We’ve been watching this trend with interest, and have compiled a few examples of great council websites.

Manchester City Council

Manchester City Council recently launched a fantastic new website, which targets the needs of residents first. Based on research carried out by the council, the new site replaces a four-year-old version that users considered outdated and difficult to navigate, especially on mobile devices.

The council’s research found that 80% of users used the site primarily to complete simple tasks, such as to request a new wheelie bin or pay a bill. Taking this on board, the new site was designed around resident services, not around the council’s structure, making it easy for people to do their business fast.

The new council homepage features nine large and clear ‘app’ like icons that link to the top services residents use, including taxes, bins, roads, education benefits and planning.  A ‘can’t find it’ link under the icons reveals another fifteen services without taking residents away from the homepage.

Manchester City Council website

A bonus of this resident-centric design is that the large icons, contrasting colours and large font make the website highly accessible, meeting government standards and, more importantly, resident needs.

Rochdale Council

Rochdale has taken a similar, if slightly less high-tech approach, by also incorporating the use of icons to help users navigate around their website:

Rochdale Council website

The use of clear, simple visual cues helps the council’s site reach far more citizens, and is useful to visitors for whom English is not their first language.

Medway City Council

Medway relaunched their website in 2010, and in March of this year was awarded four out of four stars for usability and accessibility, among other things, by Socitm. The site’s clear layout and the council’s strong, consistent use of social media also went some way towards their site being billed one of the best in the UK.

Medway Council website

While it seems logical that council websites should exist first to serve their communities, many organisations still struggle to get past the ‘ego’ factor, designing sites around their organisational structure instead of their service provision.

Socitm, the association of public sector IT managers, carry out a great deal of research around council websites, and produce the annual Better Connected benchmarking report, which is a survey of over 400 UK councils. The purpose of the report is to identify best practice in digital service delivery by councils. Socitm’s research found that councils are losing up to £11m a month due to poor website design. This cost is incurred because people are forced to communicate with these councils by phone or in person, which is far more expensive than having services automated by a well-designed website.

Another aspect covered by Socitm’s research is mobile accessibility. More and more websites are taking this into account when redesigning their site. For example, the Manchester City Council website has been designed to overcome mobile issues, understanding that many residents use mobile devices to access the internet. Using responsive technology, the website recognises the type of device customers are using and reformats the layout and content accordingly.

We look forward to seeing more clean and modern site design over the coming years, as it links with our passion for empowering citizens to work better with their local councils. The easier it is for a person to engage with their local authority, the more likely it is for that person to take part in a consultation or other engagement activity.

As my fourth unconference to date, and my second Blue Light Camp I decided this would be the perfect opportunity to stand up and pitch an event. For anyone unfamiliar with the unconference format, the agenda is determined on the day of the event, by participants ‘pitching’ a topic for a session to the rest of the audience. Sessions are then assigned to rooms on a grid system and participants can move freely between different rooms.

One of the Blue Light Camp sessions

Topics discussed during Blue Light Camp ranged from using social media in a crisis situation to making the most of time banking. Having recently attended a client retrospective with the Cabinet Office on one of the best agile projects we’ve ever run, I pitched the general topic of ‘how can government and emergency services adopt agile practices and how can we educate people about the terminology?’

My first unconference session

As some of the attendees were keen to learn, but unfamiliar with agile and the terminology behind it, I kept the topics quite broad. Three themes emerged as part of the conversation:

1. Is agile ‘just an IT methodology’ or can some of the principals be used to promote better communication?

As a bit of a language geek I thought it would be worth highlighting that the word ‘agility’ comes from agere, the Latin for ‘to do’. It means nimbleness, activity, dexterity, readiness. Based on this, the consensus of the group was that the reflection and communication methods used within agile could be powerful tools for harnessing ICT-enabled business change.

