not the best channel for every engagement.
In Grocery choice's case the debate has centred on whether the information in the site - which is published monthly - is useful to citizens.
This is a debate with two sides, Choice magazine, as quoted in the Livenews article, Grocery Watch is a great tool: Choice, has expressed that they believe the website is of use, whereas other commentators has said that monthly basket data is not as useful as visiting the local supermarkets.
The information is collected as part of a set program, over which I would expect the website manager has little control.
However I think the site manager has done an excellent job of presenting this information in a useful way, and explaining the collection process such that website visitors can make their own determinations of the usefulness of the data.
The presentation and organisation of information is often the area over which website managers have the greatest influence in helping make a website more useful for citizens.
The value of information or services can be greatly enhanced - or greatly diminished - through presentation and all website managers need to have a firm grasp of how to best use the online channel to maximise this value, even when they have no control over the information itself.
Channel choice
The specific debate in ABC's article (mentioned earlier) is related to claims that seniors cannot benefit from the Grocery choice information as they make limited use of the online channel.
Online has always been a controversial channel as not everyone chooses or is able to use the internet. For example it has higher barriers to entry than other mass media - you need to purchase a computer and pay for an ongoing ISP account. Television, radio and print media have a lower upfront investment and shallower learning curve.
Despite this, internet has been adopted in Australia much faster than radio, television or print media. Industry reports are fairly clear that both television and print readership are declining. The advertising industry are also very clear that 18-35 year olds are very difficult to reach via other media, as has been discussed in ABC's The Gruen Transfer.
So therefore online is an important and growing channel - but is not a universal channel.
My experience has been that ]in management there are internet 'bulls' and internet 'bears'. The first group seeks to use the internet wherever possible, is more supportive of the channel and more inclined to fund online initiatives. The second group is still cautious of the internet, is more dismissive of whether it is used and how it is used and is inclined to use traditional channels.
Effective website managers need to steer a middle course, advocating use of the channel where appropriate, and advocating the use of other channels where not. They also need to ensure that other managers understand the capabilities of the online channel so that good channel choice decisions can be made.
The primary goals of organisations generally involve reaching, communicating and engaging with customers and stakeholders - providing what is needful and supporting the conversations necessary to make improvements over time in an effective and cost-efficient manner.
On this basis the channels selected are less important than the outcomes achieved.
I personally remain mindful of this, and believe other web managers should also.
Did you have other take-aways?
I'd appreciate comments from other web managers regarding the takeaways they've had regarding the Grocery choice media coverage.
Friday, August 01, 2008
The survey for people who make websites | Tweet |
A List Apart is conducting a survey on the work situations of those working in the web space - from developers and web designers, through to content managers and online publishers.
Last year the survey (held for the first time) had 33,000 respondents, roughly 1,700 from Australia. This year is expected to be much bigger.
This survey is particularly interesting as the raw (anonymous) data is released - allowing anyone interested in a particular segment to analyse this data in the way they choose.
This allows for significant insights into particular segments of the market which can be used for web team management and recruiting purposes.
I'd recommend that anyone in the online space in the public sector consider both completing in the survey this year and reviewing the result from last year.
This year's survey is open at http://alistapart.com/
Last year's results are at: http://alistapart.com/
Collaborating with citizens to add value to government data | Tweet |
Over the last six months a collection of libraries and museums from around the world, including the Library of Congress in the US, the Toulouse Library in France and Australia's PowerHouse Museum, have been placing copyright free images from their photo collections online in Flickr, allowing the online community to add information and commentary.
As discussed in the article Flickr, Library of Congress find something in 'Common', in USA Today, the approach has seen over 500 photos have new information added to them, from identifying individuals, locations and providing context for the images.
This approach of tapping into an existing online community of enthusiasts (Flickr is the world's largest community of photographers), providing them with public data and seeing what value the community can add (free of charge) is applicable across many different areas of government.
This isn't a unique instance of this approach. Other, and quite different examples of government-community online collaboration include;
- the SETI@Home program, which uses unused processing power on millions of home users' PCs to analyse astronomical data in the search for intelligent life,
- the Police Wiki Act, which was passed as an Act of Parliament last year as the first piece of New Zealand legislation to be written, analysed, discussed and finalised online involving hundreds (if not thousands) of community contributors, and
- the UK government's mash-up competition, where the UK is looking for community innovation in creating useful online applications involving government data released especially for this purpose.
There's many other forms this type of collaboration could take. All it requires is some goverment data and the will to work with communities.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
US releases eGovernment satisfaction results - useful benchmark for Australian sites | Tweet |
ForeSee Results has just released the findings of the latest quarterly US eGovernment satisfaction survey, looking at citizen satisfaction with over 100 US government websites.
Available as a PDF download, the E-Government Satisfaction Index (PDF 1.2Mb) uses a uniform system to compare satisfaction across US sites and was selected as the US government's standard measure in 1999.
Based on the results of this latest survey, there has been a small increase in average satisfaction to 72.9 percent, the first rise in a year.
The report does a good job of identifying the US government sites with the highest level of citizen satisfaction, which can be used by Australian government as good benchmarking examples.
It identifies the major priorities for improvement across agencies, with search topping the list (88% of agencies identified it as a top priority) followed by functionality at 59% and navigation at 41%.
