www.e-govwatch.org.nz
How to Channel Shift
The recent Better Public Services report supports the idea that online delivery
creates more-for-less government. There are significant savings to taxpayers at
stake if high quality, new media content is offered and people choose to use it.
Online government can offer more than is possible in other forms as well as the
convenience of access any time, anywhere, on any device. People like to be
informed online and to level the perceived power imbalance even if they do
eventually make human-to-human contact with a government advisor. So morefor-less government through online channels is both possible and strategically
important. So how is it going to be done?
No one will be forced to get their government services online. Enthusiastic
promotion and search optimisation may get more to try the web-based route but if
the experience is poor they probably won’t go back. Therefore the online channel
must be better than the alternatives of making a call, going to a service centre,
writing a letter or any other means. This ‘better than’ imperative means a focus on
end-to-end online channel quality and measurable results.
Such high quality must apply throughout from the awareness that somewhere in
government might have an answer, through search and navigation to the possible
right place, to introductions or other context confirming the user is in the right
place, to delivery and fulfillment and finally a reference to possible related topics of
interest - where next. The results focus is about whether users’ interactions with
government webspace make a meaningful difference in solving their problems.
Content alone, even the most potentially useful e-service, is not enough. There are
enough stodgy repositories of e-stuff lying unloved around government webspace,
creating no value to users whatsoever.
This article outlines strategies for the creation and management of high quality,
results-oriented government websites whether standalone or collaborations among
several agencies. It is aimed at senior managers responsible for governing online
channels on behalf of their agencies. The strategies are based around a model of
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user experience known as the pyramid of engagement which maps depths of content
to audience types.
A generic pyramid of engagement for a mature government website might look like:
My
Account
Ongoing Relationship
Online Forms
Online Payments
Authenticated Transactions
Apps, Utilities, Widgets
e-Consultation
Personal Interaction
Introductions, Advice, Policies, Publications
Anonymous Interaction
Findability
Home Page, Navigation, Search, News, Features
Audience
A
Audience
B
Audience
C
Audience
D
Audience
E
Strategy 1: Bridge information and transactions
Most government websites are missing the layer that steps users from lowinvolvement, static information to high-involvement services. Involvement in this
model represents how
much the user has to
give of themselves
(personal details or a
payment) to get
something back. This
gap of trust (for anyone
inexperienced with the
providing agency) is
bridged by some
medium-involvement
interactivity – useful
utilities, widgets or
apps.
While many users of government will happily go directly to an e-service or
transaction (maybe because agencies are often monopoly providers), many may not
without first establishing a greater sense of comfort or trust with the organisation.
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Utilities, widgets and apps can fill this role, by providing useful content tailored to
the person’s situation. They create the impression ‘this agency is interested in
solving my problems’ or ‘these guys are on to it’. Government-relevant examples
include calculators, what-if simulators, visualisation, mashup maps, advice or
funding matching, animated processes, events notifications, etc. If you can hit the
sweetspot of being useful, novel and fun they are extremely promotable via social
media too.
Strategy 2: Cap your pyramid by personalisation
One end game for government
websites is to create a fully
personalised account with each
user provided access to all
transactions and information
relevant to that user’s situation. A
number of local authorities have
begun creating My Council
accounts to do this. Such one-toone relationship-building can
deepen over time as the
organisation learns more about
each user and the opportunity to
match with tailored content grows.
The organisation would usually
start these with key stakeholder groups and expand from there.
Strategy 3: Laminate your audience slices with others
The other primary end game for government webspace is to cut or copy the
audience slices from your pyramid and integrate them with other organisation’s
slices serving the same audience. The resulting webspaces can provide
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comprehensive coverage of ‘all’ content relevant to them in a true one-stop shop
fashion. These are not just directory sites but consistent content within a single
complete context. From there gaps and overlays can be removed, processes can be
integrated or re-engineered and personalisation added if needed. Centred on
problem-solving these sites can be incredibly powerful and do things never before
achieved in government.
The new governance and financial models proposed in the Better Public Services
report should help streamline development of cross-agency and private hybrid
initiatives. These integrated service clusters are technically easy to create but fall
apart in their design when agency agendas or rivalries dominate rather than the
needs of the user group. It is apparent that independent facilitators are critical to
broker clean designs which serve users best.
Strategy 4: Socialise your web spaces
The relevance of social media to government is a lot broader than the personal
profile and conversational sites like the Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus.
