From: Dan Jellinek [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 26 June 2009 14:25
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: E-Government Bulletin, 26 June 2009: Web 2.0 inside the council; new media and petitions; accessibility drivers.
+++E-GOVERNMENT BULLETIN
- ISSUE 291, 26 June 2009.
- A Headstar Publication
http://www.headstar.com .
IN THIS ISSUE: Web 2.0 inside the council; new media and petitions; accessibility drivers.
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++Special Notice: Building Perfect Council Websites '09
An E-Government Bulletin/Socitm Insight Conference Portals, Task Management, Future Visions http://www.headstar-events.com/councilwebsites09/
In a period of economic upheaval it is more vital than ever to ensure your council's website works well as an efficient and effective provider of information and services to citizens. Building Perfect Council Websites, now in its fifth year, is the major annual meeting for local authority web professionals - around 300 attended last year - to find out the secrets of creating easy to use, compelling and engaging web sites.
A partnership between E-Government Bulletin and the Socitm Insight Programme, this unique event draws on the collected wisdom of ten years of Socitm's annual 'Better Connected' review of all UK council websites. This year's event looks at best practice now, and predicts future trends. Have a look at our website today to see the latest programme details, and book your place:
http://www.headstar-events.com/councilwebsites09/
[Special notice ends].
++Issue 291 Contents.
Section One: News.
01: Council Expands Internal 'Web 2.0' Trials For Staff
- Social media used at Brighton to improve efficiency.
02: Petitions Committee Warns New Media 'No Panacea'
- But tools can help to increase public engagement.
03: Legal Fears Driving Work On ICT Accessibility
- Survey reveals equality legislation is a key factor.
04: Digital Letdown? - mixed views on report; 05: Government Cloud
- shared infrastructure; 06: Championship Role - for Martha Lane Fox.
Section Two: Case study - Web 2.0 in local government.
07: Internal Interactivity Insights: Many local authorities have dipped their toes into social media, but Brighton and Hove has taken things a step further by giving staff access to a series of collaborative applications tools on its own internal systems, in a bid to improve communication and efficiency. Tristan Parker reports.
[Contents ends]
++Special Notice: PEP-NET
- The Pan-European Network on E-Participation
The Pan European eParticipation Network (PEP-NET), the most dynamic network in Europe focused on e-participation by citizens and e-democracy, is seeking new members.
Launched in May 2008 to build up an active network of solution providers, public administrations, citizen organisations and researchers in the field of e-participation, the network has since grown to 34 member organisations.
Potential new members and innovative thinkers in the field of e- participation are now being sought to broaden our activity and deliver more value to our members. If you think your organisation could benefit from being involved - currently, at no cost - please contact us via the details at:
http://pep-net.eu/wordpress/?page_id=8 .
[Special Notice ends].
++Section One: News.
+01: Council Expands Internal 'Web 2.0' Trials For Staff.
The use of interactive 'web 2.0' social media tools inside an organisation, to boost staff efficiency, is being tested extensively by one UK council, E-Government Bulletin has learned.
Twitter, Yammer, YouTube and wikis are among tools being used by staff to improve internal communication, efficiency and productivity within Brighton and Hove City Council ( http://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/ ).
Applications available on the council's intranet include Yammer.com (a business-oriented version of Twitter) and Microsoft SharePoint; a web-based collection of software that can host shared applications such as wikis (pages edited collaboratively) and blogs.
The council also plans to introduce a number of collaborative measures, such as an 'ask a question' and 'jargon-buster' wikis on the intranet, allowing workers to share answers to common internal queries.
"What we're doing is looking at what's available in SharePoint or looking at the concepts that are developing in social media and how we can apply them to improve the way we're working within the council", says Yvette Bordley, senior marketing officer for Brighton and Hove.
NOTE: For a full report on Brighton's experiments see Section Two, this issue.
And you can comment on this story now, on EGB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/egblive/?p=232
+02: Petitions Committee Warns New Media 'No Panacea'.
New media tools are not a panacea for increasing public participation in a petitions process, according to a new report from the Scottish Parliament.
Technology must not be relied on to deliver all of the parliament's participation goals, says the report from the parliament's Public Petitions Committee. "It must be recognised that technology is only an enabler of participation ... ICTs should be used as a means of enhancing traditional methods of engagement."
