Today’s Links

January 8, 2013 · Posted in tickled me fancy · Comment 

Things I’ve been reading

Just ‘cos I read it, don’t mean I liked it.

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In love and money, it’s best to say sorry…

November 16, 2012 · Posted in bee in my bonnet, communications, community engagement, socialmedia · Comment 

Colette Sales

I recently read an article by Charles Saatchi in the Evening Standard (afraid I can’t find a link to the article) in which he claims that men find it terribly hard to say sorry (while women don’t) and that if you want to have a satisfactory and perhaps even blissful home life, it’s best to say sorry.  He claims that there are six necessary elements to an apology and that you better “kitchen sink” it and throw them all in.

The necessary elements are:

  1. Acknowledging the wrongful act
  2. Acknowledge the hurt feelings
  3. Express remorse
  4. State your intention not to re-offend.
  5. Offer to make amends
  6. Seek forgiveness

He also warns agains the dreadful non-apology language: “I’m sorry that you’re upset,” or “I’m sorry if you feel that way.”   Absolutely! Anyone’s who’s ever received one of these non-apologies knows just how patronising and infuriating they are.

I don’t agree that you should ever throw in all of these approaches. And there’s a good reason for that, people hear apologies in different ways. On a personal level, I absolutely despise Number 6.  If someone asks me for forgiveness, I always feel like the apologiser is wanting me to make them feel better after having just injured me.  But for other people, it’s an important signifier that they recognise they’ve done wrong and wish to repair the relationship.

There’s a great exposition of these different apology styles called The Five Languages of Apology.

  • Expressing regret
  • Accepting responsibility
  • Making restitution
  • Genuinely repenting
  • Requesting forgiveness.

Like the Saatchi article, it’s designed for personal relationships, but there are important lessons here for any relationship.  Perhaps particularly customer service relationships. Things do go wrong in providing services, acknowledging that wrong and putting things right is a great way to ensure that wronged customers stay customers.  (Oh and you can take a quiz to find out what your apology language is and more importantly ask your partner to take the quiz, too)

Examples of customer service apologies and non-apologies:

The Bad Apple:  Apple Apologises for Maps: Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO apologised for the poor quality of their maps function which was included in an iPhone operating system update.  They acknowledged that it wasn’t good enough and said: We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better.  Note that Apple didn’t use language like “we are sorry for any inconvenience you may experienced”. They acknowledged that, yes, people were put out by not being able to find out where they were going.  They also offered some alternative solutions from their competitors with links to instructions about how to do that.  Note also that The Register reports that another Apple executive was forced out because he wouldn’t say sorry and sign his name to the letter. (And they weren’t so good at apologising to Samsung.)

High Volume Customer Services:  In a high volume and complex service industry like airlines, thing can and do go wrong. Delta Airline’s @DeltaAssist Twitter account is full of apologies.  But also offers to make things right and to help out where they can.

 

The social media disaster:  During one of the Obama-Romney debates, President Obama told a story which included the fact that his grandmother died three days before he was elected.  Someone manning the @KitchenAidUSA twitter account then made a tasteless joke about her death.  The tweet was deleted but not before it got significant media attention in the US and many, many re-tweets. But on the plus side, KitchenAid’s Head of Marketing Cynthia Soledad apologised immediately, said that person wouldn’t be tweeting from that account again but also took responsibility. She also proactively contacted reporters to say that she was willing to talk on the record about the incident.  Obviously this should have never happened, but it did and KitchenAid responded quickly and well.  (More here from Ragan’s PR Daily)

Consistent non-apologies:  The NHS. Although I’ve received some really great care from the NHS, I have also received some really dire care and verbal abuse (shouting, swearing and bullying) from a nurse/midwife in the post partum ward after three days of labour and an emergency c-section.  I was left shaking in terror. I complained.  After over a year chasing the complaint through the patient liaison service and intervention from Health Services Ombudsman I finally got a non-apology “I’m sorry you feel you were shouted at.”  The Health Services Ombudsman has criticised the NHS for a culture of non-apology.  Mistakes happen, people snap, but adding a bureaucratic grind and a non-apology adds injury to injury. It also increases cost. Many people, including myself, would have been satisfied with a sincere apology early on – thus avoiding the cost of further complaint procedures and missing the opportunity to improve “customer” care. There’s evidence from America that saying sorry for medical errors can reduce litigation costs and payouts. I’ve also heard a similar tale of non-apologies generating higher levels of complaints from a former Local Government Ombudsman worker.

