Web/Tech | Reach The Public

A New Role for Mobile Apps: Reach More People

Everyday 2.5 quintillion bytes of new data are created (IBM: What is Big Data?). The increasing development of mobile technologies makes this data creation even easier by allowing us to search, upload, Tweet, photograph, and produce content from almost anywhere in the world at any time. With all this new, exciting data constantly surrounding us, it’s easy to miss out on the important information government has available.

Information is one of government’s most valuable resources, and there’s a lot of it to go around. But with most of this information sitting in large data sets that are spread across a wide variety of websites, the challenge becomes ensuring that the right people are seeing the right information.

According to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, “By the end of 2013 there will be more mobile devices on Earth than people.” Clearly, the growth of mobile devices is not slowing down. For government, this new mobile market provides an opportunity to expand outreach through digital communications and allows citizens to engage with government in a way that’s convenient for them.

The use of mobile apps is one way your government organization can leverage the growth and dependence on mobile technology. Organizations can publish their most valuable information, acting as guides by providing online resources and websites. In fact, this is already being done by many government organizations. For example, the U.S. Census Bureau has embraced the new mobile market, developing its own mobile app: America’s Economy.

Upon completing the most recent census in 2010, the organization faced a significantly smaller advertising budget. At that juncture, Steve Jost, Associate Director for Communications for the U.S Census Bureau, and his team were left questioning, “What [are we] supposed to do the other 9 years?” Looking towards digital communications, the concept of a mobile app was developed.

America’s Economy provides real-time updates for 16 key economic indicators including unemployment rate, homeownership rates, and gross domestic product. The app tracks increases and decreases in the various indicators and creates ongoing trend reports. The app also provides detailed descriptions of what each indicator represents in addition to any news releases surrounding them. Clicking on these “features” automatically redirects the user to a Web page filled with the desired information and provides the user with an opportunity to explore other information.

During the 2012 GovDelivery Washington D.C. Webcast, Jost referred to the Census Bureau’s new mobile app as “part of a strategy” to “marry” the traditional universe with the digital universe. He said that “by creating an app, a direct linkage [is formed] from one’s mobile device to the data available on our website.” This direct linkage encourages more people to view website content that they may not have normally viewed.

The U.S. Census Bureau is just one of the many government organizations capitalizing on the new mobile market. Having a mobile app provides another means for your organization to better serve your customers. Whether it’s a mobile app or designing a mobile-friendly website for your customers, embracing the mobile shift and exploring the opportunities that accompany it are critical for continuing the success of government’s digital communications efforts.

To hear Steve Jost and other leading government innovators discuss their digital communications strategies check out this video from GovDelivery’s 2012 Washington D.C. Event.

Census Bureau, digital communications strategies, GovDelivery Washington D.C webcast, Steve Jost

Leveraging Technology to Do More with Less

With sequestration officially underway, the phrase “doing more with less” carries more weight than ever before. While cuts are being made across the board, citizens’ needs remain, posing quite a challenging situation for government organizations and their communications efforts. As budgets are forced to become even tighter, organizations are being called upon to serve the needs of citizens by thinking innovatively and creatively.

The need to innovate to solve public sector challenges is quite familiar to Phil Bertolini, CIO for Oakland County, Michigan. While struggling with decreasing revenues and budgets, Bertolini and his team found that citizens were demanding more information than ever before. They quickly realized the need to find an efficient and effective way to meet citizens’ needs while simultaneously meeting the county’s budget.

Realizing that traditional methods would not suffice, Bertolini looked elsewhere, looking to technology as a solution for Oakland County’s communications challenge. The transition to digital communications began changing the way Oakland County handled their communications. Oakland County began placing more and more information online, leveraging various social media channels to reach a larger audience much more quickly than before. Citizens now had easy access to the information they needed through a variety of convenient, online channels that provided savings in both time and resources to Oakland County.

Oakland County is not alone in this transformation. Many organizations are now turning to technology to provide more efficient solutions to increasing communication challenges. There are many other ways in which leveraging technology around your office can help your organization cut communication costs. Here are three examples of where to begin.

Work “in the cloud”. Cloud computing refers to computing resources that are delivered on a network, (most commonly the internet). Working in the cloud reduces office storage and hardware costs because all of your information is online. Many companies, such as Google, provide a variety of cloud-computing applications that include email accounts and collaborative document sharing (GoogleDocs) in lieu of standard office software. The best part? Cloud computing allows this information to be accessed anywhere on a variety of mobile devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and e-readers.

