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).
Wow – what an opportunity. I’d be stressing the community angle and maybe giving some examples out of the US. I’d definitely keep it 100% non-technical. I’d point up ease of use, choice, giving the citizen a genuine voice – with examples. I’d also as a finale talk about the power this puts back into people’s hands to help themselves, improve their social awareness, promoting social cohesion – which can be a genuine issue in under priveleged communities.
Go at ‘em Paul – I’m green with envy!
Thanks Dennis! BTW I love the “the power this puts back into people’s hands to help themselves” – something I didn’t think about but will be sure to include it!
[...] Walsh, who chairs BIMA has been asked to give a keynote to the leaders of a group of London Councils. His topic: How to better engage with the public [...]
I forgot to ask Dennis, did you have any examples in mind?
Paul,
I agree with Dennis that this is a great opportunity. Apart from evangelising social media in the business context in the day job, I also happen to be chairman of my local parish council in St. Albans (Sandridge, covering 4,700 homes). Typically district and parish councils don’t do anywhere near enough, and “topic oriented” blogs would be a great idea. At my parish we do the traditional media things like a quarterly publication delivered to everyone, but we’ve linked that up with a Yahoo group for the community to interact, and when I came on board we put together a website, which is “above average” compared to the norm (http://www.sandridgeparishcouncil.org). We also use wikis internally for our knowledge management. Our district council’s site meets things like the accessibility standards, and has some limited interactivity as most local authority sites probably would, but use of forums, blogs, wikis is mostly absent. I’d definitely add forums in to your mix as well as blogs.
David – great stuff… forums has got to be a yes! Well done with your site. It’s great to see people get off their bums to make a difference
There’s a wider audience than I thought Dennis:
Audience: LOCAL AUTHORITY CHIEF & ASSISTANT CHIEF EXECUTIVES/HEADS OF SERVICE & HEADS OF STRATEGY / LEADING MEMBERS & CABINET MEMBERS
Oh wait. Yes, I have. I’m sorry, but I just don’t have it in me right now to type it all out again. Besides, it was just ramblings anyway. You didn’t want to hear me go on and on about this, right?
Any interaction within a community is good, but local councils will use these as soap boxes and have them manned and moderated by people who can not or will not answer concerns fully, I am not against the idea just the politics that will govern them.
Somehow i missed the point. Probably lost in translation
Anyway … nice blog to visit.
cheers, Protester.