Working in LG was like banging my head against a wall. Not a brick wall you understand  but one entirely constructed from peoples ignorance, individual resistance, bureaucracy, petty empires, small and large ‘P’ politics, resistance from directorates to provide ‘meaningful’ data for clients to use, self interest – largely in protecting jobs that moving to a truly digital solution would put at risk and much, much more.

In the main it has seemed as though the client didn’t matter. Oh yes there was a stated desire to assist the client but it just felt like lip service. It – whatever ‘it’ was – ticked a box or met one standard or another. What appeared more important was the desperation to spend budgets – no matter how much duplication that involved – as well as the continued aggrandisement of the individual, directorate or silo. And the silo is the elephant in the room in local government. Despite the desire to collapse the ‘separate’ business silo mentality of the giant directorates it still exists. It’s alive and well and thriving in a highways, or other  directorate near you.  And that’s divisive and expensive. And, setting aside the obstruction silo ethos places in the way of the management of the whole organisation,   it makes running an effective web presence almost impossible.

Meddling amateurs…
The overriding frustration felt by me, and no doubt by many more web folks, is the inherent meddling amateurism in local government. Not in the services they deliver of course i.e. social care, roads, education etc. are all delivered very professionally I’m sure, but in the ancillaries where, for example,  some staff in  local government consider themselves graphic artists because they can use Word or they  can knock up a web site using some torrid templates.
The output of the local government ‘graphic artist’ can be seen stuck up on the walls all around the organisation. Worthy posters, with the headline forming an arch at the top of the page with every letter being a different colour, proliferate. And of course they use a different font for every line.

It’s this same ‘design consciousness’ they bring to what they want of web output. What with this acceptance of palpable visual tat and the “we know best” attitude – and not just in their own speciality - of many local government managers it comes as no surprise it has taken so long to climb out of  the mire of bad practices that have held back LG web site development. e.g. local government web sites put together by somebody’s 16 year old next door neighbour and hosted on Freeserve.

Why do I say meddling? Let me give you an example. During a robust discussion about a web presence I asked a manager in social care  if her mother was in care to which she answered “Yes”. I asked her if she would like me to look after her mother? Of course she said “No”. And rightly so because I know nothing about social care. So I asked her why she insisted on telling me how I was going to construct her web presence and what it should look like? To these meddling amateurs I would say “You have a job. Get on with it. And leave the web stuff to web people.”

… and councillors.
And then we come to councillors. There are some joyful exceptions but in the main councillors aren’t  concerned with web sites – unless they’re mentioned on one of course –  because many of them struggle with computers in general.  As a result they see all this ‘tinterweb’ stuff as pointless. And it is these digital illiterates who have sway over what web stuff looks like, what it says and the way it’s used but more importantly on how much is spent on it. The life digital poses a large threat to digital illiterates and if they have control of the strings of the purse from which the required money should flow there’s not too much hope for advancement is there?

Slow to Change
You are involved in a sector which is slow to change. One where, in some places, metaphorically, the quill pen has only just gone out of existence. One where the ‘typing pool’ mentality persists in some directorates. One where deference to know-nothings is the order of things. And one which is really scared of the electronic world and what it can do, particularly social media because it allows the  people to speak directly, and with a sizeable voice. But change it will. Change is constant and inevitable.

The web site as a central hub. Put the web first.
There is no doubting the LG web presence will become the hub around which the administration of the organisation will spin. The web will deliver more services and that will undoubtedly  grow. But it starts with ‘put the web first’. If you have a project bring in the web team first. Not as an afterthought, but as a  FIRST THOUGHT. Only when you have exhausted the possibilities of service or information delivery via the web should you start on other methods. A vibrant, effective web team given the software and the resources – but more especially the AUTHORITY – will deliver the customer service the public want and you will see those much needed savings, providing of course you understand ‘electronificating’* services doesn’t need as many people. But that’s just the point isn’t it?  There’s a strong element of ‘turkeys voting for Christmas’ in driving your systems towards digital and there’s  the rub, the resistance point if you like on the road towards real, palpable cost savings.

