Updated Web Guide released
I’m pleased to announce the release of a revamped and updated Web Guide. The purpose of the Web Guide is to help agencies manage their online presence and understand their relevant legal and policy obligations in this space. The site replaces the previous Web Publishing Guide, which was launched in May 2007. Read more
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Metadata – Part II
There were a few questions from the previous post on the metadata we’re planning on using for the Web Guide, so we thought we’d break it down a little and go into the various decisions we made along the way. Read more
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Data about data – metadata
In the last post, I spoke about the way we are developing the information architecture to ensure that content is easily discoverable, relevant and able to be sliced and diced a number of ways.
But these aren’t the only issues regarding content on the site. In reviewing the focus group information and brainstorming ourselves, we came up with content questions such as:
- I need to drive this policy forward internally. What’s the basis of the compliance rating?
- Is this content still relevant?
- Who do I go to for help on this topic?
- That IA structure we came up with: how are we going to implement it when we don’t have a sophisticated Content Management System (CMS)?
Coming to our aid is, of course, metadata.
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Deliver me the content I need and nothing else or Information Architecture (IA)
One of the issues raised at the focus group we held a while back was that our users want information which is relevant to them. They want to find and make use of it quickly, without barriers. Our stats show us users tend to come with a purpose and want to fulfil it quickly:
“This guide is aiming at a whole bunch of people and one way you could address that is to say ok from a management point of view these are the important chunks, if you’re designing, these are the things that you should be looking at more seriously and if you’re the bunch of people who might be writing these pages then these are the sorts of things you should be across..” – Focus group response
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Behind the blog: Web 2.0 record-keeping and blog comments
We always intended this blog to have a dual purpose. First and foremost, it’s an online engagement tool used to keep in touch with people interested in the redevelopment of the Web Publishing Guide. But, importantly, the blog is also meant to provide lessons and examples about blogging for Australian Government agencies interested in setting up their own blog.
With this second purpose in mind, in this post I’ll look at record-keeping issues involved in managing comments submitted to our blog. Record-keeping may not be the most exciting topic, but it plays a crucial part in making sure that government agencies are accountable to the Australian people. Records provide evidence of agency activity and help create transparency as agencies go about serving the public.
However, as recent US Government policy acknowledged (PDF), and as the Government 2.0 Taskforce said in their final report, there are some issues that agencies need to consider when capturing records generated from third-party Web 2.0 sites and services.
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Behind the blog: what’s in a name?
In 2008, the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) hosted a two week trial blog seeking consultation on “thoughts and ideas about the digital economy”. Over the two weeks ten posts were made, either by a ‘blog team’ or the Minister. The blog attracted over 1500 comments, with a number raising the issue that blogs were supposed to be conversations with individuals and not with a ‘blog team’. Which brings us to an interesting issue. Who should author a blog post? A team? A person? If it is the latter, should they identify themselves fully?
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Content Strategy Development: Aligning an IA with our Site’s (and our Content’s) Purpose
Content on the Web Publishing Guide is designed to assist Australian Government agencies to:
- Identify their legal and policy obligations
- Meet their legal and policy obligations
- Establish, manage and decommission their website(s)
- Apply web-based technologies to achieve their business goals
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Content Strategy Development: Content Schedule
Many of the visitors to this blog would also be aware of the work of the Government 2.0 Taskforce, and the issues they’re attempting to address.
There are some topics that are outside the taskforce’s terms of reference that we are aiming to develop new guidance on in the coming months, including:
- Using third-party hosted web services (APIs, embeddable widgets, etc.)
- Rich Internet Applications (RIA)
- User-generated content
- Web Analytics Standard Metrics
- Mobile web
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Content Strategy Development: Content Audit
Or, as we’ve dubbed it internally, “eating our own dogfood“.
The existing Web Publishing Guide and the associated Better Practice Checklists have plenty of guidance regarding Maintenance, Managing Online Content and Implementing a Content Management System.
Even though we’re not implementing a new CMS (at least not initially), the following activities described in our own guidance have proved to be enormously useful at this stage in the project: Read more
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Blog Post Authoring Processes
At the risk of being overly self-referential, we thought our visitors might benefit from observing the workings behind this blog (even though the blog is offering a chance for visitors to observe the workings behind the project).
As stated on our about page, this blog’s content is produced by several authors from the review team, with posts going out on a semi-regular basis. The style we’re adopting is considerably less formal than what you may find on the Guide, and the blog content review process is slightly less rigourous, requiring a much lower level of sign-off than one would expect for a significant policy addition/modification to the Guide.
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