However the report, which reviews the entire petitions process (
http://fastlink.headstar.com/sco3 ),
says new media tools play a valuable role in increasing the parliament's presence to citizens, and meet growing public demand to engage with digital communication. "If used properly, social media has the advantage of making politics and political processes at the very least more accessible but also hopefully more relevant to the population," it says.
The Scottish Parliament has embraced digital democracy tools from its inception, including webcasting of its meeting and the acceptance of electronic petitions. Other current projects include a new blog page ( http://scottishparliamentpetitions.blogspot.com/ ), which will allow users to post video and photographic content about petitions; plus the use of YouTube videos, podcasting and social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon.
Comment on this story now on EGB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/egblive/?p=233
+03: Legal Fears Driving Work On ICT Accessibility.
The need to meet legal requirements and a desire to enhance corporate social responsibility are the two main drivers behind organisations'
work to make their internal and external ICT systems accessible to people with disabilities, a new survey reveals.
Some 70% of respondents cited these factors as 'strong' or 'very strong' drivers for ICT accessibility policies in a survey carried out by Bloor Research in conjunction with E-Government bulletin's publisher Headstar and Ability Magazine. Only 15% of respondents rated increased revenues or reduced cost as a driver.
The survey, which questioned organisations from both public and private sectors, investigated the current and planned status of organisations' ICT systems and identified the drivers for accessibility; the barriers that were slowing down implementation of accessible systems; and what needs to be done by the industry to remove these barriers.
Other findings included that a lack of budget and "legacy systems not being accessible" were the two main barriers to implementation of accessible ICT systems. This suggests that providing tools for improving the accessibility of legacy systems could be a strong business opportunity, said the survey's creators. Less than a quarter of respondents cited a lack of understanding or inadequacy of tools as a barrier.
As noted in our earlier report on the survey's initial findings, the survey has also revealed that, in general, the public sector is more committed to ICT accessibility than the private sector, with more plans to continue improving (see
http://www.headstar.com/egblive/?p=226 ).
The full results of the survey will be published on Bloor's website ( www.bloorresearch.com ) in early July and presented to a workshop Headstar's 15 July conference, Building perfect council websites ( http://www.headstar-events.com/councilwebsites09/ ).
Comment on this story now on EGB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/egblive/?p=234
++News in Brief:
+04: Digital Letdown? Last week's Digital Britain report on the
communications industry set out a "national plan for digital participation" to make the internet more appealing to non-users, key to which was "creating a compelling online offer through the delivery of public services online." In contrast, digital inclusion charity Citizens Online says the report "lacks any serious Government commitment" to get the eight million UK non-internet users online:
http://fastlink.headstar.com/db1 .
+05: Government Cloud: A private shared network of government IT
services using 'cloud computing' - in which a third party oversees the infrastructure of a shared network - is also recommended by the Digital Britain report (see above), in a section on procurement. The proposed 'G-Cloud' would be aimed at improving government IT cost- effectiveness and flexibility, and would complement and develop the Cabinet Office's existing Public Sector Network infrastructure project:
http://fastlink.headstar.com/cloud1 .
+06: Championship Role: Dot.com entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox has
been named the government's new digital inclusion champion. Best- known as founder of travel website lastminute.com, Fox is also involved in social enterprises including Antigone, her organisation awarding grants to charities. She is a trustee of human rights charity Reprieve, an international patron of CAMFED (the charity supporting women's education in the developing world), and holds board positions with Channel Four and Marks & Spencer. She will work on broadband take-up for the eight million people in the UK who are not online, and help shape plans for some public services, such as student loans and redundancy advice, to operate primarily online from 2012:
http://fastlink.headstar.com/mlf1 .
[Section One ends].
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++Section Two: Case study
- Web 2.0 in local government.
+07: Internal Interactivity Insights
by Tristan Parker.
In today's world, technology changes so rapidly that one barely has the time to adjust to one new type before the next comes along. The microblogging service Twitter is already becoming commonplace, in as short a time-span as it first gripped the public interest as something new, strange and exciting. Whereas not long ago it was innovative and daring for local authorities to send out Twitter updates, allowing residents to keep track of council services and events, it is now rapidly becoming the norm.