The opportunistic apology: OK, this is a joke, but it’s brilliant. When a male customer complained on Bodyform’s Facebook page about periods not being so happy, the maker of a female hygiene products crafted this brilliant faux apology. Total respect.

Just say it

Whether you’re an individual, a company or a public service – being willing to take responsibility and apologising when you’re wrong is an important part of maintaining an healthy relationship: personal, civic or commercial.  It’s not easy, but it’s better than leaving people angry and wounded or losing existing or potential customers.

 

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Swedish Lessons: 12 key points for tech enabled participative democracy

November 10, 2012 · Posted in communications, community engagement, innovation, socialmedia · Comment 

Stockholm Town Hall

Back in May, I participated in the Swedish Association of Local Authorities summit on digital participation.  I was in some very fine company…  We brought experience from around the world and listened to some of the key challenges Sweden is facing. I have to give them some massive credit for identifying problems on the horizon and wanting to innovate, to ‘fix’ the system before it becomes ‘broken’.

These are some of the key points from the summit.  But you can see the more subtle analysis and reflection, as well as all the participants’ essays on the subject here:

  1. Strategies for effective engagement are necessary. It’s important to be; credible, consistent, responsive, integrated and transparent.
  2. New forms of participation have some differences from our traditional democratic structures and processes; they are open, personalised, direct and immediate. Understand those differences, how they affect communication style between citizens, institutions and politicians.
  3. Be yourself, remain authentic and be honest about your weaknesses and mistakes.
  4. Target your audience proactively, don’t assume they will be interested and come to you or your platform.
  5. Examine forms of participation which are growing and ask whether these can be used to reconnect citizens to formal decision making.
  6. Exploring more direct forms of communication between citizens and elected representatives can also help to bring the gap between old and new ways of working.  This can be done without the need to do anything other than change the approach taken when training politicians.  (i.e. this is not a replacement for representative democracy, but a way to augment it)
  7. We need to reframe the debate about the use of tech in government as a cultural and social rather than technological. This allows us to address some of the fundamental structural and behavioural issues which inhibit the effective use of technology in Government.
  8. “Doing digital” without thinking about the right approach and the objectives is oversimplified and undifferentiated. Government and public authorities need to think about whom they are working with and select the right tools.
  9. In some cases, for example, anonymity can be extremely important; in others, it can be a barrier to
  10. Keep the voice of citizens at the center of your work and invest in strategies with civil society that continues to build this.
  11. You may need to give minority voices more specific consideration.  It is crucial to see that the voices of those on the fringe of society are brought into the conversation. This task is shared with civil society and grassroot movements and initiatives.
  12. It is also important to have a clear strategy for community engagement which recognises that it is the long term journey that moves from information sharing, through consultation to dialogue and partnership working. A good democratic experience is one where you are happy that the outcome is fair even if it isn’t your preferred outcome.

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10 design gaps in my life

October 26, 2012 · Posted in bee in my bonnet, musings · 2 Comments 

 

Do the elastic shoe laces work? I’m afraid not.

I’m currently enrolled in a Coursera design class – Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society. The Coursera concept is pretty cool. They offer free short courses on a whole range of subjects that are taught by leading academics in their field. Everything from algebra to…I wanted to say zoology, but I didn’t actually see a course on that.

One of the first assignments is to identify 10 design gaps in my everyday life.  The internet is built on cats and lists of 10, so I thought I’d go ahead and post here.

