Site Review – Transparent Jefferson County, Colorado
15 November 2009
Jefferson County’s transparency website has good intentions, but is hampered by a few design and implementation obstacles.
Well, it has certainly been awhile. I’ve been working hard at my day job, working toward my Master’s degree, working on my house, playing with my kid, working on a website for a local newspaper, writing about local government reform issues on another blog I run, and pretty much doing anything and everything other than writing here.
Which isn’t to say I haven’t been thinking about government web design. I’ve just been spending more time thinking about open government data, its possibilities, and implementing those possibilities. And thankfully, Jefferson County in Colorado has a site where transparency-by-OGD allows me to talk about both OGD and design in the same post. The county has over half a million residents and is the 4th most populous county in Colorado.
What’s Good
- Open Government Data! JeffCo has provided itemized, searchable information regarding the County’s finances. You can even download it if you need to. This is cutting-edge, especially for a local government entity. Jefferson County is basically working on provided their own version of data.gov to their citizens.
- The copy is written in a friendly, inviting manner. The tone isn’t emotionless or businesslike. The right tone can do more to build trust than any amount of promises or guarantees.
- Clear goals! If you want to see what their timeline for improving the site looks like, it isn’t hard to find.
- Citizen input is encouraged through public meetings a feedback form, and a blog.
- There is an interface which allows you to search through their procurement data and some tools that allow you to manipulate the data.
What Needs Work
- Most importantly, the content needs to be better weighted. (cf. Weighting Content on Your Website). Most of the text is in the same (too small) font size, so important links or sections get lost in the wash. Without clear cues to what is important or should be read, a visitor to the site remains slightly confused throughout, and is even more likely to miss something that is important later on.
- The site is not very accessible. No HTML heading tags are used, not even an H1 at the top of each page. Using headings is one of the fundamental rules of good web design. It will also help solve problem #1.
- PDFs. PDFs are not open government data, and all of the checkbook warrants on the Jefferson County site are in PDF. They’re easy, but they aren’t transparent. (cf. the Sunlight Labs post on why Adobe is Bad for Government).
- The data manipulation tools are buried under a seemingly random icon, and the documentation isn’t very useful. At least there is some, though.
The Jefferson County Transparency site is off to an admirable start, and the commissioners’ commitment to continue to improve its offerings illustrates the need for progressive, high-level executive buy-in to implement something of this magnitude. Though the layout and organization of the site needs significant refinement, this is still the most interesting thing I’ve seen a local government do in some time.
W3C on Publishing Open Government Data
10 September 2009
A first draft of a paper I worked on as a member of the W3C eGovernment Interest Group has just been published. It’s called Publishing Open Government Data (OGD), and is meant to help governments get into the right headspace and head in the right direction in the publishing of OGD.
I’ll write a bit more about my thoughts on the document, unofficially, over the weekend. The document is meant to evolve, so it is something to come back to when you’re in need of a reference point. There’ll even be more graphics, too!
Weighting Content on Your Website
9 September 2009
When I get involved in a new project, whether it is a completely new site or a redesign, the first thing I do is analyze the content & content expectations of the client and try to figure out the best way to organize things so that the correct information is easy to find, and the important information makes sure that it can be found. Where this gets complicated is when there are differing ideas as to what constitutes important or correct content. So, communication is a key part of the content analysis process. I’m going to skip talking about that piece, assuming that y’all know how to effectively communicate, and instead I’m going to focus on some of the pitfalls of content organization and a few ways you can make your content more user-friendly on the home page of your site.
Content that weighs too little
You’ve seen it. The site with no useful information on it. A site where the home page consists of a mission statement and the navigation links to pages describing services provided by the office, but no details are available, and little reason to return to the site after grabbing a telephone number or address. Typically these sites are from the early days of the WWW, when people were still figuring out what a website was for. They’re essentially web presences, not proper sites, but just something minimal that directs people to call or come visit.
