Facebook for Local Government. It’s all been said hasn’t it?
Preface.
Just like the article produced on Twitter here, this article on Facebook is not meant to be a document which tells you all, or teaches you everything, about Facebook. It’s more an overview of what Facebook is, how to set it up for non personal use and to offer some suggestions as to how it can be used in local government .
Overview.
Just like Twitter, Facebook is meant to be a communication tool.
Mark Zukerberg, the founder of Facebook says…
“The thing we are trying to do at Facebook, is just help people connect and communicate more efficiently.”
That’s a pretty important statement especially when you are talking about a Facebook market of some 750million users in July 2011. One in nine people on the planet have a Facebook account. The market is simply vast.
In August 2010 Roy Wells, a commentator on Social media said…
“7% of the worlds population is on FaceBook.”
But that doesn’t show an even distribution. You can see his break down of usage per country and many other interesting Facebook facts here.
“Yes, yes” I can hear you say. “It’s just kids!” That’s an understandable assumption, but you’d be wrong.
I’ll give you that 2010-2011 saw a 74% increase in the younger demographic age group of 18-24 but there was an increase of 58.9% in the 55+ age group. The 18-34 age group provide 50% of the users in the UK. That’s a level of engagement that can’t be ignored.
In an article in the Wall Street Journal here, the growth in usage of Facebook by the older generation is discussed. The article is worth a look, even though it talks about the American market, but you all know where America goes we tend to follow, so it’s a fair assumption the percentages shown in this article will be appropriate to the UK too at some time in the (near) future.
Just how much is Facebook used?
In March 2010 Facebook overtook Google as the most used web site in the USA. And it’s the 2nd most used web site in the world. Facebook, its usage and its users is/are ubiquitous*.
* There are places where Facebook doesn’t exist in quite the same way. The author’s daughter is currently working in China and bemoans the lack of any access to Facebook.
Facebook UK
- As of April 2011 there were 30,168,260 users
- The gender usage is nearly 50/50.
- The average user has 130 friends – so news travels fast.
- The age demographic is as per this pie chart.
Once again, just like Twitter, you can see that by excluding yourself and your information from Facebook you are excluding a huge information channel.
Enough!
OK, OK… enough facts and percentages! However, whichever way you look at it, the use of Facebook is widespread, mind boggling in fact. It’s no use being luddite. Local government officers need to use this channel of communication because their clients are. Simple.
Starting off a commercial (non-personal) Facebook site.
Syncing with the lingo.
Before we go further; the use of peculiar language on Facebook is the biggest block to understanding what to do and what to expect. “Add as a friend” “like” “profiles” “fans” all have meanings that are slightly out of kilter with those of the average UK based conservative ( note the small c) user. I don’t want ‘fans’ but that’s what the follower of a page is called. It’s a bit cloying but you’ll just have to live with it.
If you want more information and clarity, at this link you will find a glossary of terms in common use on Facebook.
Onwards…
How do you get started?
There is a difference between you as a Joe public user and how a commercial users (business or local authority) use Facebook.
Commercial users – and that’s what we are aiming to be here – use ‘pages’ and not ‘profiles’. What’s the difference?
A profile – a Joe public piece of content for non commercial users:
- will have details at the top like “lives in” and “from” and “born”.
Clearly those epithets don’t apply to a local government site because local government is not a person. It’s an entity.
- And you will be able to add a profile as a “friend”
A commercial entity should not use a personal profile. It is not allowed by Facebook but, that said, it’s an easy mistake to make.
A Page – a commercial (none personal) piece of content.
- Will have none of the personal details of a profile and you will be able to “like” that page.
- Pages have limited access to user profiles.
- With Pages you can update your status (these will be your posts) which will then appear in the newsfeeds of “fans” who have chosen to be so.
- With Pages you can adjust the settings to allow fans to write on the page wall or not.
- With Pages you can alter the look and feel of the page, using apps, to be more in line with your corporate ID.
How do you construct a Page?
