Why we need to involve the “local” end users

September 30, 2009

It doesn’t matter how we design systems, there are cultural considerations to be taken into account as Bill Moggridge, founder of IDEO, outlined  at EmTech@MIT 2009 and as described in the MIT Technology Review, demonstrating the need for some difficult considerations that go into designing for a connected world.  Two examples are provided of the need to be aware of cultural constraints that might exist when employing technology.

However, this is an international perspective and we need to be aware of constraints on using services at all levels of employment. How best can we do this? Well, we could watch the locals, as Moggridge demonstrates, an academic practice known as ethnography, which can be quite lengthy and time consuming. Another method might simply be to involve the “locals” in the design, implementation and testing of any application, electronic or otherwise.

Due to the constant change in the adoption or use of different communications media, this consultation needs to be ongoing and is not necessarily about technology, it’s primarily about the processes behind the wires and chips.

Leave a Comment » | citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, Metrics, Systems thinking, transformational change | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator

USA Government Web Sites

September 27, 2009

The latest comScore review of US government web sites sees some interesting changes in usage.

From my particular point of view I’m also interested in their employment of user satisfaction as a metric. One quotation that caught my attention is that “On January 21, 2009, President Obama issued a directive stating that ‘Executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public.’” I highlight the fact that “information” is required, not the seemingly obligatory “transactions”.

Perhaps the US has wised up to the Canadian observation that what citizens want is information prior to considering any transaction, and that transaction may be carried out across multiple channels in the end?

Incidentally I’ve updated my table with the latest CMetrix product, so am now at Company table V6.

Leave a Comment » | citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, Metrics, NI 14, NI14, Systems thinking, transformational change | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator

Another survey

September 23, 2009

The Oxford Internet Institute have released the report of their latest survey, The Internet in Britain, which contains a comparative analysis of results from 2009 with the years 2005 and 2007.

One of the quotes from Helen Margetts (p.26) contains the statement: “Information seeking remains the most common e-government activity, similar to the way e-commerce developed (although slower). However, the frequency of online transactions such as paying for government services, taxes, fines and licenses has started to increase.” So information, not transaction remains the killer application.

Interestingly, local services remain more popular than central government ones, whether policy or politicians, although all see a small but steady increase.

However, an added reminder came from Gerry McGovern in his latest e-broadcast , when he stated: “The purpose of marketing and advertising used to be to get customers to do the things you wanted them to do. The purpose of web marketing and advertising is different. It starts off by accepting that the customer is on the Web to do something. It then focuses on helping that customer become more successful in doing that thing, not getting the customer to do something else.”

In the case of government, what we need to remember is that primarily we should be using the web to help citizens, not to help ourselves!

Leave a Comment » | citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, Metrics, NI 14, NI14, Systems thinking, transformational change | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator

E-government dependencies

September 20, 2009

Computer Weekly of the 15th September 2009 includes a piece by Ian Grant on Dr David Osimo’s presentation to the European Network and Information Security Agency summer school under the title “E-government success depends on external expertise”

Coincidentally, Dr David Osimo is a managing partner at tech4i2, a consultancy founded by my friend Professor Paul Foley, formerly of De Montfort University which examines a range of practical issues around electronic government, so I was interested to read it.  Especially as I was attending a meeting with members of the Local CIO Council at Sunningdale on the subject Public Sector Network (PSN) at the time.

Osimo points out that ICT has not fundamentally changed government in Europe with 50% of services fully interactive and only 9.3%  of citizens using them. The answer to which he sees as Web 2.o solutions being delivered by people outside of government, my favourite of his examples being Patient Opinion.

He then goes on to propose a model for Tao government, with which I have no arguments but rather than being anything “techie”, this is a change to democracy and government as we’ve known it and, without a revolution, I don’t see it becoming much more than a facade that citizens will soon tire of.

Leave a Comment » | citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator

In these hard times

September 16, 2009

A recent Computer Weekly (8 – 14 September 2009) contains a piece entitled “Hard Times for local government IT” written by Dr Simon Moores a Conservative district councillor and former advisor to Tony Blair! Strangely, it’s largely the content of an earlier posting from his blog. I tend to agree with his conclusions to the state we are likely to be in, but as one of advisors behind the e-government race, I think he should consider his role in bringing us to the current situation we’re in.

The rush to 100% targets with little process improvement brought us to a place where, in order to share services, we are trying to rationalise a vast range of systems without any standard architecture. He bemoans his own council’s situation for being on Groupwise and ”fat” desktops – I moved my own towards “thin” some six years ago against some resistance and avoided Novell at the outset, however many neighbours still use Novell and still employ “fat” desktops, which can limit some of the “quick wins”.

Many authorities and government are forced down the Microsoft path by interfaces and joining up, open source won’t make things easier, if anything it will possibly make them harder.

IT is just the glue of service delivery, e-government is just a group of channels to deliver information and services. What is needed is standards for applications to enable them to be shared across boundaries.

Will a change in government bring that?

2 Comments | e-government, Metrics, transformational change | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator

« Previous Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.