1. Shoelaces. My son can’t tie his shoes. I could blame the parents for failing to teach him, but I’d rather blame the proliferation of velcro closures on shoes. All shoes except for rugby/football boots. I put elastic laces on his shoes, but they just turned out to be a frayed mess. There has to be an easier way.

2. Insufficient rugby information. As a new fan I’m hungry for more. I want push notifications. I want full premiership and international rugby schedules and results. I want info on where I can watch or listen to games. I can get this for my college football team, but not for rugby.

3. Things to do. Yes, there are things-to-do apps. I’ve got a high energy boy. I want to know where I can take him – either free playgrounds, pay-to-play, swimming, special activities. I would pay to get this information.

4. In terms of services, I would like an unstructured play area to take my son to. Pay-to-play places are expensive. Sometimes, particularly on rainy weekend days, I’d just like to have a big gym that I could take my son and maybe one of his friend and just let him run around and maybe play with balls.  I know there are spaces around where I live. Church halls, school halls and even in my gym.

5. I love my electronic key fob for locking and un-locking my car doors. In absent-minded moments, I occasionally find myself aiming it at my front door. Wouldn’t it be cool if I could electronically unlock my front door, especially when I have hands full of groceries?

6. I’m still on the hunt for the perfect hoodie.  I need one which is a good masking color, I invariably spill coffee on mine. Charcoal grey would be awesome. It should be long enough to provide good coverage and warm enough for standing around the rugby pitch. It needs to zip and have generous pockets. Ideally it will carry a small, cool emblem or logo – but it won’t advertise someone else’s brand.

7. Easy-peasy donation-stations.  I love the idea of the Marks & Spencers campaign/ service Plan A  which lets you bring in clothes for donation and even provides a money off voucher if you also make a purchase on the same day.  But I never think to bring my stuff as I don’t shop their often. It would be awesome if something like this were offered at a grocery store I often shop in.

8. A Southern Accent app.  I’ve always had a variable Southern accent despite being raised in Tennessee. And then at University I totally lost it, even though I went to school in state. There are apps in the App Store for losing or softening your Southern accent, but not for recovering or gaining one. Can I say, “Market failure, y’all”?

9.  Broken jewellery. I have necklaces with broken clasps. Yes, I could take them to a jeweller, but that’s expensive. I want a cheap secure ‘thingy’ to help me wear broken necklaces again.

10.  Reward charts.  So many reward charts out there, but they’re all so uninteresting. They’re either ugly or cutesie, certainly nothing I’d hang up in my house. Online reward charts (apps) that I’ve looked at aren’t customisable enough and it would be kind of awesome if I could link a reward chart app to an allowance manager app. There are already some cool allowance manager apps.

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What is social media friendly?

October 11, 2012 · Posted in community engagement, socialmedia · 5 Comments 

Recently the Local Government Association produced a sort of kite mark for councils wishing to proclaim themselves social media friendly.  My first reaction was “That’s good. This is big stuff. Glad to see they’re taking this seriously.”

But my second reaction was “What does that even mean?”

My third reaction was to read the guidance and then to be even more puzzled still.

  • Any local authority can use the mark.
  • It is being implemented via a trust system that expects local authorities using the mark to believe in its ethos; ie are committed to the use of social media.

and from the press release:

The mark can be affixed to websites, meeting agendas and the other publications, letters and pamphlets councils send to residents, to advise people of their local authority’s commitment to social media reporting. It can also indicate the availability of wi-fi in public buildings for live tweeting, blogging and taking and uploading photos.

This feels dreadfully gimmicky. I’ve got nothing against a good gimmick; it’s eye-catching and a powerful communication tool. But I suspect that no ‘social media friendly’ mark on a website is nearly as powerful as having these far more familiar marks on your webpage or literature.

And frankly – anyone who’s digital savvy at all doesn’t really need permission to Tweet or take pictures in a public space.

