A blog about government-to-citizen digital communication and engagement, Government 2.0, GovDelivery, and other e-government issues
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Measure the Impact of Better Communication (GovDelivery + ACSI/Foresee)

August 17th, 2010 | Posted by Scott Burns CEO of GovDelivery in CDC | Cloud Computing | Compelling Content | E-Government | Email Communication | Federal Government | GovDelivery | Government 2.0 | Government Success Stories | Integration | Software as a Service (SaaS) | Web 2.0 | Web/Tech - (0 Comments)

By Scott Burns, CEO & co-Founder, GovDelivery

Why does communication matter in your organization?  What impact does it have?  You always need to be thinking about your impact, but in these tight budget times, it's important to get the facts on the impact of communication into the dialogue when your organization is discussing priorities.

This topic is so pressing for our clients that I want to call attention to our friends and new partners at ForeSee Results who have some incredible facts about website and communication effectiveness that will transform how you think about and make the case in your organization for the importance of effective communication.

FACTS MATTER

High citizen satisfaction with federal websites is a key driver of
desired future behaviors, saving taxpayers money and improving the
government’s relationship with its citizens. When compared to less
satisfied site visitors (scoring below 70), highly satisfied website
visitors (80 and higher) are:

  • 52% more likely to return to a federal government website;
  • 79% more likely to recommend the website;
  • 54% more likely to trust the government agency;
  • 80% more likely to use the website as their primary resource instead of using more costly channels like call centers;
  • 50% more likely to participate in government by expressing their thoughts.

You can read their recent quarterly report on government website satisfaction here.  While there is not as much data on local and international government, I am certain that these facts hold across the public sector. 

IMPROVE ENGAGEMENT, MAKE SERVICES MORE EFFECTIVE, SAVE $$$

Imagine citizens that are 50% more likely to engage or 80% more likely to use the Web instead of call / visit to get needs addressed by your agency, city, or county?  The fact is that better communication impacts some of the most important metrics in you organization and can have an amazing financial impact.

I'm really proud that GovDelivery has recently partnered with ForeSee Results (learn more) to allow our shared clients to see within their ForeSee Results reporting how proactive digital communication through GovDelivery is impacting citizen satisfaction.  You'll now be able to tell if visitors coming back to your website after receiving proactive messages via email (and eventually the other channels we support)  are any more satisfied with their experience than users that reach your website through other means.  This will create exciting opportunities to measure and improve proactive communication.

The idea for this partnership came from several amazing civil servants including Janice Nall (formerly at CDC and now at OMB) who explained at our user forum on the Open Government Directive how tracking the impact of social media on citizen satisfaction and trust was helping CDC quantify the impact of its social and digital media investments.

Janice led the effort at CDC to make better use of metrics and publicize the metrics.  Along with Janet Stevens (CIO of the Food Safety & Inspection Service at USDA and one of our first federal clients) she was also one of the first to bring to our attention several years ago that CDC's use of GovDelivery was positively impacting CDC's ACSI scores.  (Listen to a brief clip of her presentation at that time.)  Other agencies have reported similar impact, and now we're in a position to quantify the impact at a more granular level that we hope will allow or clients to continue to improve to have even more impact.

Please get in touch (either through this form or to me directly) if you are using GovDelivery and/or ForeSee Results today and want to take advantage of this new way to measure the impact of your communication efforts.

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CDC and H1N1: A Case Study for Excellence in Communications

December 11th, 2009 | Posted by Jennie Olson in CDC | Compelling Content | Federal Government | Government Success Stories | H1N1 - (1 Comments)

Remember the game "Telephone" in kindergarten where all the kids sit in a circle and the teacher whispers a message into the first child's ear, then he/she whispers it into the next child's ear until the passing of information comes full circle?  The message communicated by the teacher to the first student is completely different than the message that eventually made its way around the circle.

This same phenomenon has happened with the spread of information about the H1N1 virus.  Information available through traditional news media, Twitter and the blogosphere is pervasive, but not always entirely accurate.  This is understandable, because much like the kindergarten game of "Telephone," it is our human nature to distort information as we share it.

Fortunately, there are government agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that cut through the abundance of misinformation, providing the public with official H1N1 information.  From the early stages of H1N1 becoming a major health issue through information on prevention and vaccination, the CDC has proactively reached over 190,000 citizens with H1N1-related information on topics such as flu prevention, H1N1 cases and vaccinations.  See CDC's comprehensive online site dedicated to H1N1 here.  To get up-to-date information on H1N1 from CDC, subscribe for alerts here.

From the first time we heard news about a new virus back in April 2009 to today, the CDC has kept us informed all along the way.  For this, we commend the agency's efforts and want to acknowledge its excellence in government-to-citizen communications.