- Go to facebook.com
- Underneath the “sign up” green button you will see “Create a Page for a celebrity, band or business”. Click on that link.
- You’ll be presented with a series of icons defining your business type. Choose one.
- You’ll probably choose “Company, organization or institution”. Complete the required information.
- You’ll then be asked to create a Facebook account or choose to use your current one.
- Go through the required process – confirmation e-mails etc -and get to your site.
- On the left of your page you will get the basic apps like wall, info, etc
What now?
The basic set up of the page is a little boring so you’ll want to make it look at little more interesting.
- The first task is to create an additional landing page.
- The landing page can be more strongly branded using a third party app like those available from Involver.com, pagemodo.com or set it up in iframes if you have some techie support. I used pagemodo.
It was very simple, though of course there are some limitations. - Call the landing page “welcome” or something similar.
- If you want people to click on from that landing page you should have some sort of “call to action” (where you want the viewer to do something) like click here to enter a competition or to get a free down load or whatever you wish. You can of course change the content of the landing page when you wish to align with any new campaigns you run.
You’ll now want to adjust the settings to manage permissions, use block lists to block things you may feel you should, set the default landing tab – this is where you use the landing page you’ve created – thus when people come to your site afresh they will see the zappy little landing page you’ve made.
You may also like to take a look at the resources section, the apps and the help centre. All interesting and useful stuff and available as tabs or navigation items in your Facebook page.
OK. You have your page, you’ve set the landing page, you’ve adjusted your settings what now?
You first need to get 25 likes. That should be easy as you can get 25 of your staff to like the pages.
Once that’s achieved the facebook page is up and running and you can do more.
And then?
It’s all down to content. And we all know how difficult that can be.
Using a Facebook page is akin to marketing. It’s all about building long term relationships with customers.
You will need to:
- beat content fatigue. Use multiple admins (more than one editor) to keep the posts fresh and relevant;
- be interesting/funny/insightful and useful;
- be careful how you update a Facebook page. This is not Twitter so 1 maybe 2 posts a day but no more;
- not ‘push’ your authority too much. ‘Over the top’ selling is not liked;
- create a social media calendar with your team so you can schedule what you are going to put out and when, especially if you have multiple admin officers for the pages;
- perhaps create a weekly video, weekly poll, photo share;
And don’t forget the sharing buttons on your own web site. Use your Web site, Facebook pages and Twitter account to drive readership and usage. Remember not everybody has both Facebook and Twitter accounts. And some of those users may never visit your web site.Ensure your web page, Facebook page and Twitter are in sync and working harmoniously. This isn’t easy but it’s worthwhile.
Apps.
There are any number of apps you can embed in your page. Try here . Hundreds of apps for your Facebook page.You will be surprised what you can drive from a Facebook page.
Sundry.
Places.
Use ‘places’ to let people check in. Try giving discount at something like swimming pools for people who have checked in. Or maybe a free cup of coffee at your libraries if that facility is available. You can read more about places/location here.
Insights
When you get over 30 likes ‘insights’ kicks in ( it’s over on the right of the pages when you are an adminstrator). This allows you to get high quality stats, which will help you to get the best out of Facebook.
You can learn more about the very powerful insights application here.
Finally.
- Your Facebook page is just like any other of your communications channels. It requires effort. No effort = no good.
- Using Facebook you can reach your actual customers without being filtered by an editor in the print media channels.
- You can measure results with insights.
- You can alter your campaigns easily and cheaply.
- The cost of set up is free.
- But most of all Facebook is interactive. It’s 2 way, providing invaluable feedback on what you say and do.
If that’s not for you then I would suggest neither is customer service. And could you afford to ignore that aspect of your business?
About the author.
Peter Barton was the Head of Service for “Web and Information Governance” at Lincolnshire County Council until December 2010.
Peter introduced many innovative elements into Local Government Web sites many of which have since become commonplace. Advertising for instance.