The best of luck in your endeavours. And thanks for your interest and comments.

Over and out.

*please excuse my made up Bush-ism but it seems to work. 

I’ll leave this blog up as a means of reference for any of the material you may find useful.

Peter Barton
Lincoln

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 2^nd 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?

1. Go to facebook.com
2. Underneath the “sign up” green button you will see “Create a Page for a celebrity, band or business”. Click on that link.
3. You’ll be presented with a series of icons defining your business type. Choose one.
4. You’ll probably choose “Company, organization or institution”. Complete the required information.
5. You’ll then be asked to create a Facebook account or choose to use your current one.
6. Go through the required process  – confirmation e-mails etc -and get to your site.
7. 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

• 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 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

Being in local government you may suppose SEO is of no interest to you. After all, your ‘clients’ are going to come to your site because in your area you are the monopoly provider of  many services; libraries, schools, social care, road repairs etc.

Whilst that’s partly true, in the move towards digital delivery in this ever growing on-line world, providing better access to your data by search engines should be seen as providing better customer service. Besides you must have had internal clients asking why their data is not “first in Google”. SEO is therefore important to you.

What search engines should you optimise for?

• Currently ( researched in June 2011) 90% of UK searches are carried on Google property.
• Bing have 4.2% of the market
• Yahoo have 2.5%

And ASK, though not really a search engine anymore, has 1.2%.

So in the UK there is really one important search to enable and that is of course Google.

Abroad, in Russia, China etc there are many more search engines , some more important than Google in their own country. In the unlikely event you need to be generally seen in other countries – maybe some pages for economic development would be of use but only if they are in the language of the country – then you need to consider how you can utilise SEO for those pages of your site.

What’s happening at Google?

Google is turning into something more than just a search. I cant pretend to know or understand where Google are going. All I can do is see what comes out of Google and think about where that may lead.

We have already seen other Google services; Google Earth, Google Maps , Google+ and much, much more but are you aware there is a shopping experience on Google? It’s not wonderfully obvious, or for that matter, relevant to local government, unless you have products to sell, but the next time you do a search for a product of some sort have a look at the left hand column in the search results. You’ll see ‘shopping’. Go take a look at the results. The supplier has to opt into this service by providing a spreadsheet with agreed content in set columns. You can start to see where Google is going here.

Panda

Panda is the name for a series of changes to Google’s search algorithms, which were put in place in February of 2011, affecting the UK last April. It’s worth emphasising this is a change to Google’s algorithms. It’s not a black list of any sort. Panda algorithm modification is the biggest change Google have made in their history.

Panda changed the world for many people. The main change was the downgrading of sites connected to sites known as “Link farms” or “content farms”( a site which hosts many links and usually trite content about a site or URL). Being connected to by link/content farms is seen as detrimental and many sites were downgraded, some losing as much as 99.9% of their visibility in search results..

You can see an article here on the winners and losers in the Panda re-shuffle. Panda is unlikely to have an effect on local government or even small business visibility.

What is Google looking at on your site in order to define your position in their rankings?

Before you start.

Get the word from the mouth of Google-god. Google provide a really helpful, no, ESSENTIAL,  guide on SEO in pdf form here ..

Download this document to get an insight into just what it is Google want from your site.

Note.
Take heed of the contents of this document. It’s  ’the 10 commandments’ for your Google-life.

It covers…

• Create unique, accurate page titles
• Make use of the “description” meta tag
• Improving Site Structure
• Improve the structure of your URLs
• Make your site easier to navigate
• Optimizing Content
• Offer quality content and services
• Write better anchor text
• Optimize your use of images
• Use heading tags appropriately
• Dealing with Crawlers
• Make effective use of robots.txt
• Be aware of rel=”nofollow” for links
• SEO for Mobile Phones
• Notify Google of mobile sites
• Guide mobile users accurately
• Promotions and Analysis
• Promote your website in the right ways

Some of this is a bit ‘techie’ but so is the Google process. Get your IT team or your Content management System (CMS) provider to show you how these issues have been covered, or not, as the case may be.

