This was the question posed by Peter McClymont for his LocalGovCamp Lincoln session and the answer may not be as easy to come by as you think, even when presented to a room of council webbies.
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.
Good stuff. Have you thought of cross-posting? Pointing PSF at this?
For readers info I talk about the Public Sector Web Professionals Group developments here http://paulcanning.blogspot.com/2009/10/public-sector-web-professionals-wheres.html
Thanks Paul – I’ve added the link into the text as well now so people should find their way there!
PSF have been in touch so we’ll see what happens. Thanks for the suggestion – not very good at flagging my stuff up with them, unless they pick it up through Twitter or RSS!
Excellent post (again!) Sarah. A lot of familiar themes and concerns! We definitely need to find a way to curb the ‘just in case’ publishing you talk about.
Sarah,
You said…
“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.”
I believe there should be a specialist knowledge. In fact in another blog entitled “who runs your web site” I discuss the misplacing of the web element in local government under either of those two false standards of Comms or IT. There is a need for an alternative intelligent other. One that is not pulled in the direction of either of those two groups.
You can see it here if you have not caught it online in psf etc…
http://thewaistline.blogspot.com/2009/08/managing-digital-stream.html
Michele – thanks for your comments and glad you found the post useful.
It seems increasingly likely that I’ll be looking at authorship models as my dissertation topic next year. I’ve found so many people are having the same problems and trying to find a way through them that some formal research (and hopefully a suggested solution) would be a good idea!
I’m sure I’ll be posting more on the topic in the coming weeks / month / year!
Hi Peter – thanks for your comment – definitely very useful, interesting and relevant to this topic.
I did see the article you post a link to in your comment and am in general agreeance with the points you make. It’s a shame we ran out of time in the #lgclincoln session otherwise I am sure the question of who runs the website would have naturally flowed from some of the other areas we explored.
As I replied in my comment to Michele it looks as if I’ll be looking at the topic of authorship models and responsibility for the website as my dissertation topic (MA eCommunications) and it would be great to be able to contact you as part of that research to talk more.
I’d suggest to anyone who didn’t catch the Managing the Digital Stream article Peter links to they go and read it now – great post.
You could go further in the theme of your title along the lines of this (right wing/libertarian paper) government data and the invisible hand.
http://www.yjolt.org/files/robinson-11-YJOLT-draft.pdf
There is an interesting opportunity for public sector bodies to give up on traditional websites and move over to a simple website in wordpress.com for the vast majority of their content. Applications being hosted by their providers behind buttons (which is often what happens anayway).