Peter’s background, prior to Local Government web site production was in commerce where he started and ran a successful design business for many years. Peter has been involved in web site production since 1992 building the first sites in hand written code.
Peter’s business is a commercial venture in on-line retail. Quite a departure form local government but a departure which has involved learning about the otherwise hidden intricacies of the web again. This time with a commercial eye. What he now has is a commercially augmented experience of local government web production. And that’s refreshing and useful.
Peter also provides consultancy to local government organisations on things web related.
Contact details:
Peter Barton
T: +44 (0) 1522-878135
M: +44 (0) 7712-578596
E: peterdbarton@gmail.com
Skype: V70PDB
Twitter: @lgwebman – Tweets about local government web stuff
In this blog:-
- Does your site accommodate Mobile visitors?
- What does position in Google search results mean to your click through rate? Does it really matter?
- Is your site fast or slow and does it matter?
- Do people read what you have written?
- Does it matter if content is ’below the fold’?
- Bounce Rate. What’s that and does it matter?
- Quick tip.
- Some useful links
Does your site accommodate Mobile visitors?
Mobile use of the web is growing faster than the initial web take up in the 90’s; accounting now for around 50% of web usage. At first that may seem surprising but when you consider the options now available for web browsing; smart phones, TV’s and tablets, it should come as no surprise at all.
Check your analytic software to see what level of mobile visitors you have. And ask yourself are you ready?
n.b. If your site is not accommodating mobile visitors, that’s a major failing.
What does your position in the Google search results mean to your click through rate? Does it really matter?
We all strive to be in the number 1 spot in search results but what if we don’t achieve it? What affect does that have on the traffic from the search results?
The difference between First at 42.13% and second at 11.9% shows just how important it is for your link to be number 1 on that topic. Other results are shown on this pie chart. (I’m not quite sure the percentages stack up with the ranking but despite this the indication is clear.)
Source. http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/google-organic-seo-click-through-rates/
Moral of the story… strive for number 1 spot.
Is your site fast or slow and does it matter?
Some would argue that for a local government site this isn’t as important as for a commercial site where there is competition. The argument being it’s better to deliver good and complete information than it is to be just ‘quick’, and to risk the possibility of inferior or incomplete information.A reasonable argument, however, fast sites are another issue to be considered in customer service evaluations. Indeed Google downgrades sites in it’s rankings if the pages are slow i.e. over 2 seconds.
For commercial sites the faster the pages load the better the conversion. A one second speeding up of the page load adds 7% to conversion. So speed is important to our clients.
Do people read what you have written?
My experience of dealing with internal clients showed brevity was not their strong point.
Huge amounts of pointless data, some of which is just ego massaging, is being displayed on web pages. And it goes unread by clients – and that’s who we are trying to satisfy (not the manager of a particular section who wants to tell the world how great he or his team is).
Sadly people don’t read web pages in the way the writers would believe or even hope. They scan for keywords and skim around those. Rarely if ever do they read long text, especially if it’s about you, the council.
Dross and flannel. Skim off the dross and throw out the flannel. Froth and bubble. Scrape off the froth and prick all the bubbles. It’s just so much pointless verbiage that gets in the way. Cut to the chase and provide the data.
Put yourself in the clients place and say ”what’s in it for me”. Evaluate all your content that way and remember the average reading age for web users is 14 (maybe higher for local government pages because of the market sector but dont assume high levels of literacy for your readers) so keep it simple.
If you want to test some pages to see if you really are interested in customers, go here… www.futurenowinc.com/wewe.htm put in a url for a page to test whether that’s so.
Does it matter if content is ’below the fold’?
75% of clicks occur without people scrolling down! Blimey that’s going to come of bit of a surprise to those 10 page scrollers on some local government sites.
You can test your site to see just how many people can see what parts of your site. Go to www.foldtester.com to see how much of your page is below the fold and is therefore unseen and by what portion of visitors.
Bounce Rate. What’s that and does it matter?