For example, at Delib, we run daily stand-ups. Session attendees were either familiar with this process or could relate to it as a good way of facilitating cross-departmental working. The challenge of course is how to effectively use stand-ups across a large organisation, as different departments may wish to work in different ways. GDS have blogged about the challenges of adopting the daily stand-up as their team has grown.

One participant felt that this cross-team communication could be a natural fit for many public sector organisations. One attendee commented that an agile project can be driven to fail by those involved not hearing the message ‘this is going to fail,’ highlighting the importance of solving problems before they happen.

2. Does agile on the whole save money? How can we demonstrate the benefit of agile to procurement teams?

Whether or not agile on the whole saves money depends on the project involved. One session attendee told us she managed a site brand refresh where there was an emphasis on agile in the procurement process. This was not based on any personal preference of agile but on the financial information presented as part of the briefs, which highlighted an opportunity for cost savings.

Agile sounds sensible but what are the barriers? During a session at UK Govcamp 2013, the question of terminology was raised. As a ScrumMaster myself, I have found there is a lot of confusion over the terminology used. It could be argued that agile methodology does not represent traditional project management roles.

3. Can agile be used in order to re-evaluate cultural change?

Cultural change is often one of the slowest moving aspects of any organisation. Could agile be a catalyst for this where appropriate? The nature of agile is that it is built on a foundation of trust. If the culture of an organisation is based on opacity and an overall air of secrecy, agile will fail. However, it could be a great fit in an open, transparent organisation.

During my recent visit to our Australian team, I did some research on how agile can scale across time zones. I came across some really interesting core ideas. This idea (from People, Processes and Tools) of interlinking people, processes and tools seems particularly simple but relevant:

Agile brings it all together

Blue Light Camp is a brilliant opportunity to evaluate the most effective use of social media and digital technologies in the emergency services. Aside from discussing agile, I attended some interesting social media-focused sessions. At GovCamp 2013, I was interested to see what had changed since the previous conference and one of the key messages for me was how the dynamic of social media has evolved.  Where it used to be around sharing information generally, now it’s more about developing in-depth, often global conversations. Social media also brings challenges such as building trust and content validation.

One of the key messages for me from Blue Light Camp was how we can combine emerging technologies to effectively deal with problem solving situations, whilst ensuring we maintain the goal of having a safer society.

I’ve generated two different reports: one for Citizen Space’s management pages (i.e. pages that can only be accessed by logged-in admin users), and one that includes public-facing pages as well. Here are the figures for our admin users:

Admin visits by browser, April 2013*

This first chart shows something wonderful: last month, nobody used Internet Explorer 6 to administer their UK Citizen Space site.

For those who don’t know, Microsoft’s venerable Internet Explorer version 6 (AKA IE6) was released back in 2001, and is notorious for rendering web pages very differently from modern, standards-compliant browsers.  To support IE6, web developers have to spend a lot of time writing workarounds to make web pages display correctly in all browsers.  Of course, this increases the cost of product development without benefitting those users who don’t use IE6.  Last year Delib decided to stop actively supporting IE6 in our apps, and these latest figures clearly vindicate that decision.

The second chart shows visits to all Citizen Space pages, including visits from members of the public:

All visits by browser, April 2013*

As you would expect, this shows a much wider range of web browsers, including a few visits from IE6. The ‘Unknown’ useragents are mostly made up of crawlers, bots, RSS feed readers and other things that aren’t conventional human-controlled web browsers.

It is interesting to compare our statistics with current worldwide browser usage.  At the time of writing, Google Chrome and Firefox are the most widely used browsers, followed by IE9 and then IE8.  In contrast, our stats show that IE8 is by far the most common browser used to access Citizen Space.

My theory is that most of the activity (both administration and participation) on our Citizen Space sites takes place during the working day, where people are less likely to have a choice about the software they use, and are more likely to be stuck with a slightly out-of-date standard-issue browser.  Incidentally, Edd at GDS made some interesting observations about this same phenomenon last month.