Keywords.
Previous thinking on providing information in the keywords tag is a little outdated. Google doesn’t use the keywords in the ‘keywords tag’ to add much, if at all, to your ranking. Is adding keywords of any use ? I would argue it is, because the activity of producing a keyword list for a page generates a lot of words which can be used in the text and used in the page content they do add to the ‘discoverability’ of the page by search engines. Include as many keywords as possible in the body text of your pages as you write them.

Schemas.
Schema is from the Greek meaning ‘shape’ or more generally ‘plan’.  In web site context it relates more to accepted standards. A number of search engines have agreed on schemas which make content appearing on complying web sites more discoverable – even re-usable.

The web site schema.org provides information on standards and practices. This may be one area for the more technically minded in your organisation to look at.

Domain authority:
Is about the “weight” of your site in terms of its authority.

This is related to:-

• the age of the site – the older it is the greater the authority (especially if it is kept up to date).
• Quality of links to the site – the more links of better quality i.e. from sites which have some credibility, the greater the authority of the site. In addition if you have a large number of long tail articles ( articles referring to the full range of content on your site) so much the better.However, cheaply written long tail articles about small issues in your long tail – a sort of ‘pulp fiction’ for search engines – a ploy employed by some SEO companies – are frowned upon. Google are looking at how they can overcome this “tweaking”.(This is not really an issue for Local Government sites, most of which are both old and massive, in terms of customer usage largely developed as a result of monopoly supply of these services in their geographic area; but be aware of the issues.)
  Working with partners and stakeholders.
  The production of cheaply written articles designed essentially to dupe Google – mentioned above – is not a feature found in, or about, local government web sites. However it’s true that good articles written about issues in the long tail of LG web sites are seen as positive. You should therefore consider how you work with partners and stakeholders to publish interesting and useful pieces about content on your site.
  Links.
  Links to your site from external sources should not be simply links to the home page. “Deep-linking” – where you provide links to deep areas of your site – is an essential part of customer service, good manners even. How often have you been frustrated by following a provided link only to find you have been dropped at the front page of a site with 20,000 documents and having to search. Grrr… Deep-linking is good for you and the client.

Remember… No links = no ranking. For local government this is relevant if you want to improve visibility of sections deep within your site.

Social media.
Use social media ( you should be anyway. See post about using Twitter here)  Twitter, Facebook, blogs  etc  to send out links to deeper parts of your site.  Using social media raises Google scores as it illustrates a willingness to engage. Evidence of engagement is good for your “Google-life”.
Note.
There is reputed to be a relationship between Facebook and Microsoft hence Google is none too keen on Facebook results. It prefers to add more credence to your name appearing in Twitter – allegedly.

Low quality content on part of the site can affect the whole site.
Look at your site for signs of low quality. Such as:-

• Not enough content on a page.
• Poorly written pages – grammar, spelling, readability. (Google checks these elements).
• Content copied from other sites. (Google say they can see this).
• Content that isn’t useful – we’ve all produced it; that ego-massaging stuff about “how good we are and what we achieve blather, blather”. Only good for egos. Not at all useful to the client and therefore a negative.

Note.
Google ignores duplicate pages even from different web sites. Google is looking for original, high quality content. Don’t copy content from elsewhere into the pages of your site. It’s OK to cut and paste elements to illustrate a point but don’t cut and paste whole pages or even sections.

Remember.
In Local Government Content is King. I believe local government organisations should place their ever-reducing resources into providing and sharpening up their content. It’s what clients go to local government sites for after all.  And – in the extreme – if that content isn’t there or is weak then what’s the point of the web site?

Another perspective; SEO for companies is far, far more complex.
Whole books and seminars are devoted to those complexities and nuances. There is little point in covering them here.
Here’s why it’s simpler for local government organisations :-

• Most businesses do not have the benefit of being a monopoly provider.Local Government organisations do.
• Most businesses do not have the benefit of providing essential services.Local Government organisations do.
• Most businesses are not talked about by partners and stakeholders as widely. Local Government organisations are.