Bounce rate is loosely the percentage of people who view your site, or a single page if you are set up that way, for whom the landing page is also the exit page i.e. they go nowhere else.Your site did not interest them enough to induce them to dig deeper or browse.
Now this may be entirely appropriate. e.g. you may hav e provided a link to a page with a specific piece of information for a specific set of people. They look at that page and ‘job done’ off they go somewhere else. However, generally, if your bounce rate is above 40% – that’s a sort of average in commerce – then something is wrong.
High bounce rate has been crudely likened to “I came, I saw, I puked.” Graphically cruel but accurate and we’ve all done it.
Quick tip.
Pages with forms embedded deliver better results than those with a link to a form.
What does this mean? Say you had a page where you wanted clients to register to a newsletter. Don’t link out to a complex form requiring a large to medium number of fields to be completed. Put a small form in the top right of the request page with something like…
Register here to receive hot news.
And construct a small form in that box to do just that.
BTW incentives to register i.e. free swim at the local baths etc really lift the percentage of registrations.
Some useful links
This site provides really useful information.
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/clickstream/
Browser testing
http://browsershots.org/ Tests you site on a number of browsers
Uptime and link testing.
http://www.pingdom.com/ Tests web uptime and performance for your site.
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html Xenu Link Sleuth. Tests the links on your site.
A/B & Multivariate Testing
http://unbounce.com/ constructs alternative landing pages and provides stats too.
www.google.com/websiteoptimizer does what it says.
Visitor tracking
http://www.clicktale.com/ constructs heat maps of visitor interactions with your site.
http://www.crazyegg.com/ visualise where your visitors are going.
Usability testing
http://www.usertesting.com/ Does what it says.
http://whatusersdo.com/ Usability and user experience testing.
User surveys and feedback
http://www.surveymonkey.com/ Carry out surveys. I’ve used this in the past and found it to be excellent.
http://kissinsights.com/ Feedback from your site.
http://www.4qsurvey.com/ on line survey tool. Free for 15 days.
About the author.
Peter Barton was the Head of Service for “Web and Information Governance” at Lincolnshire County Council until December 2010.
Peter introduced many innovative elements into Local Government Web sites many of which have since become commonplace. Advertising for instance.
Peter’s background, prior to Local Government web site production was in commerce where he started and ran a successful design business for many years. Peter has been involved in web site production since 1992 building the first sites in hand written code.
Peter’s business is a commercial venture in on-line retail. Quite a departure form local government but a departure which has involved learning about the otherwise hidden intricacies of the web again. This time with a commercial eye. What he now has is a commercially augmented experience of local government web production. And that’s refreshing and useful.
Peter also provides consultancy to Local Government organisations on all things web.
Contact details:
Peter Barton
T: +44 (0) 1522-878135
M: +44 (0) 7712-578596
E: peterdbarton@gmail.com
Skype: V70PDB
Twitter: @lgwebman – Tweets about local government web stuff
I said I wouldn’t but, oh dear.
Socitm are talking about the next Better Connected being ”top tasks” related.
I suppose telling us what is going to be measured next year is a step forward from past years. They usually spring their surprise of ‘something new’ on unsuspecting local government web teams after the BC review and then tell us what we should have done and question why we didn’t. Doh!
Is this ‘helpful’ shift just that, or is it a cynical ruse to get more LG cash into what are allegedly ever shrinking coffers over there in Socitm land.
Rumours, and that’s all they are, abound about diminishing membership at Socitm. I suppose given the shrinking Local Government pound it’s inevitable. Discovering whether these rumours are true is difficult at best. It was nigh on impossible to get information out of Socitm when they camouflaged themselves with a .gov.uk extension to their name (despite submitting FOI’s) so there is no chance now that they are fully fledged and overtly, commercial. That aside the potential to top up the turnover, by offering paid for seminars on the up coming Better Connected top task agenda, is a chance too good to miss.
In a recent blog by Simon Wakeman headed “Shabby PR from Socitm’ a comment was made by an anonymous respondent.