* For the purposes of these statistics, a ‘visit’ comprises all the requests from a given IP address and useragent on a given day.

What is Crowdfunding?

Crowdfunding involves raising money for a project via a collective of individuals, promoted online or via local media, and people are invited to donate money towards the cause.

Online crowdfunding has been around for a while, and first began as a way for artists to raise money for various projects. It has evolved to encompass a huge variety of commercial and personal fundraising opportunities. Popular platforms that host crowdfunding ideas include Kickstarter (Global), Spacehive (UK), Indiegogo (Global) and Pozible (Aus).

Although it’s a relatively new form of financing, a diverse range of projects have already been funded this way, from innovative gadgets such as the Pebble Smartwatch to London’s first cat café. Yet, it’s not just small businesses and entrepreneurs that are crowdfunding. We’re increasing seeing that councils and community organisations are embracing it to replenish their budgets and finance new community projects.

Examples of Crowdfunding From Councils and Community Organisations

Mayor’s Fund – Bristol City Council

Bristol City Council are crowdfunding grants for local charities and social enterprises in as part of its ‘Mayor’s Fund’.

The grants for 2013/14 will fund work with disadvantaged young people and children in Bristol.

The Mayor of Bristol, George Ferguson commented:

“We’re all feeling the impact of tough economic times. This impact is not, however, felt equally by all our residents and communities. Some are in greater difficulties than others and the disadvantages they face are deepening.

That’s why having a way to donate locally to help our city’s most disadvantaged people is important – and that’s why I have set up The Mayor’s Fund for Bristol.”

Free Public WiFi – Mansfield District Council

Mansfield District Council successfully used the crowdsourcing platform Spacehive to raise over £36,000 to install free WiFi in the Mansfield.

The funds will also be used to implement QR codes on signs and workshops for visitors on how to use/access WiFi in the town.

New York City Council & Kickstarter.com

New York City Council have launched an official page on Kickstarter to serve as a hub for crowdfunded community projects in low-income neighbourhoods.

Recently funded projects include an art school in Williamsburg, a rebuild of a restaurant damaged by Hurricane Sandy and a mosaic and mural at Newkirk Plaza Subway Station.

Power2Give – United Arts & Science Council

The Arts & Science Council in the US has launched the power2give website to exclusively crowdfund for local art, science and history projects from non-profit organisations.

The site is currently hosting projects for communities in Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin.

Restoring City Centre Fountains – Kansas City

Kansas City, Missouri has the second highest number of fountains in the world (only Rome has more). Around half of the 48 public fountains in are in need of significant repairs.

City of Kansas City had budgeted $250,000 towards repairs, but it is estimated that to repair just five of the fountains will cost over $1 million. Therefore, Kansas City’s The City of Fountains Foundation is looking to for the community to donate towards funding the repairs.

Pat O’Neill, a board member of the Foundation, believes the community will be willing to donate to the cause:

“We all love our fountains, but we often take them for granted. I think it’ll be well-received. Those fountains and our statuary are really signature pieces of our community.”

People want to help

Contributing to crowdfunding projects appeals to people who are passionate about the problem they will help to solve. People like to feel they are making a difference. They feel good when a target amount is raised for something they’ve contributed even a small amount to, and that project then comes to fruition.

Crowdfunding can be a great way to engage citizens and raise money for your organisation. Here are some other articles you may find interesting:

• Can crowdfunding save local governments? A talk from this year’s SXSW.
• Can crowdfunding kickstart struggling cities?
• Crowdfunding pulls UK government projects off the scrap heap

Now, four and a half years later, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has taken the step of adding paid advertisements to its highly popular website (one of the top 20 sites in Australia) in a trial detailed in this page of their site.

Depending on how the trial goes, advertising may become a permanent feature of the BOM’s main site, and it is even conceivable that other government agencies might start considering a similar approach on their high-traffic sites.

However, is paid advertising appropriate for government websites, and if so, what limits should apply to the type of ads shown?