These sites can offer useful promotion of interesting web features, feedback on the
organisation and related issues but are unlikely to be a platform for quality
consultation.
New dedicated e-consultation platforms are emerging that interleave the proposed
policy material with the conversation and add interactive visualisation to show the
effects and implications of proposals in individual circumstances. This will bring
consultation alive and break through the barriers of participation.
Other dimensions of social media are in crowd-sourcing and mass collaboration. The
art here is to recognise potential purposes that are interesting enough to encourage
participation by lay public or specialists and experts. The role of social catalyst will
be required to help agencies spot the low-hanging fruit of these innovative
possibilities so that when they work well produce near free contributions of content
for all. The main challenge for government is to see the value of porous boundaries
and open participation. There will always be more expertise outside any
organisation than inside - how to access it is the trick.
Strategy 5: Meet them on the road – go mobile
Mass uptake of smartphones, tablets and laptops and the availability of cheaper
wireless connectivity mean government needs to respond with content useful when
people are out and about. As standard practice, agencies should be making their
webspaces mobile-usable with HTML 5 compatible web publishing and adaptive
design. They also need to select the new location-specific and/or time-specific
content that is most useful to their stakeholders. Some fantastic possibilities are
coming in virtual guides and augmented reality overlays on real scenes with re-
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created historical sites or proposed developments. Government being innovative
means when people are saying ‘there is an app for that’ they are also including the
public sphere.
Strategy 6: Monitor and target online channel contribution
There are a lot of government web presences that are totally unable to prove their
value because they have never counted their visit numbers let alone compared these
with the other channels that provide the same enquiry or transaction. Usage
reporting or analytics can show the paths users take through the site, the points at
which they drop out (go elsewhere) and the proportions that are taking desired
actions or reaching a point of conclusion.
In order to demonstrate the extent of channel-shifting there must be clear
information about current volumes of enquiry and transaction types by channel, the
costs of these per interaction and monitoring over time to show the effects of online
development, management and governance. A good financial planner or cost
accountant is invaluable to the online channel manager to proving the heavy-lifting
the online channel is doing.
Strategy 7: Monitor quality of online delivery
Quality of online delivery can be a difficult one to measure, especially for
government which does not deal in bottom lines but in a mixture of quantifiable and
qualitative desired outcomes. Still, anything not measured cannot be managed. On
the assumption there is no perfect web presence, what can web teams do to get
over subjective self-judgment of their outputs?
Most take a multi-pronged approach. Often, analytics or usage reporting is assessed
against expectations and the potential audience especially over time. But this can
tell you little about specific weaknesses or gaps against contemporary practice.
Next most common is user testing, or watching real users try to achieve objectives
on your site and seeing where they slow down or stop. This can also be paired with
focus group sessions with sample users to solicit potential improvements or
enhancements. These can be useful, particularly for critiquing or optimizing what is
there already but users find it notoriously difficult to suggest new functionality or
even content.
The last practice and becoming more common is independent expert assessment;
still subjective but fine-grained evaluation against elements of best practices and
web standards and commenting on gaps. This approach often includes
benchmarking and ranking against peer websites. The ALGIM web awards
assessment and e-Gov Watch are examples. All three methods are useful to
counter-balance strengths and weaknesses.
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Strategy 8: Get serious internal help
Many government online operations are ridiculously understaffed. In some cases
you have all-of-organisation online channels representing $100 million organisations
and thousands of content items to diverse and complex audiences with one or less
full-time staffer. Budget squeezes are no excuse; in fact financial hardship is the
best time to invest in these more-for-less channels as confirmed by the Better Public
Services report.
Innovation and channel-shifting cannot occur without the online channel manager
having sufficient time available to help operational managers solve their audience
interaction problems in a meaningful way, all the while managing the overall user
experience. All too often the website manager (or even worse a web master or web
editor) is doing the grunt-work of content publishing with little time for advocacy
and coherency. Support these people with content editing help, good content
management systems, application development support and an operational budget
that reflects the contribution the online channel can make.
So in summary, this article advocates a ‘build it better and they will come (and keep
coming)’ approach. Provide content in context. Once you have a great destination
drop out rates will be lower and promotion will be much more effective if it is even
needed. Word of mouse may be enough. You will see your users establishing habit
loops from satisfying one need and having a high expectation of fulfilling the next.
Viral and useful government, anyone? Could this be closer to the essence of the
innovative government now desired?
Shane Middlemiss
Director, e-Gov Watch Ltd
027 248 9406
[email protected]
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