Leverage video communications. Video communications can greatly reduce the costs associated with in-person meetings and conferences, travel expenses, and phone bills. While it’s great to have everyone in the same room at the same time, it can be very costly. Videoconferencing allows everyone to maintain the critical face-to-face contact that helps facilitate communications while eliminating the many costs (travel, accommodations and food) that can result from in-person meetings. Videoconferencing also allows for an even larger number of attendees to participate in the conversation. Adapting video communications software can greatly reduce the expensive phone bills most organizations experience. Skype is one example. Skype is a cloud-based software application that allows users to communicate by voice, video, and instant messaging at no cost. Using Skype in place of phone calls (when possible) for communications between employees on a regular basis can reduce the costs associated with company phone bills.

Go paperless. Think of everything that gets printed in your office a day. Flyers and printed information for your customers aside, think of just the memos, notes, forms, and contact lists alone laying around your desk. I myself can count six separate items on my desk right now. Try going paperless. For internal items, you can have scans readily accessible on your desktop. For internal communications between employees and colleagues, you can send emails with attachments to digital documents. These steps can help you reduce the costs associated with printing quickly and easily.

There are many ways to begin cutting costs around your office; it’s just a matter of where to start. Examining your organization’s most extraneous costs is a great place to start. While you may not be able to fully eliminate some of these costs, it’s fairly easy to find both short and long-term reduction strategies.

For more ideas of where to cut costs throughout your organization, check out 22 Ways to Cut Costs in Time of Sequester and watch Phil Bertolini’s video discussing Oakland County’s communication challenges.

communication, communications, digital government, do more with less, Oakland County, saving money, sequestration, technology

It’s Always Phishing Season: How to Avoid Becoming Prey

By Chris White, Director of Technical Operations, GovDelivery

People in the Midwest love outdoor activities. From hunting season to fishing season to trapping season, there’s always something to do outside. But hackers don’t stick to a calendar. For them, it’s always phishing season.

First, let’s identify what we mean by the phrase phishing and its variations.

Phishing: Sending email to a group of people that looks like it comes from a legitimate website or organization in hopes that someone will click a link and provide personal information, like an email address and password.
Spear Phishing: Sending a targeted email to a specific individual that looks like it comes from a legitimate website in hopes that the person will click a link and provide personal information, like a bank account username and password.
Whaling: The same as Spear Phishing, except that it involves targeting business executives in hopes of a bigger payoff, such as gaining information to access organizational finances.

These aren’t technical attacks, but are known in the industry as social engineering attacks. Instead of trying to hack into your computer to get the information they want, hackers who use social engineering bypass technology controls and instead rely on the weakness of the users to simply provide that information directly. And unlike technical attacks, they’re far more difficult to protect against.

With tax season coming up, one popular form of phishing is to send Internal Revenue Service (IRS) forms to individuals. Attackers craft emails that appear to come from IRS.gov and request unsuspecting victims to fill in attached forms and fax them to a given number. The attack could be targeted (spear phishing) by browsing social media sites like LinkedIn, identifying where you work, and saying something like, “Dear Bob – There is a discrepancy in the amount you entered on line 7 of your 1040A, and what company XYZ reported as your income. In order to avoid any late penalties, please complete the form and fax it to 555-123-4567 by April 1^st.” While many people are trained not to click links in suspicious emails; phone calls and faxes are generally not discussed, making this spear phishing attempt more realistic and more likely to succeed.

So how can you protect yourself?

Keep antivirus up-to-date: This will protect against more than phishing, and is a good first line of defense if the attacker’s goal is to infect your machine with an attachment.
Always question attachments: Sure, you know not to open a file from a stranger, but you should question it even if the email comes from a trusted source such as a recognizable organization or business. As in the IRS example used above, your best course of action would be to manually visit IRS.gov and to find the form yourself.
Never click links in emails: If your bank asks you to click a link to change your password, open up your browser and manually type in the URL for your bank and change the password through the site instead of through the link. Better yet, call the number listed on your credit/debit card and ask if the email is legitimate.
Trust your instincts: If something seems wrong, then it probably is. There’s nothing wrong with picking up the phone and asking if a message is legitimate. Better safe than sorry!

Even tech-savvy, well-informed people can make mistakes and fall for a hoax. If that happens, just remain calm and let people know. If you open a bad attachment, let your IT department know. If you faxed that fake IRS form to the bad guys, inform the IRS as well as your credit card companies. If you clicked the bad link to your bank, change your password by manually visiting your bank’s website and let your bank know immediately.