The BOM has, in my view, taken a sensible and sensitive approach to its advertising trial, forbidding the display of a range of advertising material that might offend community sensibilities (perhaps a list of exclusions that commercial sites should consider as well).

This includes prohibitions on:

• tobacco, gambling, lotteries or advertising promoting the consumption or sale of alcohol,
• advertising that causes offence or incites hatred of any individual, group or class,
• advertising directed at children 17 years or younger,
• advertisements glorifying, or delivering for the purposes of entertainment, scenes or descriptions of non-consensual pain, suffering, death, torture or ill-treatment of humans or animals,
• advertising relating to bombs, guns, ammunition and other offensive weapons,
• advertising containing sexually explicit content and/or sexual innuendo and/or advertising containing offensive language,
• advertising that is misleading or deceptive or be likely to mislead or deceive,
• advertising that contains a misrepresentation which is likely to cause damage to the business or goodwill of a competitor,
• advertising that is defamatory, and
• advertising of a political nature.

The BOM has also made it clear that advertisements do not imply endorsement and that they won’t place advertisements on warning pages – meaning that people visiting the BOM to learn about weather warnings won’t necessarily have to view ads at all.

This approach is one which could be quite readily adopted by other government agencies, whether at federal, state or local levels, and provides a good beginning platform for any agency that is considering including paid advertising in their sites.

However it still leaves the big question – should government agencies feature paid advertising on their websites at all? Certainly, agencies don’t normally include advertisements in their print publications or physical events.

One key factor will be the community response to ads on the BOM’s site – whether the public believe that government agencies should do this and whether it damages their standing or reputation.

We already have some preliminary anecdotal feedback on this via Crikey, who asked its readers for their views and received a number of responses – all but one negative towards the approach.

While I can’t really share this input (available in Crikey’s email newsletter), a couple of views expressed were that public services were already paid for and so should be provided free to citizens, and if agencies were so skint as to need to advertise, the government needed to raise taxes.

Another is whether agencies can make money on advertising. While the BOM is an extremely popular website year round, few other government sites consistently rate in the top 100 websites visited in Australia.

Certainly the ATO’s website has periods of high traffic around tax time, and both the APS Jobs and Centrelink sites have consistently strong traffic. Other sites – even Australia.gov.au – don’t attract that much traffic and it may not be commercially viable for advertisers.

Third, there’s the question of how the revenue is used. If it disappears into general revenue, or results in government reducing the budgets of agencies, forcing them to make up the difference with advertising, I’m less inclined to think advertising is a good idea on government sites. I believe advertising revenue should be retained over and above an agency’s budget and should be primarily directed to improve the agency’s websites and the services provided through them. In this way there’s an incentive for agencies to both support (appropriate) advertising and to continue to improve their websites, delivering improved experiences to citizens (the main goal), and thereby attracting more traffic and increasing advertising revenue.

Finally, while the BOM has done a great job of defining what is not acceptable and has the right to refuse or pull down any ads which may cause offense, there will always be advertising that sits just inside the acceptability criteria, however may still cause offense or reputation damage.

There’s not really any way to predict this, however carrying objectionable advertising – at least right now – will call greater attention to a government department than it might to, say, a media outlet – who may have greater latitude on what they can allow, or have an interest in not carrying stories about objectionable advertising in other media outlets in case they damage their own interests.

All these factors aside – should government agencies support advertising? In 2008 my position was to make this an open question to readers – essentially sitting on the fence myself.

From 2008 until now there’d been no research testing the concept of advertising on major government websites in Australia – no evidence to indicate whether the approach would be accepted by Australians, be profitable and manageable within government reputation tolerances.

I am very glad the BOM is holding this trial as it will allow government to test the concept and come to a sound, evidence-based conclusion.

Depending on how this trial goes, I am prepared to come off the fence and say that it is fine to advertise on government sites, provided that advertising is commercially viable, and the funds earnt are used to continue to improve the online services provided by the agency.