Whoever is behind that eponymous and anonymous David Jones comment on the Simon Wakeman blog here… hits the nail on the head and goes beyond the topic of Simon’s blog, which was related to Cookies. David Jones says:-
- “Who appointed Socitm as having the last word in what a council website should or shouldn’t look like, do, have as its content, or even where in the council structure the webteam should sit?”
- …. “what they write in their reviews are all just personal opinions, not objective facts about how the site should be.”
- “And different reviewers come up with different opinions – one reviewer fails a website because of the location of the A-Z index, whilst another reviewer passes a different website on its A-Z index in exactly the same location!”
- “Are the council webteams which all diligently obey their Socitm overlords going to get four stars, whilst the councils which are implementing their website according to their own needs going to struggle to even get two?”
- And he finishes with…“Will this madness ever end?”
Bravo! Well observed and elegantly put.
My experience of taking issues with Socitm and one of their suppliers whilst at Lincolnshire County Council showed that comment was futile and to no avail. Those blue rinse ladies are not for turning, particularly the cloth eared Mr Greenwood who sees himself as the grand panjandrum on local government web sites. A comment given to me by a less guarded BC reviewer showed the sway Mr Greenwood has on the review.
Are Socitm simply critics or can they cut the mustard when it comes to web sites?
Lets not talk about the Socitm web site as it is now, or even as it was just a couple of years ago. That’s not what we should judge them on. Suffice to say they have never been good at leading by example.
So what should we judge them on? Consistency in measurment is what they should be judged on. David Jones highlights Socitms inadequacies at getting any consistency in what they do…
“And different reviewers come up with different opinions – one reviewer fails a website because of the location of the A-Z index, whilst another reviewer passes a different website on its A-Z index in exactly the same location!”
And that has certainly been my experience.
Better than nothing. Now there’s an accolade.
And yet…yes, I’ll give it to Socitm, Better Connected is better than nothing – after all there is little else. But to pay so much attention to what is an inconsistent hodgepodge of disparate and subjective opinions from a group of individuals, some of whom actually run web sites for Councils is akin to believing in the curative properties of snake oil .
Continuing on that theme; if reviewers also run council web sites they cannot be unbiased. Of course if they are web managers, and some are, and they are expert at judging web sites –and if not why are they Socitm reviewers – why aren’t their own web sites marvelous? None of it stacks up.
Better Connected is not a measuring process. It’s a finger in the air stab at something solid and meaningful. Not to mention the two fingers in the air to Socitm’s clients.
Some would say you only have yourselves to blame. People do not gather together to make their dislike of the Better Connected review known and they should. There is no community outcry. Why? Perhaps for the very reason the person behind David Jones mentions in his piece…
“I am, of course, posting pseudonymously because I work on a local authority webteam, and do not wish our rating for Better Connected 2012 to be harmed by anything which the Socitm spies might have read here.”
The sad thing is I believe Socitm will be heartened by a comment like that.
Is there life outside of Better Connected?
I am aware there are many who think as I do. They don’t like the inconsistencies in Better Connected or even what it stands for let alone the rank commercialism hidden behind the faux objectivity. Each time I spoke at or attended conferences or meetings many voiced this opinion and asked why we slavishly followed Socitm’s view.
Many particularly dislike the practice of sending reports to Directors who may be ill informed, or worse still, Councillors, many of whom have little or no understanding of the technical slant to the report nor of Socitm’s commercial push behind it. And less still of what is achievable within a large knowledge based organisation. And of course many people dislike the contemptuous use of tabloid spun headlines put out by the Socitm comms people. It’s all a bit tacky don’t you think?.
Some years ago I decided in Lincolnshire to ignore what Better Connected said. We chose to ask what our external clients want from us and concern ourselves with how we could achieve that with the information we could get from our internal clients. We didn’t value the opinions of a team of self appointed ‘experts’ with whom we disagreed. I was prepared to argue the point internally and take the flack for it. I made that opinion clear to all. Unsurprisingly we slid in Better Connected rankings. Much as we did in the Sitemorse rankings when we stopped paying them.