By remaining vigilant, you’ll reduce the chance of falling prey to a phisher. For more information on how to protect yourself, check out the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s article, “Phishing” Fraud: How to avoid getting fried by phony phisherman.

citizen, email, how to avoid phishing scam, phishing, spear phishing, technology, whaling

Do RSS Feeds Still Matter?

Co-written by Mary Yang, Senior Communications Manager, and Anna Stroncek, Marketing and Communications Intern- GovDelivery

The recent Google announcement that it would be shutting down Google Reader has led to a flurry of blog posts and discussions around RSS feeds, their importance (or lack thereof), and what to do now.

What is an RSS Feed?

For those of you non-techies out there, or maybe those of you whom just need a quick refresher on what an RSS feed is, here’s a short and sweet explanation.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (RSS), which is essentially a format for delivering regularly changing web content. RSS feeds allow a user to subscribe to their favorite news sources, blogs, websites, and other digital properties, and then receive the latest content from all those different areas or sites in one place, without having to repeatedly visit each individual site.

Picture your Twitter Feed filled with postings of new content from your favorite sources rather than 140 characters informing you of which friend is currently enjoying the new vanilla spice latte from Starbucks, #delicious.

RSS was developed in the 1990s, giving websites the ability to push information out to their subscribers as opposed to a subscriber having to check for new content by going to each individual website. This new development brought on increased capabilities for websites and blogs to capture new visitors and turn them into returning visitors, as well as helping to increase the online ranking of the website to bring increased overall awareness.

Now fast forward to 2013. RSS feeds still exist, and they still do get used. However, they’re no longer the new kid on the block, so they’re not as ‘popular’ as they once were. More and more that small orange widget seems to go missing from the ever-increasing lineup of widgets on any given website.

With all the buzz surrounding social media, it’s easy to argue that RSS feeds are dying out and becoming a thing of the past. Who needs to subscribe to RSS feeds when you can get instant news and updates from outlets like Twitter?

Maybe that’s what Google’s thinking by shuttering Google Reader, which, just a few of years ago, was the RSS tool to use. But what’s next, especially with this new development in the tech world?

The Future of RSS

Today’s world is filled with massive amounts of information. According to IBM, 90% of today’s existing data has been created in just the past two years. People no longer sit down at their desktop and surf the web for an hour a day. Instead, they are constantly creating, searching for information, and retrieving content from all types of devices – smartphones, tablets, e-readers, and laptops. As these digital technologies continue to evolve and move in a more mobile direction, new opportunities arise for technologies like RSS.

Hot new mobile applications like Flipboard provide a great example of how RSS feeds can be leveraged to bring updated digital content to customers. Flipboard publishes content from thousands of sources via optimized RSS feeds. Publishers are pushing out their new content via RSS, and Flipboard leverages these feeds to users in a magazine-like layout (within Flipboard). This application can be used on smartphones, tablets and e-readers bringing customers the content they desire in a simple, convenient, personal and aesthetically pleasing way.

Another example of leveraging RSS feeds is the application Pulse. Pulse, quoted by Steve Jobs as “a wonderful RSS reader”, is an elegant newsreader application that uses publishers’ RSS feeds to read and publish content. Pulse brings its 25 million (and counting) users their favorite blogs, magazines and social networks to one place at one time. Similar to Flipboard, their application is compatible across iOS and Android platforms, but also makes content even more accessible and convenient with its compatibility to Windows, Nook, Kindle, Xbox and the web.

These two applications have been around for a while now but still mainly pull from well-known publications or newspapers. With the death of Google Reader on our doorstep, tech firms are already on the hunt for Google Reader’s massive user base. Digg announced just this week that they’re speeding up the release of an RSS reader/application. But in their statement, they note that they’re going to push the envelope of RSS too:

We hope to identify and rebuild the best of Google Reader’s features (including its API), but also advance them to fit the Internet of 2013, where networks and communities like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit and Hacker News offer powerful but often overwhelming signals as to what’s interesting.

So what does this mean for you?

The demise of Google Reader sounds like an open invitation for some tech firms to start innovating on a well-defined technology to make it more relevant and integrated into the tools we’re already using every day. This could mean that RSS feeds could become the new cool in digital technology, and since it leverages technology that’s fairly stable, you could roll with this curve once it hits simply by instituting an RSS feed.

Much like magazines and newspapers, governments and their organizations possess a lot of information and produce a lot of great content. However, it can be a challenge to attract regular visitors to your digital properties, which is why RSS feeds and proactive communication comes in handy. For GovDelivery clients, all your digital communications created and sent out via the Digital Communication Management (DCM) platform can be collected in an RSS feed, allowing you to push content out to your citizens and stakeholders easily. One great example is the Driving Standards Agency (DSA) in the UK. They offer different types of RSS feeds, tailored to the topics they’ve defined in GovDelivery DCM:

Their digital communications management system allows them to segment their RSS feeds so readers don’t have to figure out what’s important – if you’re an instructor, you merely subscribe to their instructors email topic or you follow their instructors RSS feed.