Now an interesting new question is increasingly being asked in local government. We know that social media can increase engagement between an organisation and its customers, but can it also be used to improve internal communication and staff efficiency within an organisation?
Brighton and Hove City Council (
http://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/ )
thinks so, and have begun using Web 2.0 applications and channels such as Twitter, YouTube, SharePoint and wikis through its internal intranet, in the hope that they will benefit staff.
One key development has been the use of Yammer ( https://www.yammer.com/ ) - essentially a business-oriented, private, internal version of Twitter, which replaces Twitter's concept of 'What are you doing?' with 'What are you working on?'
Senior marketing officer for Brighton and Hove City Council Yvette Bordley explains its use: "We've got web content and communications people, and then we've got technical people who are based in a different location, and quite often there are things we're working on that we need to communicate about. So rather than picking up the phone, it's a way of actually finding out what's been done, what hasn't been done, and what's being worked on. And because it's instantaneous, it's not like you're getting an email which you then have to follow up. It's just a better way of working."
Microsoft SharePoint, a web-based collection of software that can host shared intranets, wikis and blogs, among other functions, is also proving a valuable tool for the council, and other collaborative tools are being sought for internal application at the council. "What we're doing is looking at what's available in SharePoint or looking at the concepts that are developing in social media and how we can apply them to improve the way we're working within the council", says Bordley.
Though the potential benefits of these tools are clear, not all are convinced of their use to local government, particularly where they have an external or public element. Plymouth City Council recently banned staff and councillors from using Twitter - a move that provoked much anger - amid fears of inappropriate content being posted in the council's name.
Bordley says Brighton and Hove is forward-looking in this respect: "A lot of local authorities don't have really progressive people who are opening up these channels. There is a lot of opposition to it. I think it's important to have an evangelist - someone who says 'let's try it and see', but also some guidelines. Not to stop staff having a view, but just to have some rules of engagement."
To assist in this process, Yvette is currently working on a set of social media guidelines, for use by council workers, to address the widespread fears represented by Plymouth's example. "It's so that people are clear about the fact they're representing the council", says Bordley. "A lot of it is just common sense and simple guidance. We're not writing reams and reams, and it's not bureaucratic - that's not in tune with social media."
She is keen to point out, however, that the council has a long way to go yet in working out how best to use the new generations of interactive tools, and that its work is still at the preliminary stages. "We haven't yet cracked it just by introducing these [channels] on our intranet and allowing people to have access to them - it's going to take time", she says.
"At the moment we're trying to educate people on what these things are - how we can use them; how they can benefit service delivery. The focus is totally on how these things can improve the way that we work."
Though it is too early to have received much staff feedback or fully assessed whether the new measures are improving efficiency, the council is already planning for further technologies to be introduced.
One new feature will be an evolving 'ask a question' wiki on the intranet, whereby staff can access a wiki page to answer common queries, with information having been posted by other staff members.
"It's a different way of doing things, so that staff can help themselves.
If someone has a question, hopefully someone else can post an answer.
It's user-generated content", Bordley says.
Further plans for the future include a similar wiki-based system that would allow staff to relay their ideas on how the council can save money. And a third idea, says Bordley, is for a 'jargon-buster'. "A lot of people might begin working at local authorities and not understand the jargon that's used. In this way, we can allow staff to generate the content that they would find useful for them to do their job properly."
As befits an area with many high-tech and web-based companies, Brighton and Hove was recently named the most talked-about council on Twitter, suggesting that there is good scope to use such tools both internally and externally to reach out to citizens. "I think it signals a change - that we're using social media to communicate and be accessible, both with people outside and within our own staff,"
Bordley says.
"We've got a long way to go, but it's about two-way communication.
We want to encourage staff to use these tools to help them collaborate, but really it's about looking at ways we can use these methods to improve productivity and help people to do their job."
NOTE: Comment on this story now, on EGB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/egblive/?p=235 .
[Section Two ends].
++END NOTES.
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+COPYRIGHT NOTICE.
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ISSN 1476-6310
+PERSONNEL
Editor: Dan Jellinek.
Reporter: Tristan Parker.
Associate Editors - Derek Parkinson, Mel Poluck.
[Issue 291 ends].
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