And yet despite this Lincolnshire County Council’s web site was voted Best Government web site of the year 2011. See here…
So despite not playing Socitm’s game it seems LCC did OK. Complaints from customers reduced with there being practically none about the navigation and the ability to get to information. That in itself was a minor miracle.
And finally.
During a conversation about contradictory comments from the reviewers of our A-Z in consecutive BC reports; when asked why we had been marked down in the second for doing what was suggested in the first, Martin Greenwood said Better Connected was not a document to be followed slavishly. My reply was “then why make the comments in the first place if they are not there to be taken heed of”?
Remind me. What’s the purpose of Better Connected? Barmy, just barmy.
And remember, if Socitm and Better Connected was the all seeing oracle then their report, should you follow it, would ensure your site would be perfect. Wouldn’t that be, commercially speaking, like sawing off the branch they are sitting on? Of course it would which is why it is neither the oracle nor is it necessarily correct in its assertions. And if that’s the case…
Why don’t you see what you can achieve by talking to your clients, if you don’t already, and providing what they want – even if the results don’t agree with Socitm.
After all, who are you building your site for; a set of biased and opinionated Better Connected reviewers or somebody who really uses your site and wants information?
Listen to your clients. Listen to your real critics.
It really is your choice.
To see more on these issues search this site using the phrase ‘Socitm’
And Finally, finally.
After this little trot on my pet hobby horse I’ll put it back in the stable and return to a more sanguine level of comment with upcoming articles on Google analytics, e-mail marketing for local government and the use of Facebook in local government - though not necessarily in that order.
About the author.
Peter Barton was the Head of Service for “Web and Information Governance” at Lincolnshire County Council until December 2010.
Peter introduced many innovative elements into Local Government Web sites many of which have since become commonplace. Advertising for instance.
Peter’s background, prior to Local Government web site production was in commerce where he started and ran a successful design business for many years. Peter has been involved in web site production since 1992 building the first sites in hand written code.
Peter’s business is a commercial venture in on-line retail. Quite a departure form local government but a departure which has involved learning about the otherwise hidden intricacies of the web again. This time with a commercial eye. What he now has is a commercially augmented experience of local government web production. And that’s refreshing and useful.
Peter also provides consultancy to Local Government on all things web.
Contact details:
T: +44 (0) 1522-878135
M: +44 (0) 7712-578596
E: peterdbarton@gmail.com
Skype: V70PDB
Twitter: @lgwebman – Tweets about local government web stuff
The ‘How To’ on social media
Dave Briggs is running an event in May.
If you don’t know about Dave Briggs… where have you been? Dave is a gifted speaker – I had the sinking feeling of following on from him once at conference in Birmingham – and general uber-geek on all things Social media.
Social media. If you want to know what it’s all about, why you should be using it and how it can help you in local government get along to his event. You’ll learn a lot and your council will benefit.
Information here.
There is an excellent article here… describing the use of social media tools internally.
Whilst at Lincolnshire County Council we sourced and developed an internal social media system nearly 2 years ago.
Let me tell you why it got started, how it was developed and why it was not taken up. And perhaps I can throw some light on the missed opportunities generated by not following this through.
GEORGETALK as it was called (Lincolnshire CC’s intranet is called GEORGE. The social media system was a development of that) was the result of a discussion between myself as Head of Web and Information Governance and my then boss the Assistant Director for all things web as well as Human Resources.
There was a requirement for staff to be able to talk to one another in discreet groups for a number of reasons not least of which was to help in communication and encouraging a sense of community which it was felt would be lost when the “New ways of working” (NWOW) initiative washed through the organisation.
Many people would be working remotely, broken away and isolated from the fractured teams NWOW would create. The sense of isolation of working either at home or some sort of remote ‘touch down point’ is palpable. Daily team interaction, removed by NWOW, is not easily replaced and certainly not by cold, flat e-mail.
