One of the problems with many local government web sites is that the responsibility for creating and maintaining the web site falls under the authority of the Marketing/Communications department or the IT department. While there are undoubtedly clever people employed in marketing and IT they are often not web specialists and not well placed to maintain and develop outstanding user experiences on local government web sites.
I’ve read in a number of places the arguments in favour of employing specialist web teams for an organisation. These arguments make a lot of sense. Jeffrey Zeldman articulates the argument nicely in his article, Let there be Web Divisions:
“From law firms to libraries, from universities to Fortune 500 companies, the organization’s website almost invariably falls under the domain of the IT Department or the Marketing Department, leading to turf wars and other predictable consequences. While many good (and highly capable) people work in IT and marketing, neither area is ideally suited to craft usable websites or to encourage the blossoming of vital web communities.” (1)
What’s wrong with the Status Quo?
While I don’t have any hard data to back me up I’m reasonably confident that the responsibility for most local government web sites lies with one or other of the two departments suggested above. This can be a big problem if the management of the section responsible for the web site does not have a clear understanding of the opportunities afforded by recent web developments and social computing.
Of course both departments have valuable input. Marketing departments understand brand development and the importance of design and written communications. However, coming from a PR background they often don’t fully appreciate the importance of the organisation’s web presence as a two-way conversation. IT departments have an important role in making decisions about appropriate technology solutions and network security, which can have major impact on budgetary considerations, but they are often not the best people to talk to about design decisions. And their approach to security regularly inhibits innovation.
There is some belief that these problems will be solved by installing a Content Management System and delegating web content development to the staff who own or produce the information. In many cases, however, this approach compounds the problem when responsibility for publishing to the web site is funneled through a single staff member with approval permissions.
“The call [for web teams] remains pertinent, especially in local government where the extraordinary possibilities of digital information and communication technologies are often reduced to “website” with a single person in an essentially administrative role tasked with maintaining that presence.” (2)
I would like to think that with increasing opportunities for user participation on the web, the development of spaces that allow two-way conversations, more discussion about how organisations and businesses can tap into this potential, and governments giving birth to a growing number of social media policies all suggest that we are becoming aware of the possibilities of the web for government – think Government 2.0 Taskforce (3) and Obama’s declaration on Transparency and Open Government. (4) I think that it’s time to rethink the way our local government web sites are managed. That it is time to introduce web teams in local government. And that those web teams include staff from outside the Marketing and IT departments, and from my perspective, library staff in particular.
Why Library Staff Belong in your Web Team
Librarians know things that others don’t. Librarians may offer your web team some unique insight that just may not available in the marketing or IT departments.
Librarians engage with customers directly every day. Public libraries often have long opening hours and library staff have direct contact with a broad cross section of the local community. In the 2007/08 year nearly half of the NSW population (46%) were registered users of a public library. And this rate has remained consistent over the last 15 years, hovering between 46% and 50%. (5) We get asked all sorts of questions. The library is the sort of place that you can take a community pulse. Marketing and IT departments certainly don’t get that kind of community access.
Further, many enquiries at public libraries relate to information produced or supplied by the local council. Whether it is information about local planning rules, local environmental issues, local history or community services and facilities, libraries have a history of being a link between the community and local government. Indeed many people are referred to the library from Council enquiry counters. For example, libraries are often one of the places that parent council’s use to display draft plans for comment. The range of direct public enquiries about council services fielded by libraries places them second only to council customer service desk or telephone enquiry staff in terms of exposure to community information needs. Librarians are, in most cases however, far more experienced users of the web than your average customer service officer.
While no replacement for user testing, this customer contact places library staff in an excellent position to offer insight into what types of council information and services should be prominent on any local government web site. Add to that the experience libraries have had in publishing information on the web – many libraries had a web based library catalogue before their parent council had a web site. Indeed, libraries were transferring catalogue records over the remote networks before the World Wide Web existed. In more recent times libraries are focusing increasing proportions of their resource budgets to digital products that are delivered direct to library members via the web. Electronic journals, online databases and downloadable audio books and ebooks are now routinely available in many public libraries. Libraries and librarians have embraced the opportunities the Internet has provided – we are web savvy. And it is not just the one way web.
Many library workers are way ahead of your marketing department when it comes to participating in and understanding social media spaces. The Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County in the US invented the Learning 2.0 program, a self-directed training package that encouraged their staff to learn about Web 2.0 tools and emerging technology through exploration and play. (6) That program spread like a virus through the library world. There are now more than 450 Learning 2.0 programs in libraries throughout the world (7). From individual libraries to consortial groups to statewide programs, the value of the participatory web to libraries has been well recognised and there are librarians everywhere blogging and tweeting with their communities, often in spite of the technology road blocks put in place by IT management. This experience and understanding may not be present in any other department of your council.
Of course there is more to the council web site than community engagement. Local government produces mountains of information and data that they want to communicate to their community. Council activities range across such a broad array of services that organising that information in a logical way for users is one of the biggest challenges for local government web site. Fortunately, librarians understand the organisation of information. Over a hundred years of experience on creating metadata to help users find information, developing bibliographic records to describe books and creating catalogues that help users locate that material, is great training for developing information architecture. Information management is the essence of librarianship. Creating, storing and retrieving information is what librarians do. Librarians understand ‘findability’.
Librarians have knowledge, expertise and enthusiasm for delivering information and services via the web to their communities. And now they’re asking for input from their communities through Web 2.o channels. As your council is planning, developing and maintaining its web presence can you afford not to involve your library staff?
Notes
- Jeffrey Zeldman. Let there be web divisions
http://www.zeldman.com/2007/07/02/let-there-be-web-divisions/ - Bernard de Broglio. The importance of web teams
http://www.stapisi.com/articles/web-teams - Government 2.0 Taskforce Final Report
http://gov2.net.au/report/ - Barack Obama. Transparency and Open Government: Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/ - 2007/2008 Public Library Statistics
http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/services/public_libraries/statistics/docs/2007_08summary.pdf - Learning 2.0 program
http://plcmclearning.blogspot.com/ - List of known libraries that have run a Learning 2.0 program for their staff
http://delicious.com/hblowers/learning2.0Libraries
stories magazine is part of the Local Government Web Network
stories: issue 2 – July 2010
Hello and welcome to issue two
I am very excited and pleased to bring you this second issue of our community magazine. Coming into our third year of existence, and looking down the barrel of our third annual conference, it’s very gratifying to see where we started and how far we’ve come since then.
Yet we still have a lot of challenges to face; from raising the importance of our skills to ensure that our web work is written into our job descriptions to learning how to handle the changes being wrought at breakneck speed in the world of social media and community engagement. It’s all there before us, and we are rising to the challenge. We want to hear about your successes and your failures, your almosts and your almost theres. Tell us your story…