Another great government example is the White House. The White House has developed a mobile app that pushes out content from The White House Blog, press articles, photo galleries, LIVE stream videos, speeches and more all by way of RSS feeds. The app is visually appealing and easy to navigate. This is a great way to emulate apps like Flipboard and push your organizational content into the mobile sphere while leveraging content and tools you already have available.

And although the White House may have a slight advantage over smaller government entities in terms of content (a live stream of the State of the Union), state and local governments can leverage RSS feeds and content that’s already available to inform and educate. People like to know and see what’s going on where they live. So take a look at what your organization currently produces (blogs, photos, events, news updates, videos, etc.) and find out if you can pull those pieces of content into an RSS feed (or multiple RSS feeds) to help expand your digital communications reach even more.

Do you use Google Reader personally? How do you feel about the announcement? Let us know what you think might be ahead for RSS feeds in the comments.

collaboration, communication, community, digital government, e-gov, engagement, Google Reader, RSS, social media, technology, Twitter, web 2.0

Going All Digital: How to Move Paper-Based Transactional Messages Online

I don’t have to tell you how constrained government budgets are these days. If you work in government, you know the depth of budget cuts and lack of resources – but this doesn’t mean that you stop doing the important work you’ve done before. You still need to communicate with your citizens and stakeholders about your services, from recycling updates to open park times to tax updates.

A recent white paper titled, Cutting the Costs of Paper: Digital Delivery of Government Messages & Statements, may provide another perspective on how to better reach citizens and stakeholders with important, personalized messages while working within constrained budgets. The white paper notes:

Many government agencies are achieving efficiencies through e-government initiatives that move processes and communications online. Yet paper is still an essential part of many communications between agencies and the public. These paper-based processes are often a bottleneck, slowing down essential processes such as payments while increasing costs for handling paper.

Some agencies send high volumes of these transactional messages, which often represent a sizable cost to the agency. The cost of printing and mailing is just the tip of the iceberg. Keeping these business processes on paper creates significant follow-on costs for handling inbound forms or calls. By moving these printed messages to electronic mail, agencies can realize significant cost savings while streamlining business processes and becoming more efficient.

What’s a transactional message? The white paper gives some examples, but it may be easier to start with a private sector example. For instance, if you have a credit card, you can usually set up a recurring email alert to notify you when your balance reaches a certain threshold. I have one of my credit cards set up to send me this kind of email alert; but it doesn’t just tell me that I’ve reached a certain balance, it also tells me exactly what my credit card balance is in the email. And then it gives me the option of clicking on a link to see more information through my credit card portal.

How would this work for government? An easy example would be property tax statements. Usually this information is mailed to the citizen or business, with a paper statement for payment, if that’s required. Because of the very specific information contained in the statement, it’s been easier for organizations to collate this information and print it, then mail it. The other option has usually been to implement or install an enterprise system that’s expensive and large to manage. But with advances in technology, especially with application programming interfaces (APIs), this is no longer the case. Legacy financial or citizen relationship management systems can remain intact while APIs do the work of pulling in personalized information and then sending out these transactional messages to their intended recipients. Transactions with government organizations that were generated from paper-based communications can move to an all-electronic process, saving your organization time, money and resources.

The white paper goes into more depth. But why not hear from an expert? GovDelivery’s Technical Product Manager, Tor Flatebo, is discussing this very topic on a live webinar on March 27. The webinar is free, and you can pick Tor’s brain on all the ways transactional messaging can work for your organization. Register today.

APIs, citizen service, collaboration, communications, community, digital government, e-gov, email, engagement, Gov 2.0, government services, responsiveness, technology, web 2.0

Digital communicators transform service delivery. We are change agents.

By Kathy Kyle, Digital Communications Consultant, GovDelivery

Among the many topics discussed at this year’s Communications Camp (@commscamp | #commscamp13), the one that resonated most with me was how to best demonstrate the value of digital communications. If we can’t measure our impact as communicators, how can we influence and transform our organisations?

