London Councils using the Web to engage with the public
I’m probably a little late in writing this post but what the hell, better late than never. I’ve been invited to give a presentation to a room packed with heads of local councils in London. No, I don’t mean heads without bodies.
The subject matter is ‘how to better engage with the public through the Web’.
When delivering a keynote, I tend to focus on no more than 2 messages. Less is more. That is, fewer messages will increase the likelihood of people remembering.
I intend to cover general accessibility, Web accessibility and blogs, but would like to solicit your feedback.
Accessibility
- Make local council staff more accessible. This can be achieved by putting names and contact details for every service that Councils offer the public.
- Make it easy for disabled users to access the same information as everyone else. This can be achieved by making sure their Web sites are designed and built with best practice techniques in mind. The W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the defacto guidelines used to help developers build accessible Web sites.
- Make their content more discoverable for search engines so when users can find reliable and relevant content when searching for local information. This also covers internal search. This is automatically achieved when Web sites have incorporated Web accessibility best practice.
Blogs
I intend to explain the benefits of blogs. My aim is to demonstrate the importance of being more interactive and engaging with the end user. It’s important for end users feel that Web site owners care about them. So, whilst I don’t think every organisation should necessarily have a blog, I do think it’s important for them to understand the importance of putting the end user first, by constantly improving what and how it delivers products and services based on their feedback.
Having said that, perhaps local councils should have blogs where nominated staff talk about bullying, drugs, pregnancy etc. as well as talk about local initiatives.
What do you think? I do realise it might be too late to get feedback but I’d appreciate last minute comments as I tend to change my presentations on the fly based on listeners responses (or sometimes lack of).
3 Responses to “London Councils using the Web to engage with the public”
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Be interesting 2c who is involved in this (councils) and then follow-up with them in 3-6 months and c how far they have advanced.
good 2c them take some initiative but without true intentions (and work) and resources (money and good staff) I’ll be surprised if it works. However for those (few) that can make it work should show the others how 2 do it and follow.
Best of luck on this
I think that British councils have to take this very seriously as they are compelled to by law (1995 DDA act). If they don’t put measures in place they are opening themselves up for litigation.
One approach may be to get them (the councils) to do a five point plan that will take them into the next three to six months.
Conduct an assessment.
Put together a strategy
Highlight the “easy wins”
Highlight changes requiring greater resource levels.
and then ..
implement.
[...] I wrote a post in March about a workshop I was invited to by e-Envoy. The Office of the e-Envoy (OeE) was set up in September 1999 as part of the Cabinet Office, and is headed by Andrew Pinder who was appointed e-Envoy in January 2001. The OeE has responsibilities across the whole e-agenda, notably e-commerce and e-government. [...]