Perhaps more importantly, a social media friendly mark should be a sign that a council really is social media friendly.

Here’s how you’d know:

From the outside:

  1. Social media is used in a friendly and engaging way. It’s not just a broadcast from the Town Hall, but a space for communication between council and citizen.
  2. The council takes all digital interaction seriously. From paying council tax to reporting complaints to finding out about local events and resources, there are easy low-friction ways to engage with the council online.
  3. There’s some actual evidence that the council wants to hear from citizens through social platforms. Maybe they’re using a cool deliberation tool for real policy co-production or maybe they’re using local digital images for citizens
  4. There isn’t just one way to access the council through social platforms.  But you can engage directly with the services you use and each has a different and suitable feel.
  5. Paper literature, posters, etc have URLs and social accounts where you can follow up or get more information.

From the inside:

  1. Social media sites aren’t blocked for employees or at least there is a generally permissive approach with clear guidelines about who can and can’t access social sites from work for work as part of clear, simple social media policy.
  2. There is a federated approach to communications. It isn’t solely owned by a Comms team, but the Comms team supports and oversees social media communications.
  3. Social tools are used for internal communications. The intranet isn’t simply some software but an approach to sharing knowledge and information between teams and individuals.
  4. Managerial and political leaders demonstrate that they hear and respond to what staff and the public communicate to them through social media.
  5. There’s a clear digital communications strategy and services and staff know where they fit in it.
So in other words, not just ‘social media friendly’ but a truly social organisation. Just what councils and frankly many other public and private sector organisations that work with people should be.

But well done LGA for encouraging councils to think about what it means to be social media friendly and encouraging the debate.  Recent campaigns like #ourday encouraging people who work in councils to share their day through Twitter gives me some hope that this may be more than a gimmick.

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Social media the rugby way: or Come On You Quins

October 9, 2012 · Posted in socialmedia, sport · 3 Comments 

DO YOU RUGBY? Alexandre Estanislau via Compfight

I’ve been thinking a lot about social customer relationship management lately – and what better example of a business that really needs to turn customers into fans and advocates than a sports team?

I’m a new rugby fan. Being American, my only experience of the game was random exposure to university rugby club members in the bars of Knoxville.  They did not always conduct themselves as gentlemen.  However, since starting my son in rugby, I’m developing a love for the game and decided to choose a premiership team as well as a local club. So, after doing some research on stadium distance, I picked Harlequins based solely on ease of travel to home games.  I didn’t even know they are the reigning Aviva Premiership Champions.

The initiation

The Quins social strategy has a couple of key elements for turning a casual customer (like me) into a fan. My first game was a trial effort: was it easy to get to, was it a good atmosphere, and frankly could I be engaged in the action for 80+ minutes?

To buy tickets I didn’t have to register on the site, but I could choose tickets more easily if I did. So they easily collected a significant amount of my personal data. Not only that but the process encouraged me to register my son as well, as I was taking him with me. Now they know quite a bit about me including the age of my child.

In advance of the game I received some emails about my ticket order. But they missed a trick in not linking me directly to their Twitter account and Facebook page. Sometimes these are included in emails, sometimes not.

My first match was a great experience if not a great game (Harlequins pumelled London Welsh 40-3). I had some minor trouble getting into the stadium, but was helpfully directed to another ticket gate before I joined a lengthy queue. The next day I received an apology by email about the experience. A really nice touch!

I’ve continued to get emails at just the right frequency. Not so much that I want to unsubscribe, not so few that I feel forgotten. I’ve since been to another game as a result of a direct email to me and brought two people with me.  Post game I immediately got another email thanking me for my support and asking me about my experience at the stadium. My son even got an email asking him to join in a rugby training camp. He’s a year too young, but because I’m involved at a local club, I forwarded it on to an appropriate age group which then reached 35 more families.

But I want more. And I have a lot of catching up to do.

1) I don’t know that much about rugby, really.

