After a nice summer break (that wasn’t actually long enough!) it’s time to get back to business . . .
I spend a lot of time visiting local government websites not only professionally but because I like to keep up on what’s happening in the community where I live. Most local governments and their associated Council’s have recognized the importance of having a public website as part of a communications strategy and have thus devoted considerable budgets to their development. Unfortunately, most local government sites seem to miss the mark in terms of serving information to their visitors. Visit almost any local government website and you will be bombarded with a vast array of links and menu options that are as frustrating to navigate as your cell phone provider’s automated telephone system. I usually don’t even try anymore if I’m looking for something specific . . . I’ll use a Google query to access the information I need directly.
To be fair, building a website that effectively communicates to the varied audiences that might visit a local government website is extremely challenging. Local government’s, by nature, are complex organizations. Consider a phone or cable company generally will have about three business areas (TV, land-lines and wireless) a municipality might have something over 8 different and sometimes very discrete business areas from tax collection, emergency services, utility maintenance, garbage delivery and so on.
Local governments have attempted to structure their sites to overcome the complexity by organizing content based on visitor type including: resident, business, corporate (the local government itself) and visitor. You’ll often find a menu bar that allows you to choose the type of site visitor you are and view the content tailored to your needs. It’s actually quite amazing how ubiquitous this approach to local government websites is. You’ll find this or variations in local government website around the world. Despite the nearly universal approach to organization content for a local government website the question remains as to whether this approach is all that affective.
Recent research by the Institute for Citizen-Centred Service suggest that governments, in general, continue to improve through all service delivery channels and that the Internet is increasingly important. Interestingly, the Internet is not replacing traditional channels such as office visits or the phone but augmenting these more traditional methods.
The business case for increasing expenditure on a local government website is often built around reducing requests for information via other, more expensive, channels such as an office visit or phone. The research seems to suggest this is not a viable argument. So, what can be done to actually achieve the holy grail of moving office or phone visits to the web?
First, a communications strategy needs to be developed that views all the different ways a taxpayer interacts with the municipality. You can only do this if you understand your audience. I like to encourage people to think of your audience as a single person (at the most two) who you can visualize in your minds eye. I call them my ideal taxpayer. This helps make your audience more real and easier to grasp what they want. I worked for a municipality where their taxpayers were predominantly older retired people so strategies employed here will be different than municipalities that have a younger growing population.
Second, considering your ideal taxpayer’s preferences to interact with you and see where you can help them find the information they need more easily online. This means integrating the various ways you interact with your ideal taxpayer so that office visits or phone calls are always followed up with hints on finding what they need on your website. It’s amazing how few municipalities do this. Call your local municipal government and ask them where you can get a dog licence? Did they tell you then remind you that you could have found this information on the website? Probably not. Your website needs to be part of the glue of your communications strategy and needs to be taken seriously.
Finally, a word about design. I believe it’s time to revisit the current local government website design approach. Does an ideal taxpayer really care that to have a pot hole fixed in front of their property that they have to call the “Engineering and Public Works Department” . . . what does a pot hole in a road have to do with “Engineering and Public Works” . . . wouldn’t I call the “Road” department? The point is that we who work in local government know about our departments whereas our ideal taxpayer likely doesn’t. I’ve worked with another municipality that doesn’t have a public works department but does have a parks and recreation department that takes care of filling in pot holes in roads. How the heck is your ideal taxpayer supposed to figure that out?
We need to get away from the compartmentalized nature of municipal websites. Let’s blow it completely away and think only about our ideal taxpayer. Wouldn’t it be nice if a municipal website simply had one page and one field that said “How may we help you?” I’d type “I need a zoning map” and it would take me right to the zoning map. I didn’t have to click Resident-Planning-Zoning-Maps . . . it just showed me the map. Just like the way Google does it . . .