Fight Flu with Facts! Visit flu.gov. Call 800-232-4636. Text FLU to 87000.

If it Matters, Measure It (and share the metrics!)

June 10th, 2009 | Posted by Scott Burns CEO of GovDelivery in CDC | Compelling Content | E-Government | Email Communication | Federal Government | GovDelivery | Government Success Stories | H1N1 | Local Government | Social Media | State Government | Web 2.0 | Web/Tech - (0 Comments)

One of my first mentors who ran a region of what was then called Ameritech (a baby bell in the midwest), had a saying, "If you value it, measure it." 

The larger the organization, the more this holds true.  In government, tracking results and sharing results promotes transparency, accountability and understanding of the value of the work you're doing within your agency.

The CDC National Center for Health Marketing has taken impressive steps to get their Web metrics online. They've actually been doing this for years.  Here's an example of the kinds of reports they post.

They've recently been recognized in NextGov for their new http://www.cdc.gov/metrics page.

Here are just a handful of the benefits of getting the data out there for the world to see:

  • Makes clear to internal and external stakeholders how you measure the impact of what you are doing
  • Gives everyone something to celebrate and work towards
  • Engages colleagues and helps them see and understand how they might be able to assist with your work.  For example, if getting people signed up for email alerts is one of your metrics as it is at CDC, your colleagues might see that and decide to promote the email alert option at a future conference
  • Encourages continuous improvement mentality
  • Gives everyone an opportunity to ask tough questions "Is activity A worth the investment?  Should we be using more of technology X if it's working so well?"
  • Helps ensure continuity when personnel changes occur

With the plethora of new technologies out there, it is even more important to share your stats with all stakeholders to make clear that the work you're doing matters and that you know how to gauge whether it is successful.  Just like you track the number of page views, Web visits, and the number of people signining up for your email alerts, you should also track Web 2.0 / Social Media metrics. 

You can track your Twitter followership ( If you have a Twitter feed, use TwitterGrader to track followership overtime), number of comments on your blog, number of Facebook fans, and man other metrics without much effort.

There are even external free services that make some of the tracking easy such as Quantcast which I wrote about last year.  I can't vouch for their accuracy, but they provide additional data points that can be helpful.

I don't believe that hard metrics are all that matter.  In fact, I find it much more compelling when we can go further and tie these metrics directly to mission and to $ savings if cost reduction is a goal.

At GovDelivery, we love to track overall growth in the number of messages that government agencies send to the public through our platform.  However, we get most excited when clients can tie the hard metrics directly back to agency/city/county/transit authority mission. 

At the end of the day, metrics are not an end in and of themselves, but if you track them and share them, I'd be willing to bet that they will be a useful tool in gaining support and momentum for your efforts to support your organization's mission.

Informed Citizen Recommendations for H1N1 (Swine) Flu

May 2nd, 2009 | Posted by GovDelivery in CDC | Cloud Computing | Compelling Content | E-Government | H1N1 | Swine Flu | Widgets - (2 Comments)

GovDelivery has had a lot of inquiries from citizens and media this week asking for our recommendations on how the public can stay informed during this critical time.  We are not public health experts, but our work with key health agencies gives us some perspective on resources available to the public.

We are all being bombarded with information on the H1N1 flu virus this week.  Official government information is invaluable when there is so much misinformation coming at us from all sides.

GovDelivery works with 300+ public sector entities in the U.S. and U.K.  The majority of federal health agencies (CDC, HHS.gov, Pandemicflu.gov, NIH, Medicare, & others) use our Email & Digital Subscription platform to manage outbound digital communication, and we work with state and local health agencies and departments in 30 states including the MN, TX, NE, and OR Health Departments, among others.

I'm not trying to provide a full commercial here, but rather establish how we are in a good position to see what citizens are interested in and what tools are available (particularly online) for citizens that want and need to stay informed of official information.

Some quick statistics on the activity we've seen in terms of citizen interest and government communication in the past week is truly unprecedented.

  • Over 150,000 citizens have signed up to receive H1N1 flu updates from federal and state public health agencies, cities, and counties  (these same organizations already have millions of citizens signed up through our platform, but this 1 week jump is the highest ever).
  • Government agencies have sent over 250 distinct messages through GovDelivery to more than 6 million recipients since the outbreak.

Messages have come out from a whole range of agencies: 

  • The CDC has sent over 1 million email and wireless/text messages
  • PandemicFlu.gov (run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) has also been an active sender
  • San Diego County, the City of St. Paul, TX Governor's Office, FEMA, and many others have been sending messages as well

You can follow GovDelivery on Twitter for updates on the activity we are seeing.

Recommended Actions for Citizens

Recommendation 1: Visit and monitor the official CDC web page on H1N1 flu outbreak where you can also register to receive email and wireless updates on the right hand side of the page.