As a former Communications and Marketing Director in both the public and private sector, I found the most traction when I aligned communications performance metrics with customer service outcomes. In my central government agency roles, I ensured our communications approach focused on internal and external customers’ interests. Regardless of whether I was working on an internal communications programme to engage employees or a multi-faceted, externally facing digital campaign to generate support for a new regulation, I measured our success by aligning our communications efforts to our mission and by focusing on shifting my audiences’ activities and behaviours: web impressions, media coverage, social media activity, survey responses, focus group outcomes and anecdotal feedback.

We were able to demonstrate the value of digital communications by aligning our strategy and performance metrics with the people we served – both internally and externally. If you are struggling to develop a comprehensive evaluation programme, or just want to demonstrate your value as a communicator, consider the following activities:

Build support internally with leadership and cross-functionally across the organisation.
Drive your audience to online channels for accurate measurement of activities – measure whether you experience fewer calls and in-person visits due to your digital strategy.
Create content once and repurpose it (the COPE model: Create Once, Publish Everywhere)
Use the most effective, inexpensive and targeted communication channels that suit your audience. But don’t just use a social media tool because it is “free” – ensure your audience uses the channel. For example, 3.2 billion people use email, over a billion use Facebook and over 500 million use Twitter (some analysts indicate 140m active users).

Should you care about how many Twitter followers your organisation has? Or “likes” on Facebook? Yes and no. How do you know those followers are really fans? Or even in your target population? It matters more if you reach your intended audience and change their behaviour about government services. According to a study conducted by LGiU, “a Facebook ‘fan’ or Twitter follower doesn’t necessarily capture the connection and lead to a direct, sustainable, two-way relationship with a resident.” I am not suggesting throwing the baby out with the bathwater – instead, focus on your mission (some form of government service) and the people you serve (your customers) and create a bespoke plan to reach them.

There isn’t an exact science to measuring communications success – but there are ways in which we can demonstrate our value. We must shift our role from press release writers to service delivery communicators, and then delivering results that matter to our customers. We are change agents.

Kathy Kyle, Digital Communications Consultant at GovDelivery
kathy.kyle@govdelivery @bonominiyogini

citizen service, communication, community, content, responsiveness, social media, technology, UK Government, web 2.0

Government Tech Trends to Watch in 2013

December 27th, 2012 | Posted by GovDelivery in Compelling Content | Current Affairs | Web/Tech - (2 Comments)

By Brent Kastner, Chief Technology Officer, GovDelivery | @brentkastner

One of the reasons I enjoy this time of year, aside from perfecting Sticky Toffee Pudding recipes (seriously, you should try this one…), is the annual technology prediction discussions for the upcoming year. While I don’t pay attention to every single technology prediction made (usually by companies trying to sell me something) the “Technology Forecast 2013: What State and Local Government Technology Officials Can Expect” webinar by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) and the Public Technology Institute (PTI) on December 19^th 2012 caught my eye.

In the hour-long presentation NASCIO and PTI covered the top ten priorities for State/County CIO’s as well as City and County technology leaders, I will summarize below:

State CIO:

Consolidation and Optimization
Cloud Services
Security
Mobile/Mobility Support (BYOD)
Budget and Cost Control
Shared Services
Health Care (Act implementation)
Legacy/Modernization (of systems)
Interoperable Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

City and County:

Big data to drive smart and intelligent cities
Consolidation (infrastructure)
GIS as the centerpiece for strategic decision-making
Mobility and Broadband deployment
Cyber and Network Security
Cloud-Based Solutions
Legacy/Modernization (of systems)
Unified Citizen Engagement (311, Social)
Consumerization of Technology (BYOD)
Shared Services (within and cross jurisdiction)

For State CIOs the priorities and focus are an extension of the priorities and focus of last year (largely because these are mega-trends and will likely take many years to fully realize). Many a blog post could be written analyzing and critiquing the content presented during the webinar however, the areas I’d like to focus on are at the City and County level, specifically Big Data, GIS, and Consumerization of Technology.

In my opinion, the technology climate for local government is positioning itself for a major breakthrough with citizens and stakeholders in the coming years. Potential breakthroughs are supported, both by industry experts, and by what I have witnessed in my own community and, by extension, through the work I do with GovDelivery. The fuel for this change is beginning to be realized at the local level.

Local governments can expect a much brighter budget picture this year than in previous years. 68% of City and County officials polled see IT as an investment for saving money (NASCIO/PTI). With these raw ingredients the recipe for a local population that contributes and interacts with government is beginning to emerge.

Let’s start with Big Data. Everywhere you look (at least in technology news) the term Big Data abounds. “Do you have a big data strategy?” is on the minds of technology leaders at all levels. Indeed the term or concept of “Big Data” has become the “Cloud” of yesteryear as everyone who is anyone is positioning to ride the next wave of technology trends. That said, at the local level, the opportunity to really capitalize on big data is more real than it might seem at first glance.