Consequently SEO for business is a far more complex and time consuming affair. And one on which the economic health of many a company hangs. Appearance in the search engines at high levels can make the difference between getting the business or not and therefore survival or not. That’s why many companies spend millions on improving their Google-life with SEO techniques and Google ads.

Local Government is fortunate not to have this pressure. Nevertheless local government can learn a lot from the application of good search engine optimisation techniques employed by commerce. It’s after all focused on excellence in customer service and shouldn’t local government organisations be striving towards that goal?

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

This follows on from our recent article on Tweeting underlying the growing importance of the new medium to your organisation.

It’s now even more important for public sector organizations to provide a Twitter account.

In July’s newsletter from the Information Commissioner Office 28.7.2011 it’s made clear that it’s permissible for the public to use Twitter for a  Freedom Of Information (FOI) Request.

Even more serious is that it’s permissible to make that request using an @mention as “Twitter allows the authority to check for @mentions of itself, and so it has in effect received that request, even though it was not sent directly to the authority like an email or letter.”

What this means is a council’s Twitter account is deemed by the ICO to be a satisfactory communications channel and as such should be monitored and managed. Given the clock starts ticking on the day after such a tweet is put up on Twitter, councils should be monitoring those accounts on a very regular basis if some of the 20 working days allowed are not to be lost. If you don’t check you wont see the FOI come in.

Articles discussing this issue here..

http://blogs.journalism.co.uk/editors/2011/07/29/can-foi-requests-be-submitted-on-twitter-yes-says-ico/

And a contrary view here…

http://davidhiggerson.wordpress.com/2011/08/03/foi-via-a-tweet-a-silly-flight-of-fancy-surely/

No matter what your opinion the ICO has ruled and you are obliged to comply.

Are you Ready?

Peter Barton
Ex Head of Web and Information Governance (Including all things FOI)
Lincolnshire County Council

This article is not meant as an erudite and all answering document from an expert. It’s meant to be less puffed than that. The writer was a practitioner in producing high quality local government web sites (responsible for the web site which won Local Government Web Site of the year (2011) at a recent award in London) who has since become re-involved  with commercial web sites.
This shift in direction has enabled him to judge Local Government web sites from a changed perspective and to better see some of the elements Local Government can improve upon.
The aim of this article, therefore, is to be more commonplace and worthy. More hands on. And is meant to show how using Twitter can alter the way you interact with your clients, by providing hints, tips and links on how to achieve that.

Twitter and Local Government

Why does Local Government generally shy away from Twitter?

Local Government struggles with Twitter for a number of reasons. I suppose the main being fear.

• Fear caused through a lack of understanding. Many officers and a good percentage of Councillors have no idea what Twitter is all about. And it follows that you don’t touch what you don’t understand.
• Fear of losing control of “The Message”. Once the ability to (widely) talk about the authority falls outside of those who control such things there is panic.
• Fear of things being said authorities don’t want the public to hear(as if they are not going to be said anyway) or don’t want raised.
• Fear of damage to the Council’s reputation caused by the loose lipped/fingered internal Twitterarti.
• Fear of the immediacy and enormous power provided by Twitter.
• Fear of the ability to “group” around a topic afforded by Twitter.

Apart from the first of these fears – and that can be handled by some familiarization with the technology – the other negative fears can, and should, be turned into positives.

What’s a Tweet?
This is not a treatise on what Twitter is or where it came from or, for that matter the ethos behind it. That type of information can be found in clear detail here…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

Neither is it meant to be a “Tweeting for Dummies”. That book must have already been written.

It’s about the application of social media concepts to the medium of local government.

If it’s an audience you’re after…
Twitter describes itself as an information network. It’s built from millions of conversations carried out in 140 character sized chunks.