2) I need a rapid induction into the traditions and culture of the Quins.

And a better social presence would help me get closer.

Sports and social: a natural partnership

People love their teams. They love the experience and even the ups and downs.  There’s nothing more bonding to fans than a losing season.  But teams need to make money. Social media can be a big part of getting fans to stadiums, buying stuff and ensuring sponsors get bang for their buck.

And it’s not like widget selling where you have to work hard to come up with content.  Sporting teams already have great content.  Video highlights, player interviews. Player pictures. Words of wisdom from the coach.  Fans eat that stuff up.  And fans like to see other fans having a great time at games, at the bar afterward, wearing team colours and shaving insignia into their hair and dressing their toddlers as mini-players.  Premiership rugby teams are already pretty good at sharing team content, but none of them are particularly cracking at being a node for fan created content. (London Wasps come pretty close with consistent retweeting of fan pics).

Great content is already there for the taking and the sharing.  And I’d love to get closer to my new team and my fellow fans through social media.

Social networks:

The Quins have a pretty good presence on social media. But although they’re near the top of the premiership table, they’re decidedly mid-ranking when it comes to social media.

Followership of rugby premiership clubs at 8 Oct 2012

 

 

Of course, numbers certainly don’t tell the whole story.  But Leicester Tigers at the top of the table have a really nice interactive style on Twitter with lots of retweeting of fans and some relatively decent coverage of games.  Their Facebook page is far and away the most popular in the Premiership and just about every post drips with fan comments by the dozen.  Plus they actually interact with fans on the page. They’ve got the tone pretty much right.

The Exeter Chiefs, though sitting in the bottom third, definitely deserve an honourable mention for their approach to Twitter. They even use a super fan to cover home games online which I thought was so good I put it in my case example blog.

And although I’ve stacked the teams up against each other, in this case it’s really not a competition. Great engagement by one club is good for rugby overall.

LinkedIn

As someone looking for work, I’m always having a look around for networking opportunities.  The Quins have started a series of  face-to-face networking events: Quins Means Business.  But to be honest, I’m probably not likely to pay the money to go unless I have a better feel for what happens at these events. My natural inclination was to look on LinkedIn to see if there was already a networking group and what kind of people were in it. Unfortunately there wasn’t one.

Other rugby clubs do have a LinkedIn presence, but few appear to be making good use. (It’s hard to do a comparison as some are private). Some clubs have fan-started groups – some of which are quite large like Leicester Tigers with 725 members and Northampton Saints with 456, but there doesn’t appear to be much interaction from the clubs themselves. Some teams seem to be using their LinkedIn group more as a marketing opportunity for corporate hospitality. It’s absolutely fine to slip that in, but for a LinkedIn group to work it needs to focus on mutual benefits to members – and those groups are unsurprisingly moribund.

Five tips for better social media in rugby

1. Find the rugby voice. As someone who comes from a sporting tradition of hate and rival fan baiting, I’ve been amazed by the convivial atmosphere at every level of rugby I’ve been exposed to so far. The friendliness among and between fans is something that should come through every social posting by clubs. Too many club postings feel a bit corporate.  That being said, rugby is a bit blokey and beery. Revel in it without hitting the gutter. A fine line to tread, I know.

2. Help your fans share their love of rugby.  There needs to be more shareable content, including video.  Clubs need to not miss an opportunity of helping people find their accounts; one club didn’t even have links on their main website.  Some clubs aren’t using YouTube to its full advantage.  Not enough clubs are celebrating their fans and their content.  And I’m not seeing enough celebration of community rugby, a shame since the hands-on reach of rugby across all levels of play is one of the great things about this sport.

3. Be helpful. Use social accounts to help your fans enjoy matches even if they can’t be there. Provide links to video and audio coverage of games. If there’s a customer service issue, respond.  The Quins shop was shut this weekend for stock taking. Yes, it was posted on Facebook, but when people complained there was no response from the club, which isn’t consistent with the Quins general approach to customer service. A perfect opportunity to direct people to the online shop.

