Al had some interesting experience and innovations to share around communicating quickly information on school closures, road gritting and any affected services.

The group talked about how in a rapidly occurring situation online communication was best placed to deliver information first and respond to any inquiries from the public. Indeed, in some councils the online communicators were delivering information out of hours before press officers and others were even aware of a developing situation.

This way of working was also discussed – online communicators working in isolation are an unsustainable plan for crisis communications. Too often they are left out of the loop and get information too late or not at all meaning the benefits of the online channel are lost.

Al shared his experience of being able to work out of hours with a line to chief officers and the on-duty press officer. He is also involved in emergency planning so the online work can be included in the plan but also he is aware of where the authority is at in terms of response.

The discussion strayed further into the territory of emergency planning bu eventually came back round to how online could be used to gather information into the council as well as disseminate outward. I briefly outlined a change we were planning on making to how headteachers report school closures, using our secure schools’ extranet to which they all have access. Bringing the information in from this source would mean we could repurpose and quickly send out by RSS, by SMS, and across a number of online channels.

We’re not the only council looking to make changes in this area. Along with us there are many others who are looking at making content delivery not just through the online channel but also make it mobile (I blogged about our stats on visits from mobile and other devices during the January snow). From this a discussion on digital inclusion began with differing views across the participants about whether online was a waste of time or not given how few people can access it well. Ally Hook gave some interesting information about the number of people joining the council’s Facebook page when an unexploded WW2 bomb closed parts of the city.

There were a number of interesting points I took away from the session in terms of developing our online communications in the face of a crisis as well as integrating more fully with the council’s general contingency plan. There were some great social web innovations around reporting the uksnow but these ideas could be applied to other situations. It has also helped consolidate the thoughts floating around my head about not just thinking of online as web, or social media, or mobile – it is all of these, none of these and more.

Related posts:

1. So this is Christmas
2. Getting the conversation started
3. Do councils need websites?

In fact it isn’t even quite the question which needs answering. A more appropriate way of phrasing it, as quickly became apparent in the session, is Do Councils Need the Website They Have Right Now?

Councils have huge amounts of services and information which they need to get to residents. They also have tight budgets to meet, lots of requirements from central Government, limited resources but in most cases a big desire to do things right. Having a website helps to meet lots of these requirements with the limitations in place. Or they would, if they were done well.

Lots of people in this session felt that council websites had in lots of cases got a little bit out of control. A sometimes bloated beast hard to control with only the whip of a malfunctioning devolved authorship model. We agreed in the group that an online channel or mix of channels would meet the efficiency savings head on while fulfilling an increasing demand from residents to communicate in this space – if only we could get it working right.

So, councils need websites but how do we build and run the website a council needs?

We discussed a whole range of things but most of the sharing focused on:

• Devolved authorship – a really nice theory but almost no-one has got it working right. I blogged about this separately as it was also the theme of the session I ran later in the day.
• Respect for web teams – the need for organisations to recognise that online is a channel which needs to be run with the same respect as traditional channels, and that respect should also be given to those employed to be experts on how to do that.
• Definition of boundaries – how much of what is online is within the remit of the web team to either run or advise on?

All three of these issues could come under one broad heading – respect and understanding. Where many websites and web teams are struggling is that there are two many cooks for the broth. In most councils at the moment there are a lot of people who have a say in what goes on the website and in what format. Some web teams have more control than others in terms of approving or improving this content before it is published but in some cases there is little control at all.

Compare this to the way that information is published through traditional channels and the service areas have to pass several gate keepers and abide by the advice of the communication professionals in order to get messages out. This allows them to reap the success and benefit from the experience of those professionals.

Online is a different matter though. Vanity publishing and ‘just in case’ publishing (there is no real drive to get this online now but one day someone might want this so I’ll publish it anyway) abound. And while there are lots of good reasons to devolve authorship if it isn’t implemented properly and backed with a workflow approval process it causes more problems than it solves. This can lead to poor content (in terms of accessibility, usability, relevance and currency) and too much of it.

Then there are the bits which aren’t directly part of the website itself – the bolt-ons, the dreaded applications. In one of those moments so typical of a LocalGovCamp that I felt simultaneously glad not to be the only one struggling with this problem and disheartened that the issue was so all-encompassing. Council websites are let down by the applications which make them interactive and transactional. Why? Partly because web teams have no seat at the table when applications are procured and no jurisdiction to have them removed if not improved.

What can be done then? Well, there is the Web Professionals group for a start. Paul Canning did a great job of introducing this to us all and it is a good step toward building that respect for communications and technical professionals specialising in the online space.

Each council also needs to work out how to publish information to the online space (across an increasing number of channels rather than just a website) tapping the knowledge of the service from that area while also utilising the skill of the web team in writing content which is accessible and usable.

Councils do need websites, the cost not to is too great (as Peter Barton explored in his blog a while back), but they need to improve the way they run them and part of that may be admitting there is specialist knowledge involved.

Related posts:

1. Power to the People (reprise)
2. Crisis comms online
3. Social networking for councils

In reality this bit of my history happened in a caravan near Paignton with precisely no members of Blur present. So what am I rambling on about? Well, the first time I got a text message to my mobile phone of course.

I’d been given a mobile for my birthday back in 1997. I was the only one of my friends to have one. It was massive. And clunky. And I was only supposed to use it in an emergency. It made me feel very jet set.

It was a full year before I got a text message though. I had to wait for someone else I knew to get a phone first. The great event happened while on the annual holiday on the English Riviera with my best mate and her family. The brick of a phone made a strange noise. There was an odd message about ‘Incoming SMS‘ on the screen. I was excited but also already planning how I could break the news to Bill Payer (my dad) that the phone had spontaneously broken itself.

Anyway, with friend peering over shoulder we accessed the message. It looked like it had come from a phone number abroad. This was getting more exciting and mysterious. What did it say?

Well, something along the lines of ‘Thinking of You!” It might have been miss you. I don’t think it was as profound as love you. The memory of the message is lost in the excitement of the thing.

It was the cause of much discussion and exploration of possibilities as we mooched about in rock pools and got ready for karaoke at the on-site pub (we did Relight My Fire if you’re interested). My wild imagination was abruptly harnessed when the boyfriend-of-the-time called that evening and asked ‘did you get my message?’. This was still wonderful – we were / are both geeks and he’d found a new gadget-type activity. It wasn’t as exciting as the story I had built up which was near to last night’s dream about Mr Coxon and the library of the naval destroyer.

But that was it. The first SMS. And now, somedays, I send and receive up to 50. There are some people I only really communicate with by text. I certainly text more than I use my mobile to call. It’s everyday. In 10 years it has gone from being the alien to natural. Then I thought my phone was broken because it was trying to show me a message, now I think it is broken if I don’t get one. That quick transition into everyday life and parlance is yet another reason why I am in awe of online, and in this case mobile, communication.

Anyone else remember the first time they got a text? Or would you rather share a weirder dream than mine? And Graham, we really need to switch to the Dewey decimal system because a lot of the problems we are having on board are because we’ve created a totally mental categorisation scheme (but the thing we were asked for was in Archive 2 – you’d disappeared from the dream when I found it).

(Aside: This is the second night running a blog post has come to me in a dream. What is wrong with me?)

Related posts:

1. History: Part Three: Oracle vs Community
2. History: Part two: Or private thoughts in public spaces.
3. History: Part One