Building Better Web for Citizens Tt Technology & Tools
Contents Foreword... Introduction... How does technology help?... Strategic Alignment... Enterprise Technology... The Corporate Technology Offering... Corporate Technology Services... The Team... For More Help... 3 5 6 7 8 8 9 12 13
Foreword The UX Toolbox contains a series of modules to help you build a better web presence for your organization, and to align your web presence with overall government direction. Each module helps set the stage for the next. For a thorough understanding of the entire process we recommend reading the modules in order. That said, if you are reading to get a general understanding or are looking for some particular information or tool that might help, you can jump right into any particular module. We recommend starting with the Overview of the Toolbox before continuing. By reading the Overview of the Toolbox, you ll understand how the toolbox works, how it can help you create better user experiences, and where you can go if you need help. The Introduction to Online Service Delivery module helps to paint a picture of online service delivery in the public service, our new corporate approach to web, and how we need to rethink our positioning so that citizens can access more of our services online more easily. The Design Research module explains why research is so important and why you should conduct user research before diving into strategy, development and implementation. It explains when to conduct research and describes several design research methods and tools. The Web Strategy module helps you create both ministry- and project-level online strategies based on evidence from design research, providing best practice tools, guidelines and exercises for developing a good vision. The Citizen Engagement and Social Media module teaches you how to harness the power of social media to engage with citizens and get the results you need to make an informed decision. It highlights the ways that your team can build your citizen engagement capacity through training and consultation with experts. 3
The Information Architecture (IA) module will help you make sense of the new gov.bc.ca site structure by describing its information architecture. After reading this module, you ll have a better understanding of where your content fits within the eight major themes of new gov.bc.ca site. The Content module discusses the importance of web content and how it can shape a user s experience both positively and negatively. It will give you a better understanding of how to plan for content and write for the web and for intended audiences and provides tips and best practice guidelines. The Metadata module assists ministries and agencies in understanding and meeting their responsibilities to produce descriptions of their online content. Implementing the guidelines in this component will ensure a consistent approach to describing provincial government online content and will help citizens find, retrieve and understand the information and resources they need. The Design module provides a design pattern library and available page types for standard reference points and guidelines for both experienced and non-experienced user interface designers. It also communicates standards to increase consistency, predictability and usability across gov.bc.ca. 4
Introduction Technology presents many opportunities for us to deliver better services to our citizens. More and more, people want an immediate, specific, casual and personalized service experience, government included. People are looking to technology to find that experience. People now largely prefer to use mobile technologies to access the web and third-party web applications such as Google to search for services and information across government. They like being able to access services from nearly anywhere, using whatever device and cool new features they have. We, as government, are left trying to understand the demands of a Web 2.0 world where people use the web less for read-only websites and more for direct interaction through social media (including Facebook, Twitter and blogging) and expect more multimedia options. We are also faced with mounting demographic pressures. We know we won t have the resources necessary to meet future demands. Allowing citizens to self-serve more online presents a major opportunity to redirect costs away from expensive in-person channels. Keeping up with these new demands puts an enormous strain on our resources. Ministries and branches are continually solving business problems that have been solved in other parts of government. Day-today content maintenance and writing is often done off the side of a desk and, in some cases, the lack of a content management system means that content edits are done by senior technical or business area staff. Many parts of government rely on outdated and inefficient technologies to manage web. They often require people to perform functions, such as data entry and content management, for which standard technology options are available. All of these developments require a change to the way we develop web. If we continue to focus on longer-term, sequential, technology-specific and/or business-focused improvements (say a new iphone app that allows a user to apply for a service) we will fall behind. Instead, we must prepare ourselves for sustainable delivery of online services in a continually shifting environment. 5