What do you think, and would a successful trial affect your view?

The film was made quickly and inexpensively by using a local film company, and launched it to mainly positive response. The filming was funded by the Council’s contractor, not the Highways budget. Worcestershire’s Marketing and Business Development Manager, Sophie O’Neill said, ‘we’ve been able to raise awareness on potholes in a way that we haven’t been able to do nearly as effectively through other channels.’

Making the video also served as a great morale booster for all council staff who were involved.

Worcestershire County Council was inspired by Torfaen County Borough Council in Wales, who used a singing Elvis character in a video to educate and inform citizens about winter gritting and road maintenance.

We love it when a council finds new ways to engage with citizens. In past, we’ve applauded Monmouthshire Council for doing this with their series of budget blogs and videos. The London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham has created an app which helps its citizens log issues like graffiti or broken streetlights.

Five examples of some continuing trends from last year

1) The continued move towards self service models
Self service (people using digital methods to find government and council information) isn’t a new idea, but the transition towards it and the conversations prompted by it present some interesting possibilities.  By ensuring that end users can easily access the information needed is a key focus of the GOV.UK site. Age UK was also widely cited at GovCamp as a nice example of an organisation presenting users with varied and useful content.

2) Recognising the importance of digital inclusion and acting on it
Linked to point 1 is recognising the importance of ‘assisted digital’ (as mentioned in The Government Digital Strategy) which is becoming increasingly pertinent within the Digital by Default agenda. Charities and government organisations are working to improve digital literacy across the UK (as covered in our recent blog post on this topic) and this will continue to be an important consideration. Related to this will be ensuring that innovation takes place both within and outside of the digital realm in order for government to have the widest reach.

3) Utilising data available and opening this up for public use
The continued open data movement and use of data at the local level has opened the door to some exciting citizen-centric digital initiatives. Ranging from reporting fly-tipping online to gaining real-time police data, the possibilities seem endless. Some councils, like the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, have even launched apps to help people report community health and safety issues.

4) Working with young and up and coming digital talent
Getting digital on the agenda and on the minds of young people is increasingly important. At Delib, we’ve in past hosted young hackers for the day who managed to build a real-time bus app in a day. Organisations like Apps for Good are working to help young people see a future in digital careers. Young talent can bring a breath of fresh air to government digital initiatives, and it will be increasingly important to include them.

5) Continuing to recognise the importance of conversations and not broadcasts
It’s become clear that social media is about conversations with individuals and community groups and not broadcasting to the masses. Social media, used well can be a powerful tool for engagement as well as educating people about how government works.

Five continued challenges for 2013-14

1) The role of digital teams to enable and lead other departments
We need to escape the ‘I’m not technical, go ask X’ mentality and instead create strong digital teams that can assist and influence staff and other teams across government organisations.

2) Being able to show real value in digital under the Digital by Default agenda
Linked to the role of strong digital teams is the opportunity to evaluate digital as a tool for adding value. Measuring the ROI of digital initiatives, online engagement and social media usage is of critical importance. A fellow GovCamper said it best, that it’s about ‘being able to turn tweets into pounds’.

3) Ensuring digital has a social side and is customer focused
The key question we must ask when moving services online is ‘where is the customer?’ or as one attendee put it, we must ‘socialise the operation rather than operationalise the social’. People mustn’t go from a friendly voice on the phone to a cold and impersonal website. One GovCamper spoke about how user-centric the GOV.UK site is, and how refreshing this is. Let’s hope this drive continues.

4) Recognising and utilising existing communication channels
Whilst digital is exciting and by nature produces a wealth of new ways of working, we must remember that existing communication channels do exist, and still work. The old way is not always a bad way, and unnecessarily reinventing the wheel can be costly, both in time and money. This will be increasingly important with regards to my previous point about working with young talent who may not understand that existing practice is based on years of sound experience.

