Web guide – June project update
We’ve been fairly busy in the past month. You’ve seen some of the work we’ve been discussing on the blog regarding information architecture, metadata and content, as well as our current thinking on blogging itself.
But behind the scenes, we’ve been working on yet other areas. Read more
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.
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?
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
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
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.