How does technology help? As much as new technology brings new challenges, it also brings a wealth of opportunity. Mobile technologies, web-based services, social media and open source provide new ways of delivering services that were never before possible. Although they require upfront spending, technology solutions cost much less money in the long run than do other more people-based options, and a strategic approach to these investments could result in longterm savings to government and better services for citizens. 6
Strategic Alignment Citizens @ the Centre 1 articulates our commitment to an evidencebased, citizen-centred and service-focused approach to government s web presence. It states that citizens expect and deserve a range of services and supports from their government, that our organization will save citizens time in their interactions with government and that we will make it easier to access better quality services. Our corporate Internet Strategy outlines this new approach to web, which will better serve the needs of both citizens and government. It makes the citizen the driving force behind the design of our business, our services, and how we deliver them. To support this new approach, CITZ has been given strategic responsibility for government s web presence, and is responsible for creating policy, governance and tools to support sectors and ministries through this change. As part of Sector Transformation Plans, each ministry created a strategy to rationalize their web presence and make it more citizen-centred by aligning with the overall government approach. We need to work differently in order to put services closer to citizens in a consistent manner based on their needs. Instead of managing a website, we now manage a set of services that may be delivered online. To be successful and truly put citizens at the centre, this approach requires service delivery innovation and adaptation. Service delivery innovation comes from gaining empathy and insight into what people really need, while taking into consideration what organizations are capable of and mandated to create. This includes a deep understanding of users context, goals, motivations, options, constraints and needs and an understanding of how we need to organize teams and efforts within our organizations. Once the research and planning stages of this process are complete, it s time to apply the research findings and unveil a new web presence using technology and tools to provide the user with a seamless experience. 1. www.gov.bc.ca/citz/citizens_engagement/ gov20.pdf 7
Enterprise Technology Research shows that modern, effective organizations use enterprise content management, analytics, search and social media technologies to manage their web presence. In most cases, these types of tools only reach full effectiveness and return on investment when used consistently across an entire organization. A number of years ago, the B.C. Government purchased enterprise technologies for web content management, hosting, search, analytics and social media. However, some parts of our organization already had separate technologies with the same purpose and general functions. There is currently no standard set in the B.C. Government for the web technologies used for development, delivery and maintenance of web properties. However, there are a number of standards published by the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) 2 that apply directly to these services including privacy, security and enterprise content management standards. It is easy to see why the cost and effort of keeping up-to-date with government standards and citizen expectations with business specific technologies is high. It has becomes more and more difficult to build a business case for new investment in these types of technologies. An enterprise approach to technology would allow us to fully use the capabilities of our tools and to decrease overall costs, resulting in improved effectiveness for both citizens and government. The Corporate Technology Offering (HP Autonomy) Interwoven TeamSite 3 is the enterprise web content management system (CMS) purchased corporately to host the main B.C. Government web property, gov.bc.ca, and is available for use across government. 2. www.cio.gov.bc.ca 3. http://promote.autonomy.com/promote/products/teamsite.page? 8
The OCIO standards and the design standards for gov.bc.ca have been made integral to this technology offering. A large project, completed in the first quarter of fiscal year 2012-13, integrated and configured this technology and created an easier to use and more consistent user interface to create and publish content. It also separated the storage of content and metadata from the display of content, making it easier to find and re-use content. The benefits of this to government increases exponentially as more sites come on board. As a result of this work, ministries are now able to get a bundle of easy-to-use, pre-optimized CMS services, including web hosting, metadata management, search and analytics. It provides the entire suite of technology required for ministries to deliver an evidence-based, citizen-centric and service-focused web presence and is the most effective and cost-efficient way for ministries to manage their web content and align with the new corporate direction and web standards. See the Introduction of Online Service Delivery module for more information on this new corporate approach to web. Corporate Technology Services The following integrated services are supported through Corporate Online Services (COS) within the Strategic Initiatives Division of CITZ: 1. TeamSite Content Management (CMS) - as described above, this is the tool that supports government s enterprise content management framework. It is a highly ranked self-service tool (Gartner s top-right quadrant 4 ) that allows users to safely and securely make updates to content on a controlled website. This simplified interface puts content in the hands of the content owner, allowing them to quickly and easily make corrections, immediately publish into production and automate information release. The interface is easy to use and intuitive, requiring no technical knowledge, extensive training or confusing manuals. In addition, this tool is fully integrated with the COS-hosted Google Search Appliances and Analytics services described below, providing the added benefits of good metadata management, analytics data tracking and search technology. 