4. Be open and responsive and follow social media conventions.  Several clubs aren’t following many other accounts on Twitter. One club follows none.  And although there is some retweeting of fans, there’s little visible interaction between club accounts and fans. When there is it’s a tweet which begins with an @reply most fans won’t see it. I’m also not seeing enough use of hashtags by clubs to help fans follow conversations about their teams.

5. Look outside the sport of rugby for best practice.  Look at who’s being lauded for their social media.  Although the approach of LA Kings hockey team is inappropriate for English rugby, similar outside-the-box thinking could go down well. Look at consumer brands like Cadburys or Innocent (maybe a bit too wacky) or my favourite: SunDrop, a regional soda brand which has a fanatical following.

And I know I’ve been a bit critical, but I really am doing this from a place of love.  Blokey, beery love.

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Re-socialising

September 26, 2012 · Posted in musings · 1 Comment 

I’ve been on a break

So during my self-imposed bit of time off from the world of work, I’ve been a little less social, not blogging much and not much on Twitter. Other than a fabulous workshop in Sweden looking at their local engagement issues with some amazing experts, I’ve done almost no work since February this year. Of course, looking after a five year old boy isn’t exactly no work, but you know what I mean. (Oh, and I also completed a Bikram Yoga 30 day challenge and ran a 5k and am doing some volunteering down the local rugby club)
I asked him to look like a Swedish prisoner

But it’s time to get back to the real world and get a real job with some real money. And while I wasn’t working, I was doing some thinking. I’m thinking that it’s time to move away from government and into the private sector.  I’d like to start working with businesses, helping them to use social media to engage with their staff, their stakeholders and their customers more effectively.

Part of this desire to move away from the public sector is born from frustration. I was getting sick of the pace. Yes, I know things are moving now, but they’re still moving slowly and sometimes in the wrong direction. Many public sector organisations aren’t seizing the opportunity of crisis to radically re-think how they’re working with citizens to serve citizens. And that’s a shame.  Maybe I’ll go back to public service one day. I’d like to. Democracy means a lot to me.

So I’d like to use my (frankly pretty cracking) knowledge of how people network online and in the real world to make a difference in business. The public sector has been an excellent place to hone my skills. It’s complex, it’s challenging and it really matters.

Getting back to it

So to mark my re-entry into the social world I’ve been volunteering at Social Media Week London and I have the best job of the bunch, running around, tweeting events, taking a few photos. This means I’ve been able to take in a whole range of great events.  I’ve been focusing on events which blur the line between engagement inside and outside the organisation. Staff and stakeholders as advocates and sometimes change agents.  Over the next few days, I’ll start blogging on some of the things I’ve learned and sometimes even on their applications to government.

Give us a job

Oh and if you know of anything going, drop me a line.

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The Swedish engagement

May 17, 2012 · Posted in Local by social, socialmedia · 1 Comment 

I’ve been feeling pretty cynical lately about change in government. Here we are with the biggest financial train wreck in the post-war period, this is the moment to seize change and alter the way we do business. But this isn’t what’s happening. I get that. Change is hard. And change is particularly hard when it challenges your fundamental beliefs about the role of the citizen and the state.

So when I was invited by the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions to participate in a digital engagement summit, I was excited by the prospect of a visit to Stockholm but less optimistic about the potential to deliver transformative change.

In Sweden, things are still pretty plum. The state does a lot for its citizens. They seem pretty happy with life, smug even? And I have to admit, things look pretty nice. Everything’s well maintained. Allotments in the UK look like shanty-towns, frankly an eyesore. In Sweden the gardens look like little slices of heaven, veggies interplanted with fruiting trees and flowers.  The sheds are habitable, at least in warmer weather, and you can see that people hang out there and enjoy nature.