Whatever your opinion of Twitter, be it embracing or dismissive, you cannot ignore the huge (and that’s an understatement) potential for your 140 character tweets to have an impact on others, or theirs on you.
If you ran a business back in the early part of the 20^th century  you couldn’t ignore the telephone or in the latter part of the century the internet. Similarly you can’t ignore Twitter. And for much the same reason:-

• business is being conducted on Twitter;
• the public have a growing expectation i.e. they are expecting you to use current technology because they themselves do;
• using Twitter can save time and money.

Why you shouldn’t ignore Twitter?

Just look at these stats;-

• 300million accounts (mid 2011) worldwide with about 5million of these (approx) being in the UK.
• 52% of users are female 48% male.
• Over 50% are between 25 and 54.
• About 1 billion Tweets a week
• Increasing use by business

People are talking about you.
This is worthy of repetition… it’s an “information network. It’s built from millions of conversations”.

So Twitter is  about conversations. Some of those will be about you or your services. Shouldn’t you be a part of those conversations or at least be listening to what people are saying about you?

It’s not one sided. You can pitch in to correct witless and uninformed comment and add value to the whole by providing solid, helpful information.
You can manage your reputation.

I have long held that  “it isn’t from those who pay you compliments you learn anything. It’s from those who complain about your service”.
The complainers are the users of your service and they are taking the time to tell you what you don’t have right, at least for them. If you can answer those complaints you are likely to turn those same complainers into your biggest advocates.

Previously people might have sent you a letter, 1 to 1 sort of thing. This would have happened, in private, without any damage to your reputation. Not now. Little man has a VERY BIG voice.

Spotting what is being said about you on Twitter couldn’t be easier, though I’ll give you putting things right may not be quite so easy – but you can join in.Tell people you’ve heard what they’re saying and are working on it.  Isn’t this what Customer Service is all about; listening, changing and keeping people informed?

Twitter allows micro, detailed management of your customers view of what you do. All you have to do is listen and respond.

So how is this magic performed?

The Hash Tag #

First, learn how to use the hash tag ‘#’ (alt3 for you Mac users).

You can use hash-tags to follow specific groups, to message specific groups and much more.

There’s a really useful “how to” on Hash-tags here… http://tinyurl.com/6gnx64 in fact http://www.twitip.com/ is a great place to answer those general Twitter questions.

Searching for information.

• Use hash tag to search for relevant tags.
• Use advance search at http://twitter.com/#!/search-advanced . It’s a definable search so you can exactly specify, and therefore identify, just what it is you’re looking for. Try looking for your own council. See if there are people talking about you now.
• Save your searches. If your’e using ‘Tweetdeck’ these searches are saved, displayed and updated for you.
• Use ‘lists’ to group your interests. i.e. Council name, social care, council tax etc.
• Search using your saved searches everyday. New stuff is being tweeted all the time. ( you can use Tweetgrid.com to do some of this)

Using these techniques you can gather intelligence, see what other councils, thought leaders etc are up to, watch future trends in your industry but most of all you can …
Listen to and identify your customer needs and complaints.

Developing relationships.

People wont read your tweets and re-tweet your messages simply because the message exists or indeed because they are from the Council. The tweets have to be interesting, amusing even but most important they have to be useful.

On your Tweet you can:-

• break news;
• share experience;
• become the group people go to for advice;
• provide hints and tips;
• give information on road closures, school closures and the like;
• tell people what’s happening across your area in libraries, schools etc;
• guide users to your web site for current  information say on committee meetings etc;
• get guest tweeters to tweet e.g the Chief Exec or the leader;
• ask for questions to ask of the guest speakers;
• tweet discussion on a local topic of interest e.g. closing a school;
• Develop the relationships by Championing your customers. Reply to them or  retweet their tweets. Show them you are interested in what they say.

What sort of tone should you adopt on your twitter feed and what about the content? What should you say?