4. www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/research_mq.jsp 9
2. Web Hosting - in parallel with the CMS, the secure and highly-available web hosting service supports both dynamic and static web sites. Integration with the TeamSite CMS environment allows for quick deployment of content out to the internal or public web presence. The service provides both a Production and QA environment, allowing the web content owner to validate the content on a full web site prior to pushing it to the production environment. 3. Web & Application Development - whether you require a website widget, a mobile app or an enterprise application, our diverse and talented development team is up to the challenge with services that include requirements gathering, design, architecture, development and testing. We work closely with clients including B.C. Government and the broader public sector to optimize the development cycle and ensure conformance to requirements, timelines and cost. 4. Blog - our WordPress blogging platform offers a secure way to engage with your audiences, capture feedback and dialog and garner enthusiasm for your initiative. With a dedicated development team, you may choose to launch a standard blog site or take a custom approach to launch the feature-rich site you require. 5. Web Analytics - Webtrends Analytics 5 is a corporate service that helps business areas better understand their web performance. It provides tools and methods to analyze use and determine the effectiveness of web properties and transactional services. Webtrends leads the field in its ability to manage key data, such as visits, hits and site behaviour. It also includes embedded time sensitive tools, such as heatmaps, which can help inform advertising, promotions or web design decisions. When analyzed and interpreted together with user experience best practices and the corporate approach outlined in this toolbox, Webtrends data will help ministries create more complete and multidimensional service design strategies. Government is strongly recommending the use of Webtrends Analytics across ministries. With a single web analysis toolset, government can ensure it has an enterprise view of web effectiveness, which will better inform evidence-based service design decisions. 5. www.webtrends.com/products/analytics 10
6. Search in conjunction with the launch of the redesigned main government website, gov.bc.ca, government purchased Google Search Appliances (GSA) 6 and licensing to support the enterprise-wide implementation of public and internal web search. Important features of this product include faceted search (in use by MyHR 7 ), integration of search with the CMS, self-service configuration of the search page for web property owners and proof of concept for authenticated search. Government is strongly recommending the use of GSA Search Service across ministries. Google technology is the de facto leader in the enterprise search space and will greatly improve consistency and relevancy of search results, thereby providing substantial cost savings by reducing or eliminating duplication in licensing, hosting and support. 6. www.google.com/enterprise/search 7. www2.gov.bc.ca/myhr/home.page 11
The Team Online Technology Services (OTS) 8 within COS provides skills, tools and resources to enable ministries to deliver on their web strategy commitments. It is the department that manages the enterprise content management framework and services described above. These services are available to all government organizations. OTS is ready and experienced with finding technical solutions and supporting transition for important business functions. In addition to technology solutions and management, a technical service desk is available for client support during business hours. Full service descriptions are defined in a client service agreement that identifies escalation points, agreed service levels and billable services and rates. Contact the OTS team to find out more about their tools and services, what they cost, how they are supported, and how to adopt them. 8. Online Technology Services (OTS): OCOService- Request@gov.bc.ca 12
For More Help Depending on the resources available in your organization, you may need more than just the guidance and advice provided in this toolbox. The team responsible for this toolbox is available for consultation and guidance and has a number of resources and contracts that are available to ministries on a cost recovery basis. If you have questions about the corporate approach, this or any of the other modules in the toolbox, or how to move forward on your ministry approach please contact the User Experience Design Team (UXBC) within the Strategic Initiatives Division of the Ministry of Citizens Services and Open Government. uxbc@gov.bc.ca 13