During the webinar Alan Shark (Director – PTI) posits that Big Data needs to be more than “just sensors” and has the opportunity to analyze more than sensor-type data to drive more efficient, smarter cities. In addition, it supports the open data and transparency movements, thereby encouraging the small but growing interest in using public information to drive decision making (within apps, GIS, Mobile, etc).

I think we can all imagine a future where at the touch of a few buttons citizens can see on a map crime hotspots, aggregated traffic stops, vehicle crash aggregates, snow plow routes, age of road and number of service requests, and school distract/enrollment maps just to name a few. With this information the city and its citizens can understand where crime prevention efforts should be focused, where additional stop signs or traffic awareness programs could be deployed, and so on.

I’m beginning to call this concept “Big Data Distilled”. The power is not just in the data (hence Alan’s comments about not focusing on sensors) rather it’s in how that data can be used, mashed up, and exposed to people who can act on it in a meaningful way.

In my opinion GIS and Big Data will forever be entwined in the context of this conversation. GIS is the “where to the what”. When we start talking local government, the question of where is just as, if not more important to all parties involved. For the layman, all of the above ideas visualized on a map.

That said, the usability gap between GIS systems and the ability to present actionable information still has a ways to go before mainstream adoption. In the mean-time, consumer focused mapping tools (think Google maps, MapQuest, yahoo maps, etc) continue to fill the LG2G/LG2C technology gap on the visualization side. These technologies will naturally converge over time largely due to the next topic I’d like to comment on “Consumerization of Technology”.

The one topic in the webinar that created a strong reaction in me was the brief discussion on consumerization of technology. While the focus of the conversation was on Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), and even a prediction of the downfall of iPad in favor of Microsoft Surface, I felt that the presenters missed a great opportunity.

True, BYOD is an important movement in government for many reasons that are beyond the scope of this post. But, I feel that consumerization of technology, BYOD, and other related topics focus too much on the tactics and not enough on the strategy.

For government, the strategy here should be placed on the consumerization of services delivered. With proper focus the technology needs, trends, and budget will follow. I believe this because whether one chooses to agree or not, the facts show that the population is already an expert on service expectations. We already have expectations set by our banks (I can deposit a check now without visiting a branch), restaurants through OpenTable, review services like Yelp, e-tailers and retailers, and the social tools we already use like Facebook and twitter. While we’ve all had good and bad experiences with all of these services, by comparison our local government rarely competes. My prediction over the coming year or two is that the populace will no longer be wondering if government should raise its game in this regard but will begin to expect that government already has.

In conclusion the webinar by NASCIO and PTI did a fine job of laying out the concerns and priorities for State and Local government for the coming year(s).

There aren’t any huge surprises in these lists and it’s nice to see budgets recovering somewhat, for a change, at the local level as recognition that technology investments can save and generate budget dollars. I do think that local government has a shining opportunity to invest in ways to “consumerize” the government experience for its citizens and stakeholders.

On the heels of the biggest snowfall of the year here in Minnesota, I’d jump at the chance to write a review on the excellent job our neighborhood snow plow guy or gal did and schedule him/her to come back and salt the nasty ice patch at the end of our street the next day!

big data, citizen service, government, technology, trends

How effective is your government website?

December 13th, 2012 | Posted by Mary Yang for GovDelivery in E-Government | Government Success Stories | UK Government | Web/Tech - (2 Comments)

Even in this computer-driven age when information is virtually at our fingertips, many people still discover that finding the answer to a simple question can be a protracted, frustrating, complex process.

Unfortunately, in many cases, government agencies are a prime offender in perpetuating this information muddle.

Consider many government websites: Users go to a government site with a simple query, only to find themselves confronted by pages of dense type, dozens of confusing links that lead them deeper, and obtuse bureaucratic language that makes it impossible to decipher which section of the site might provide the sought-after answer.

After spending time searching without finding what they need, it’s no wonder that users finally give up in frustration and call the help desk to find someone who can provide them with that simple bit of information.

The result? An irritated customer who’s likely to view his or her experience as a typical example of government inefficiency and bloat. From the government side, there’s a corresponding and pronounced rise in costs for staff time in order to field that frustrated caller’s request for information.

In the end, both sides lose.

So what’s the problem? Why do so many government agencies fail to provide their citizens with an efficient, satisfying communication experience?

