Web (ab)users

April 15, 2010

A report on the Webcredible site should give us food for thought, if we hadn’t thought about it already. Even more so, it possibly explains a lot of user behaviour across different channels, so there is no need to employ it in the single context of the web.

Some of the key user experiences described in the report – word-blindness, tunnel-vision, impatience and habitual behaviour, all lead to unexpected user performance when using web sites. So what do you do? Obviously there is a need to get it tested by real people and allow real people to feedback any concerns.

Where does this apply to other channels? Get any forms proof read by potential users and employ potential users to test telephone messages or processes. A recent rail journey with a blind consultant confirmed this in other ways, Graham preferred to use the term “usability” testing rather than “accessibility”, since he felt that if a blind person like himself could find their way around a service, most should be able to. So lets have more usability testing on services and processes.

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

The twittering parties

April 11, 2010

There are two new reports from the Hansard Society on the hot topic of the Internet and politics. The first is a modest three page ”digital paper” entitled ”Politicians get their clicks“ by Dr Andy Williamson which challenges the assumption that the Internet will make a similar difference in the UK elections, as it was claimed occurred in the U.S. The second, at 64 pages, is named ”Behind the digital campaign“, and largely supports this, with the tag line that in the UK “parties are digital followers not leaders.”

These rather contrast with a separate study from Sitemorse and Alterian which aligns political party web sites with their claims about the Internet. In fact it’s more a review of the party web sites and government web sites, as assessed by Sitemorse. I suppose it does analyze and attempt to compare the amount of effort that the mainstream political groups have put into their sites. In contrast, the Hansard Society reports recognize that the web sites may probably be less important than the energy they employ in maintaining sophisticated back office systems of supporters and potentials voters.

Sitemorse’s distraction with government web sites may assume that politicians have some control over Whitehall web sites, but personally I remain sceptical. The main recent, and continuing, drive has been a cull of the excessive number of them, as identified in the operational efficiency programme, which does seem to be working and, as the report flags up, brings direct.gov to the top.

Can I suggest a random survey in the street asking how many citizens actually look at a political party or politicians web site? Politicians may be relevant in community and local politics, but less so in distant Parliament. I also probably share concerns about digital exclusion and remain confident that pushing leaflets through letter boxes and generally door-stepping will occupy the parties most.

2 Comments | e-government, engagement | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator

Be my muse

April 8, 2010

It didn’t take long! Ann Macintosh and colleagues beaver away at software to analyse social media for insights that might influence government policy, and now Big Blue (aka IBM) have developed a tool to suggest blog topics to writers from their potential readership…

No, I’m not making it up! The MIT Technology Review doesn’t normally run to the wacky stories sometimes found in The Register. In the 9 March 2010 edition was a story by Erica Naone entitled “Software tells Bloggers What Readers Want“. The results are even due to be presented at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

So, if the muse has left you and you are feeling bereft of words, always remember It’s Better Manually and buy Blog Muse!

It may sometimes appear that I have a slightly negative approach to the government use of social media, to disabuse such rumours I am presenting a paper next week at Ethicomp 2010 on its use in academic research into information systems. To further put off such rumours I would like to point out the excellent set of resources on Gov 2.0 Steve Radick has posted in Australia. In the way of the Internet, I was made aware of this by Jacques Raybaut who runs the useful en.europa-eu-audience news broadcast.

Leave a Comment » | Social media | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
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Staring across the pond

April 7, 2010

On Federal News Radio (1500 AM) on the 17 March 2010 was a report on the US federal Chief Information Officer’s (Vivek Kundra) new approach. A lot of what is stated resonates with my research in the UK, along with what I hear on a daily basis. 

There is a big investment in IT in Kundra’s department, $35 million, which is apparently more than it got over the last seven years in total! It looks like it’s a focused spend on making those citizen services that will be used electronically to be made so.

There is also a move against silos, with data consolidation and cloud computing being high on the agenda, along with the piloting of various and increasing the number of datasets on open.gov to more than 250,000.

As has been stated, our own newly laid out Government IT Strategy is not very far off the US one, but what will be interesting on both sides of the Atlantic is how those silos will be broken down, since both accept that “webifying” silos is wasted money.

This also runs very parallel with Michael Cross’s latest piece in the Guardian which also strongly resonates with the sentiments I have frequently and quite recently expressed in posts here. Unfortunately, after years of spending, the Treasury want some money back, and whilst central government will probably continue to swallow large quantities of cash (no matter which government gets in) local authorities will be scratching around, now that the e-government cash has gone.

2 Comments | e-government, transformational change | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
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NI14 is dead, long live parsimony!

April 4, 2010

Having announced the departure of NI14, the question entered my head what happens to monitoring “failure demand“? If authorities were at least trying to track usage on channels and report back to services where they were failing, the measure (NI14) may have had some value, no matter how overcooked it was!

Instead, we now possibly have a vacuum in the understanding of multiple and cross-channel service delivery.

So, what to do? Well the last three years or more of my research have resulted in this model:

indicating that a suitable way of monitoring channel shift, improving channel shift and possibly improving service across all channels is to record usage and (dis)satisfaction across ALL citizen channels. It’s no use picking on one channel, you have no way of knowing where the variation occurs.

anybody thinking about this might consider one of the tools on my Company table V8 or develop something similar of their own, but if they want to manage channel shift, along with improving service delivery, they should consider employing what I continue to call Citizen Engagement Management ( a tool to understand how citizens respond across multiple channels to how services are attempted to be delivered).

1 Comment | citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, Metrics, NI 14, NI14, Systems thinking | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator

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