5) The opportunity for a change of thinking around deliverance
Deliverance around digital projects has traditionally focused on ‘what will I get?’ and ‘when will I get it?’. In a discussion around Agile development methods, the question around being able to measure deliverance against user testing was posed. One attendee pointed out that ‘currently you either deliver on time or you deliver all of the functionality – you can’t do both’. Government digital teams must improve on this in order to gain the best of all worlds.

GovCamp 2013 was awesome – just as I expected it to be! I’m already looking forward to next year, and being able to look back on how far we’ve come from now.

The BBC Trust are currently running a survey to consult with adults and 6-12 year olds on its children’s services, and have found some clever ways to make the survey not only engaging, but also safe for participants.

As privacy and ethical concerns are paramount when engaging with children the consultation does not ask for any personal information. The Trust also adapted its survey to appeal to its audience by using child-friendly copy and the inviting use of colour and pictures. (If it’s of interest, we’ve written detailed instructions about how to create colourful headers in this knowledge base article.)

A sister consultation for parents and carers is running concurrently with the one aimed at youngsters, and it’s hoped that they will be able to encourage and help their children to participate in the survey.

The rise of state-based hacking (whether for political or commercial reasons) has had a profound effect on the challenges facing government agencies, both in terms of their own security and in terms of how they protect the citizens and businesses that exist under their jurisdictional protection.

It is interesting to consider that if foreign troops or terrorists invaded a business’s building in Melbourne or London, the respective central government for that city would be expected and obliged to respond with its own armed police and troops. However if the same business’s computer systems were invaded by a similarly malicious foreign power, terrorist group or criminal syndicate, the business is alone, held almost totally responsible for their own security and protection – despite the potential for severe economic disruption or damage to the national interest.

That situation becomes even more complex if the foreign troops behind the digital attack are children.

With a seven year old now the youngest person to develop a mobile app, with other children around that age now developing coding skills and with potential motivations, such as unlocking special pets, levels or privileges in online games and social networks, how long will it be before young children are trained and put to work as hackers by criminal or state organisations?

Not too long, in my view, which comes back to the main question – what should governments be doing to protect their systems, and the systems of citizens and businesses, from a rising tide of state-sponsored hacking, particularly as it becomes child’s play?

Internet usage can enhance wellbeing and social inclusion. Council services and health information can be accessed online, and social connectivity through email, Skype and social media can all ease isolation. Equally, it is beneficial for online engagement initiatives – the internet makes it possible to consult with a wider range of community and social groups which have previously proven hard to reach. Therefore, it is important that local authorities take note of and support schemes that promote digital inclusion in their communities.

Here are some examples of UK initiatives that are aimed at promoting internet literacy:

UK Online Centres co-ordinates 3,800 community-based online centres that are aimed at helping those unfamiliar with the internet to get online. The centres are not only based in libraries and community centres but also in more unusual locations such as pubs and cafes.

British Telecom are also involved in a number of initiatives to improve digital inclusion through its ‘Get IT Together‘ campaign.

BT’s Internet Rangers project provides free resources for young people in order to encourage them to share their internet skills with older members of their community. The company also run a Community Connections Award which rewards groups that improve internet access in their community and are working with the charity Scope on a research project aimed at improving internet access for people with disabilities.

And it’s not just charities and the private sector that are working in this area; the UK government are also taking steps to combat the digital divide.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which is responsible for welfare and pension policy, has recently outlined plans to provide online support for benefit claimants who may require assistance in using the Internet.

This support is to be targeted towards those who either do not have internet access or those who lack confidence in using the internet, in the hope it will help them take advantage of DWP’s online services. You can learn more about the forthcoming initiative on Government Computing.

These are only a few of many options available in the UK for improving digital literacy. Many charities and organisations across the country are working hard to improve internet skills in their communities. The more that councils can support and promote these initiatives, the more people they will be able to reach through online engagement efforts.