The answer may lie in the old-world model of how government agencies typically communicated with their customers or stakeholders. In the old days—read that, “before the Internet”—government agencies often assumed the role of the mountaintop, and pronouncements were delivered from that lofty position to the masses. There was only one arrow in that communication diagram, and it pointed down to the customer. Today, however, customers are more proactive. They want answers to the questions they have, and they want that information to be available and easy to obtain.

A few forward-thinking government agencies manage to get this dance right. And the latest attempt to provide customers with easy access to government information is the United Kingdom’s GOV.UK portal.

More than 60 million people live in the UK, making this site the potential one-stop destination for an extraordinary number of users. If the administrators behind the site had followed the too-typical government habit of defaulting to outdated web design or confused information production, the repercussions could have been literally overwhelming.

Instead, the web site is an exceptional example of simplicity paired with robust usability, with a tagline that succinctly explains its mandate: Simpler. Clearer. Faster.

Rather than confronting users with a bewildering array of choices, the home page has a simple, clean design that breaks information into sensible segments that promise to answer the type of questions the public might have.

In the top third of the page, links are prioritised and offer one-click access to topics such as “Driving, transport and travel”, (which houses information about common issues such as car taxes and passport information), or “Employing people” (which answers questions about pay, contracts and hiring). Other links are also a model of brevity and conciseness, such as “Disabled people: Includes your rights, benefits and the Equality Act”.

The middle third of the home page hosts a highly visual offer that will likely rotate as the site grows. For now, it offers users to “Take the Tour” of the site (since it is fairly new), which leads to a brief video explaining the various services that the government offers.

The bottom third of the page is split into three columns to maximise content, displaying a “most active” list of links and news.

This site combines good, user-focused design (intuitive, clean, and easy to read) with Web tools consumers are accustomed to (brief video overviews). The people behind GOV.UK are now taking their efforts one step further: providing stakeholders with proactive information delivery. They’ve recently started using GovDelivery Digital Communication Management (DCM) to provide email notification services for Inside Government, a section of GOV.UK that holds content related to government policy information. As a multichannel, digital communications platform, DCM helps stakeholders (researchers, media, analysts, etc.) stay up to date when any of that content changes. They can choose topics of interest to receive notifications when specific content changes, drawing back users to the website. The GovDelivery platform is currently driving successful results for more than 550 government agencies worldwide, including other UK-based organisations such as Parliament, Driving Standards Agency, Department for Business Innovation & Skills and the Met Office.

Combining good design principles, methodical information delivery and cutting-edge technology tools, the GOV.UK website is giving its users exactly what it promises: simple, clear and fast information.

As a side note, why not borrow design tips from the best of the best? This infographic recently released by Go-Globe drew together home page design elements for the top Fortune 500 companies. Unsurprisingly, many elements are similar to the GOV.UK design.

communications, design, digital, e-gov, GOV.UK, government, government services, technology, UK Government, website

Responsive Design – The Future is Here

If you haven’t heard of Responsive Design yet, you will soon enough. Responsive Design is a new way of dealing with the multitude of devices people are using to view digital content. Responsive Design uses the functionality of CSS3, combined with Unobtrusive JavaScript, to provide an optimal viewing experience across multiple viewing platforms (desktop monitors, ultrabooks, tablets and mobile phones) for websites, blogs and email.

So far, Responsive Design has not been adopted by very many government organizations yet, but as new websites are designed, more and more will be adopting Responsive Design.

Three great examples of what I’m talking about:

1) Here is how Michigan’s homepage looks on my desktop:

And here’s how it looks on my phone:

2) Rhode Island looks great on a desktop

And on mobile

3) This very blog uses Responsive Design. Here’s how it looks on a mobile phone

Two main elements that make up Responsive Design

1) CSS3 Elements

Responsive-Designed sites use the most contemporary CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) design elements to adjust the layout of your digital content to the appropriate screen size. These apply to web content as well as email. Here’s how Wikipedia explains them:

Media queries allow the page to use different CSS style rules based on characteristics of the device the site is being displayed on, most commonly the width of the browser.
The fluid grid concept calls for page element sizing to be in relative units like percentages or EMs, rather than absolute units like pixels or points.
Flexible images are also sized in relative units (up to 100%), so as to prevent them from displaying outside their containing element.

Basically, to summarize, instead of creating absolute sizes for items, you size them in relation to size of the browser displaying your content. So, instead of setting a table to be 700 pixels wide within a 1,000 pixel web page, you set the table to 70% of the width of the browser. On your desktop, that would be 700 and 1,000 but on your smart phone that might be 350 and 500. You get the idea.