There was a need for this outside of the NWOW project too. Ever since we created the web site, staff would be asking for discreet areas of the web where they could share specific files and ideas about what they were doing. This was rigged using areas of the live council web site with a specific URL unconnected to any navigation or search. Clumsy but it worked – sort of. This was a weekly occurrence and indicated to us there was already a need for such an interactive platform.
We also wanted to relieve the e-mail systems of the internal chatter generated by staff and reduce the amount of social media browsing being carried out by staff. At the time there had been a board level decision NOT to stop social media browsing, regarding the curbing of excess use as a management issue not an electronic one.
There was a more crying need. We noticed that most of what we were holding or doing on our Intranet (GEORGE) could be shifted to GEORGETALK and at the same time provide far more of a community feel to it including a more bottom up approach to content. We could then drop GEORGE entirely thereby reducing management and re-design cost.
So, as you can see there were a lot of drivers to producing some sort of internal form of social media. INTERNAL…is the operative and important word here.
At the time I was also responsible for Information Governance so the security of information held by the organisation was of great importance to me, especially as I was the Data Protection Officer too. I would not have been happy to open us up to a shared system where information could have gone walkabout and on GEORGETALK you could only speak to people who were registered in the Active Directory. Providing everybody knew what was on GEORGETALK stayed on GEORGETALK security would be fine. Of course the same applies to internal e-mails so the concept was not something new but it needed reinforcing.
2 years ago the market for such software suppliers was limited to a small handful mainly based in the USA. We in the web team at LCC, together with our web contractors, AbacusEmedia, took to researching the supplier base. What we found were a few people who said they could do this or that but actually were doing nothing. It was in effect ‘vapourware’. We did find one supplier, a company started by an ex Microsoft man, who were delivering the goods. That company, Telligent supplied our contractor with the software and away we went on test.
I understand more suppliers are in the market now to supply this form of software. I would counsel though to run the software on your own servers and not to share it with others as a ‘software as a service’ type of purchase. There are of course laws under the data protection act restricting where you can host servers holding personal data so care should be exercised.
What we were doing was momentous. It held the possibility to change the way we worked with each other, the way we shifted information around the organisation, the way we held central knowledge bases – each easily updatable by many – moving in a truly innovative direction, away from relying on the paper systems of the past towards collaborative, centrally held media and information, including the creation of blogs and forums. Knowledge management in it’s simplest form in fact. Something we had been trying to achieve for years.
We spoke to managers and staff alike and described what we were doing. We involved the IT portfolio holder in the members group. We pressed on, ordering the software and installing it on servers and carrying out an initial set up.
Hold on… what was this going to look like?
Working on the basis of why re-design when something exists already we adopted a style which would be easily recognisable to most Facebook users. Not necessarily in the graphics but in the function and structure of the internal site itself. After all, lots of our internal clients are fluent with Facebook, this is just an internal, restricted version of what, – looking at the browsing stats – people seemed to use every day.
The first thing we had to do was drop all of our previous experience. No navigation to speak of, small amount of restrictions to what was set up etc.
We decided to adopt the principle of “natural paths”. This is where architects designing housing estates or office block in a campus environment don’t design the routes of footpaths. They leave the site for 6 months or so and see where the natural paths develop. It’s only when the users have decided where they want to go do the paths get built.
So it was with us. We just left the structure and see what developed.
Sadly we didn’t get that far. I was describing to one member what could be achieved i.e. a group could be constructed for all members with sub groups for each political group or party, with other groups for special interest groups and committees. Truly collaborative working a little like Facebook but entirely internal.
Screech of brakes….. it seems the politicians didn’t find the possible level of interaction across the organisation as welcome a thought as I would have hoped . The scrutinising of what we were doing started from the top of the political cadre resulting in a decision being taken that despite our spend so far all further activity on GEORGETALK would cease.
It now sits there frozen in digital aspic waiting for political thinking to catch up with what is a daily reality for large amounts of the electorate.
As you start to look into internal social networking remember…
- It doesn’t matter how good this idea is, and it is.