The benefits of higher satisfaction have also been identified in the report, being that highly satisfied customers (scores of 80 or more) are;
- 84% more likely to use the website as a primary resource
- 83% more likely to recommend the website
- 57% more likely to return to the site
The use of a standard government website satisfaction methodology, as I have previously suggested, makes it much easier for government agencies to compare their performance, identify and learn from successes and address issues. It is also an excellent accountability tool for Ministers and agency heads.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Why can one man in a cave out-communicate the government of the world's superpower? | Tweet |
There was an interesting admission from the US Army Secretary last week in Inside Defense as reported in the Wired Danger Room Blog,
Senior Army leaders have fallen behind the breakneck development of cheapThe article went on to describe some of the initiatives underway at the US Army to help it prepare for the new world - including adding blogging to their graduate school curriculum and allowing a tiny office of Web-savvy mavericks at West Point to create Army-specific Web 2.0 tools (blogs, forums, social networks) for soldiers.
digital communications including cell phones, digital cameras and Web 2.0
Internet sites such as blogs and Facebook, Army Secretary Pete Geren said at a
trade conference on July 10. That helps explain how "just one man in a cave
that's hooked up to the Internet has been able to out-communicate the greatest
communications society in the history of the world -- the United States," Geren
said.
"It's a challenge not only at home, it's a challenge in recruiting, it's a challenge internationally, because effective communication brings people over to our side and ineffective communication allows the enemy to pull people to their side," Geren continued. He said the Army brass needs to catch up -- fast. But how exactly?
One solution: "Find a blog to be a part of," Geren said.
Young people embrace social media "as a fluent second language," he added. Army leaders have to do the same.
At the same time the US Air Force is using blogs, wikis and personal profile pages to better support its missions, per a Network World article, U.S. Air Force lets Web 2.0 flourish behind walls.
I expect that the Australian armed forces are watching and learning from our US counterparts. The online channel can deliver major benefits to the training and operations of a defense force.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Online government forms don't have to be boring | Tweet |
I'm one of those quirky people who finds forms intensely interesting.
I've had a great deal of past involvement with market reseach and online transaction sites which has emphasised to me how important effective and usable form design is in order to ensure that forms achieve the goals set.
In my current role I've guided my team into supporting a number of research projects and we're currently reviewing and redeveloping our website and intranet forms capacity - touching on every other area of the business.
So I was very interested to watch Jessica Ender's presentation at the Web Standards Group (WSG) in Canberra last week.
Jessica, who owns Formulate Information Design, a specialist form development consultancy in Canberra, gave a very professional and passionate talk focusing on the four layers of a form and the appropriate process to use when developing a form.
She brought it together with the four Cs of good form design, clear, concise, clever and contextual.
While much of this was not new to me, Jessica's talk placed it into a new context and I'll be revisiting our approach to the redevelopment of our forms based on her insights.
What type of methodology do you use for developing forms?
Are your online forms effective?
Monday, July 21, 2008
Is a busy website really that bad? | Tweet |
A theme I often hear in Australian web design circles is "make the website less crowded".
It's accepted wisdom that a website should have plenty of white space, clearly separated parts - and as little text as possible - particularly on the homepage.
Similar to Google's 28 word limit, Australian communicators seem to consider the best homepage design as the one with the least on it.
Certainly in the user testing I've done over the years with Australians I've heard the terms 'too busy' and 'too crowded' come up frequently.
Those are, however, perceptual measures. What about actual usage?
I have never specifically tested for the 'busyness limit' (the theoretical limit when text, link or graphical density begins to negatively impact on user task completion) - nor am I aware of any testing that has ever been done on this basis.
I am aware, however, of cultural differences in website design and use.
Look at the difference between US or Australian and Chinese or Japanese websites for example. In China and Japan, as well other Asian countries, the density of graphics, links and text is up to five times as high as in the US or Australia.
These high-density website countries also have high populations for their geographic size - which may form part of the difference in approach. Perhaps the amount of personal space people expect is related to the amount of whitespace they want to see in a website - although some high density European nations do not exhibit quite the same trend.
With the changing demographics in Australia it's important to keep an eye on what our citizens are looking for - our communicators and graphic designers may not always represent thecultural spread of the public.
So is anyone aware of research undertaken to look at the differences in expected information and graphical density of websites across different countries or cultural groups?
It could be an interesting (and useful) thesis project for someone.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Do people want the same things from council, state and federal government websites? | Tweet |
The UK recently held its annual seminar on How to build the perfect council website.
This discussed strategic approaches to egovernment at a local level and provided key insights into what local residents needed and expected from their councils and shires.
Carl Haggerty of Devon County Council, one of the presenters, has provided a synopsis of his observations and thoughts from the event in a post titled Thoughts on a “perfect council website”.
Reading his post, I do not see enormous differences between what it appears people want from local councils and what they want from state and Federal agencies;
Presentations from the 2007 seminar are available online and I am hopeful that the 2008 presentations will be as well soon.
- Get rid of those damn press releases (who the heck reads them).
- Stop the political messages (Our Leader).
- Nobody cares for this stuff, they are task focused and don’t have much time.
- We already take their money and if we take even more of there time we will only create more frustrated citizens and visitors.
- Delete most of your content as nobody reads or even maintains the stuff.
- 80% of web management is observing behaviour.
- Do the tasks your customers do and experience the “journey” yourself.
- Personalisation doesn’t work, most people don’t want to do it - interesting considering i was on the panel about web 2.0 techniques with “Steve Johnson” from Redbridge and “Suraj Kiki” founder of Jadu CMS, more on this later)
- Start with your top tasks and get them on your homepage to stop people having to search for them.
- Don’t force “corporate” crap at your customers, they don’t really care