2) Unobtrusive JavaScript Elements

Unobtrusive JavaScript is a new concept that doesn’t have a consistent, agreed upon set definition yet, but it’s generally accepted that there are 2 main components. (This gets a little more technical, so I will try to summarize how Wikipedia lays it out.) Unresponisve JavaScript applies to web content only. Putting JavaScript in email is a no-no!:

Separating the JavaScript from HTML – keep JavaScript independent of other code. Think keeping all your JavaScript in a separate area and not inline with your HTML.
How the JavaScript “degrades” – Content should be available without all of the JavaScript running successfully and the JavaScript should improve the HTML. When there are instances of people using an unusual browser configuration, things will still render.

So what do I do with all this and why should I care?

Excellent question to ask, especially for the non-tech-nerds, reading this. There are 4 main reasons Responsive Design is the way of the future:

1) We all know smart phone adoption is going to continue to grow in years to come. The same is true of tablets and any other yet to be invented digital technology. As the screen size variations begin to reach exponential numbers, it will become impossible to design digital content that work well on all the different variations without Responsive Design. So, you can either go with Responsive Design or have a website, blog or email that looks good on one platform and horrible on all the others. Also, since your one site works on all platforms, you don’t need to maintain completely separate mobile sites, saving your web team time and money.

2) The Federal Digital Government Strategy lays out several initiatives that Federal agencies will have to meet. Nearly all of the initiatives have a component of increased accessibility for mobile platforms. And, as goes the Federal Government, so goes the rest of government.

3) Responsive Design is a great tool to allow you to have nice looking digital content and still remain 508 compliant. Gone are the days of needing to sacrifice design for accessibility. With Responsive Design, everyone can enjoy the benefits of a great website or email.

4) It helps with SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Since you site looks better and is easier to navigate with Responsive Design, people are less likely to leave right away and will spend more time browsing your content. That directly translates to reduced bounce rates and increased time-on-site metrics. If they are leaving less and spending more time your site, it gives you more time to get them to sign up receive your content in the future, thus converting them from browsing into some you can engage. Finally, having a completely separate mobile version of your site could be seen as having duplicate content on your site, something search engines really frown upon.

I’m sure there are several other benefits I’m missing out on but this is enough to get you thinking. When it comes time to redesign that website, make sure start with Responsive Design from the get go. Otherwise it might be extremely painful to come back in after your site is finished and retrofit Responsive Design techniques.

Speaking of Responsive Design, check out this short video of GovLoop Founder and President, Steve Ressler, talking about how Responsive Design in being implemented in the Federal government.

Steve Ressler talks about the Digital Government Initiative from GovDelivery on Vimeo.

communications, digital, digital government, e-gov, engagement, Gov 2.0, government, mobile, responsive design, Steve Ressler, technology

Digital Communication Trends for the Government

December 7th, 2012 | Posted by Mike Bernard for GovDelivery in Community Management/Engagement | Compelling Content | Government 2.0 | Web/Tech - (0 Comments)

About a decade ago, Malcolm Gladwell published his bestselling book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. In the book, Gladwell says, “the success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts.” He categorizes these people into the following:

The Connectors – those in a community whom knows large numbers of people and is great at connecting all these people together.
The Mavens – these are the information specialists. They accumulate knowledge and love to share it with others.
The Salesmen – these are the persuaders, the charismatic people who know how to get you to buy into an idea.

If you can get these three kinds of people to connect with an idea, you can create a tipping point, or a point at which the idea begins to be widely adopted by the general public.

I’ve known several of each of these kinds of people throughout my life, but it’s extremely rare to find all three strengths in one person. The only person I’ve ever met who has all 3 of these rare social gifts is Steve Ressler, President and Founder of GovLoop.

In this short interview, Ressler shares his vision for using social media in government and highlights the excellent work being done with APIs that are being used in exciting new ways.

Check out what this Connector-Maven-Salesmen has to say about technology trends within the government.

community, Steve Ressler, video

A New Role for Mobile Apps: Reach More People

It’s Always Phishing Season: How to Avoid Becoming Prey

Going All Digital: How to Move Paper-Based Transactional Messages Online

Government Tech Trends to Watch in 2013

How effective is your government website?

Responsive Design – The Future is Here

Two main elements that make up Responsive Design

So what do I do with all this and why should I care?

Digital Communication Trends for the Government

Email Updates

Tags

Top Posts & Pages

Reach The Public RSS

Categories

Archives

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Two main elements that make up Responsive Design

So what do I do with all this and why should I care?

Share this:

Share this:

Email Updates

Tags

Top Posts & Pages

Reach The Public RSS

Categories

Archives