• The tone of voice should be chatty and informal – think of a local radio presenter.
• 70% of the tweets should be informal with only 30% dealing with more formal, pushy content.
• Use the tweets to highlight and link to topic points from your web site e.g. videos content etc.
• Use keywords from a list which you decide on before you started publishing social media. Something like. “your-council-name”, “local government”, “social care”, “libraries” etc. This is particularly powerful if these are also hash-tags.
• Make using your tweet a rich experience. Full of interest and information.

Managing and monitoring.

Twitter isn’t like a normal web site where you can monitor use with the likes of Google Analytics. There are however some tools you can use to mange your social media – not just Twitter..

• Tweetdeck. An all purpose tool, now owned by Twitter, which allows you to monitor multiple Twitter accounts as well as Facebook, LinkedIn etc.
  If you save a search in Tweetdeck, say for  ‘Local Government’, it displays real time information on that search.
• Hootsuite. Similar in some ways to Tweetdeck but seems to have better reporting facility.
• Sproutsocial ( monthly cost with this )

Depending just how far you wish to delve into Social Media here’s a few more tools you may find of use.

• Tweetpivot.com. Discover people who tweet on a range of topics and displays them graphically.
• Twellow.com allows you to discover twitter id’s for people Boris Johnson for example @MayorOfLondon
• Tweriod shows when followers are most active so you can write to them when they are there to read your tweet.
• Twtqpon.com allows the creation of coupons for twitter users. With this you can offer discount coupons for some of your services for people using Twitter. Say a discount at the local baths for twitter users.

Where should the responsibility for this medium sit?

The ideal place is in the comms/PR department with a strong sideways link into Customer Services.

Comms is an ideal first filter for incoming information from Twitter. It’s where messages about the authority originate and is therefore perfect for constructing Tweets and controlling the medium in general.

The strong sideways link into Customer Services is to handle the specific complaints and solution providing.

This is not a medium for web techies. It’s about human communication and customer service. It should not be a web function unless of course web and comms are as one in your organisation.

Nearly Lastly…

Being local government organisations you are going to want a policy for all of this. You could look here for quick policy generation – at least the skeleton of one. www.Socialmedia.policytool.net . It’s not perfect but it can give you a base from which to start.

Really lastly…

Don’t expect instant results  and don’t give up.
Social media is hard work if done properly and it requires a lot of (constant) effort and ingenuity.
Stick at it. It really is worth the sweat and remember it forms an increasing part of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) algorithms – more on that not so black art in a piece to come later.

To sum up.

• We have explored why Local Government seems reticent about joining in.
• We have discussed the large audience yet macro possibilities of using Twitter.
• We have seen Twitter is another communications device.
• We have explored the use of Hash-tags showing their relevance and power.
• We have seen how using advanced search enable authorities to glean information.
• We have said that listening is an important part of the Twitter process.
• We have talked about developing the community and how that can be done by interacting with your clients and complainers.
• We have talked bout the tone of your tweets and how to manage and monitor your use of Twitter.
• We have discussed where responsibility for Twitter should sit.
• We have talked about the need for a policy for your Twitter actions.
• And we have talked about managing your expectations.

Useful links.

Some of these have been mentioned in the text above.

Crowd-sourced Twitter guide for local government.   Interesting views and observations.
http://t.co/jaFxh54

Don’t’ know what to Tweet, Facebook or Blog. Go take a look here and download the free e-book. Though ideally aimed at  commerce there is a lot that can be learned by the local government social media manager from this treatise.

http://oneforty.com/i/ebook/community_manager_ideas

Policy tool mentioned above.
www.Socialmedia.policytool.net

Risk assessment tool for social media from Carl Haggerty In Devon. It’s a draft but well worth a look.
http://carlhaggerty.wordpress.com/2011/07/29/social-media-risk-assessment-draft

The “how to” on hash tags.

http://tinyurl.com/6gnx64

Twitter Advance search. This is really good.

http://twitter.com/#!/search-advanced

Twitter – the basics and much more.

http://www.twitip.com/

UK Public Sector Web sites – the blog.

http://uklgweb.wordpress.com/

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

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.

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

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?