- It doesn’t matter how many of the officers want this, and they do.
- It doesn’t matter how much it will improve the lot of the remote staff members, and it will.
- And it doesn’t matter how much cost saving can be driven out by it’s use, and it can.
- Without your politicians understanding what social media is, and ceasing to be scared to death of Facebook or Twitter.
- Without your Comms officers and teams embracing what the world is already using as opposed to smashing up the digital looms like luddites…
Unless you resolve these last 2 items their will always be resistance to the use of Internal Social Media in Local Government.
Peter Barton
is available on peterdbarton (at)gmail (dot) com
“YOUR” web site! It makes you think doesn’t it?
Now that I’m no longer actively involved in managing a website for a Local Council I’m freed of the bonds of the daily arguments and angst.
Being outside allows me a certain clarity of view, but in some ways that’s false too. It’s really easy from this position to throw brickbats. You only have to read the Better Connected Review to see how those with no responsibility, no pressures – political or otherwise can take a view on what is outside of their purview. Better still listen to Jonathan Davies commentating on 6 nations rugby. Why didn’t he play like he talks? The answer is simple. It just isn’t that easy when you’re inside; in amongst it as it were.
The point of this piece is to attempt to throw some light onto ‘why the differences’ in what is being delivered. You’d think all councils would be same wouldn’t you? As you know that isn’t so.
Here goes. A stab at a very simplistic approach:
Is your council open, transparent and essentially honest? I mean really open and honest. Not just full of spin. If so then you’re in with a chance of providing a site which is truly ( and I hate the term) ‘Engaging’.
If, on the other hand, spin, gloss and obfuscation are endemic in your organisation then you stand little chance of getting data out to your clients. Probably, because it would be politically damaging to do so, you will be blocked or at best ‘slowed down’ when wishing to publish flat unambiguous, clear data.
Just as a test; were you forced to publish the ‘over £500′ spend by the impending governments deadline or did you publish well before you were obliged to?If you were forced by the deadline or you haven’t published them yet… sort of answers itself.
So councils web sites can, and I would argue do, provide some evidence of the innards of the council; the ‘type of council you are’ sort of thing. Publish everything = open, honest and transparent. And of course the reverse is true.
Is it just the politics of the situation though? Probably not. Large Councils are multi departmental, multi disciplinary and comprise a heady mix of service delivery, back office and of course, the politicos. That makes for teams and even tribes and that means it’s difficult for any web team to get at data embedded within those groups/tribes/departments.
Seamless delivery assumes all managers are equally up to speed with the processes and benefits of electronically delivered data. I’d like to bet that any of you reading this will know somebody who is still firmly paper-based. I can certainly name a few, so wresting information from them and making it electronic will be hard, if not impossible until they get their heads out of the filing cabinets and drawers or after they have fell, or have been pushed, off the twig.
We see therefore, a functioning, seamless and ( here’s that word again) engaging council web site is subject to many forces and pressures, usually from outside the control of those who are supposed to manage, or even be responsible for, the process. Paradoxical isn’t it? But how do you resolve such a situation?
- The political will has to be there to be open, transparent and honest.
- Tribal barriers need to be removed or overcome in some other way.
- Staff responsible for holding data have to be aware and switched on to the idea of doing so electronically.
A difficult nut to crack? Difficult but not impossible. Ways of resolving the issues flow from the Chief Executive and the Leader, certainly the first point can’t be overcome without their conscious and conspicuous buy in and action. And the underlined term is crucial.
Additionally, their conspicuous involvement – applying large amount of pressure if needs be – to remove the second and third obstruction will put web produced information front and centre. Which is where it should be because it’s more cost effective to do so. It’s the first place you should put the information. It should not be an afterthought or a bolt on.
This is so obvious I’m surprised it’s not taken up everywhere. I know from experience it isn’t. As an example a head of service said to me one day “I’ll see if I can get you some information for your web site”.
“YOUR” web site! It makes you think doesn’t it?