But the Swedes are concerned about direct participation with local democracy. And congratulations to them for recognising the fundamental intrinsic value of local democracy and being concerned about things like this before the problems get too great (aging population, declining tax base, immigration, education – plenty of problems round the bend). And congrats to them as well for bringing people with expertise and experience in online engagement from around the world together for a summit to talk about these issues.

Challenges

On the bad side the Swedes were in search of a solution without being ‘problem-focused’. Too often I saw this in my  own work with local government. We need an app, we need a tool, we need more engagement…whatever it is we need a thing. Solutions aren’t worth much without a problem.

They were also too focused on the e-democracy, forgetting the democracy. No blame – this is something I’ve been guilty of myself. Start with what you’re already doing to engage with people and augment with digital – or in other cases and with some communities – start with digital and augment with face to face.

And finally, they had some cultural blindness issues. We ALL have this. Kudos to them for recognising this and bringing in people from outside. This takes incredible courage. Their civil society has been crowded out by an all encompassing state. A networked society relies on networks. Networks which are resilient enough to take on some of the tough tasks like elder care in your own neighbourhood and making hard decisions about where resources should go.

Commonalities

It was great working with people from across Europe and wider and it was great to finally meet people like Tiago Peixoto who was doing amazing things with professional networks online in Facebook (almost?) before anyone else as well as his expertise on participatory budgeting.

Despite everyone being invited for their expertise on e-engagement, there was so little focus on specific tools of social media. There was far more emphasis on organisational culture and development, the role of local politicians and the role and responsibility of active citizens.

But it was also fantastic to see that others were feeling cynical, too. That it isn’t just me. That things aren’t moving as fast as they could or indeed should.  The E-participation summit provided a energising spark for most of us and I hope it helps light a fire in Swedish local government, too.

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Other posts about this event: An idea like IKEA: e-collaboration and Swedish design from Matt Poelmans – which has a bit more about the structure of the summit – something well worth emulating!

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Building perfectly open websites

July 14, 2011 · Posted in customer insight, data, socialmedia, tech geekery · Comment 

Today I spoke at a SOCITM conference on Building Perfect Council Wesbsites.  The title’s a bit funny, I think. Perfection is an impossible goal. But the great thing about the web is that you can keep on perfecting.  Maybe they should have called the event building better and even better websites, but I suppose that sounds lame.

In the morning we heard from Chris Chant, Director of Digital at the Cabinet Office,  about being digital by default, about how we need to think about the user experience from the beginning to end and how we can reflect that improved service design through the online experience.

Then we heard about the rise of the app. For me, I’m unconvinced. I love my apps, I do. But I’d rather see a more ‘perfect’ mobile web experience – unless it’s an action I often repeat (like flinging a bird into some pigs!)  or a website I visit all the time which makes my experience better or something that helps me take better advantage of the native features of smart phones. Then, yes please! Give me an app.  Certainly, I think there’s a place for the app – where do you think it fits in a perfect council website?

I spoke on the future of open council websites.  For me that means how a council website encourages openness, transparency and engagement with the public.  But an open council website is also one which is an interactive part of the wider web.   It’s about publishing both data and documents (documents are data, too – but you know what I mean).   I think there’s a lot that could be done, fairly easily and fairly quickly to make council websites more open.

 

The Future of Open Council Websites

View more presentations from Ingrid Koehler

 

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Some really useful ideas for local data and a free event

June 28, 2011 · Posted in data, socialmedia, tech geekery · Comment 

This Friday Local DirectGov will be hosting the Really Useful Data event (1 July 2011) at the Department for Communities and Local Government in Central London. The event has just sold out – but you can still shape the day!  UPDATE: A few additional tickets have JUST been made available. Sign up now. Or find out more about why this is a data event with a difference.

Go check out the many useful ideas for using local data. Such as:

Or check out any of the sixteen (and counting!) other ideas, Vote on the ideas, comment on them or add your own.

Remember this event is only the beginning of a cooperative, sector-wide effort to share and use open data much more effectively – so share your ideas now.

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