When you’re dealing with a site that weighs too little, the first thing to do is identify what the agency does and figure out which of those things can be better translated into web content. It’s easier than you think. Here are some things to ask yourself or your client:
- Do you have regular meetings that are open to the public? (Put up a calendar with agenda and minutes)
- Do you have forms or applications that your citizens will need to use? Can any of them be filled out online? (Post PDFs (interactive ones if you’ve got the ability) or create online forms that can be filled out and submitted at the citizen convenience)
- Are there questions you get regular calls about? (Put up a FAQ)
- Are there specific programs that could use a little publicity?
- Are there reports (annual or otherwise) that could be put online for citizens to view?
- Is there a staff page listing contact information for various departments within the agency?
- Is there a contact form?
It is surprising how much content you can get from asking these few questions. Basically, anything an agency does can be translated to a website in one way or another. If the resources are available it is even better if you can make some of these processes interactive, and user-friendly enough to reduce the weight of red tape and bureaucratic turnaround.
Content that weighs too much
On the other hand, there’s the site where the agency has gotten the point about putting content out there, but doesn’t have a clear plan on organizing, displaying or distributing it. What you can end up with here is a rabbit-hole of pages and no clear direction regarding where you are or how you got there (adding breadcrumbs is only one part of solving this issue), long paragraphs of text with no distinguishing characteristics, and inconsistent organization of programs, forms, policies and other information. This site is the result of content accretion, a bit like your junk drawer (or closet as the case may be). What you need is in there, but it might be at the bottom of the pile, or else somehow ended up in your bowling ball bag. When you’re dealing with one of these monstrosities, this time you need an ordered list to follow:
- Dig through the site, the whole thing. Have a piece of note paper handy to write down your general ideas for content groupings. By department, program, clientele or a combination of all three? Is there some other way of organizing the content into a meaningful hierarchy?
- Identify sections that can be split into subsections. Are all of the programs on one page? Make a page for each one.
- Remove unnecessary or outdated content. Is the mission statement at the top of every page? Put it on the About Us page. Is there a notice for an event that has long since passed? An advisory or press release that no longer needs to be prominent? Create an organized, searchable archive for these items.
- Design your page layout and keep it consistent. Use HTML headings to help users separate content into sections, name consistent sections consistently (e.g. Forms, Contact Info). Don’t be afraid to use different font sizes, bold, or italics, but don’t over use them either.
- Make sure that the most important thing sticks out the most.
- Make sure that everything doesn’t end up being the most important thing. Prioritize.
- Use your home page to collect all of the important things from the rest of the site. Prioritize and distinguish these items in the same way.
- Keep your eyes on the goal: you’re organizing the site for your citizens, strike a balance between what is important to internal stakeholders and external ones, but prioritize for the people who visit the site to use your services.
If you go through this list (and I’m sure it can be added to and adapted) you should have a better idea of how to wrestle your site’s content and pin it just where you’d like it to be.
Ask GovLoop/The Design State – A Bit About Design
7 July 2009
I’m collaborating with GovLoop in my Ask The Design State video series. Here’s the first installment, just a very basic overview of what design is. If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer, head on over here and let me know.
Transcript
Welcome to the first installment of Ask GovLoop. My name is Adam Harvey. I’m a web designer in Cleveland, OH. I’m going to talk about design, if you’ve got a minute.
When I think about design in a broad sense, I think about how well something works and how intuitive it is to use. Aesthetics comes in second to usability. Yet for me, the opposite holds true with websites. The first thing I pay attention to is how pretty the site is, and I think about its usability only after that first impression.
Yet web design isn’t just about how pretty a site looks; the effectiveness of its layout and usefulness of its content are equally important. All three of these pieces are necessary for a top-notch website.
So when you visit a site, or look at your own, ask yourself:
1. Is the site aesthetically pleasing?
2. Is the layout intuitive?
3. Is the content useful?
and you’ll get a better idea of what separates good design from bad. Thanks for listening!
How Innovators and Early Adopters Fail at the Technology Adoption Lifecycle
21 June 2009
There is a very robust and lively conversation about eGovernment being held by government employees online. A lot of great ideas for improving citizen access, transparency and data distribution are being tested and implemented. Unfortunately, there’s an even larger group of government employees, officials, and managers who aren’t engaged in using the Internet to keep tabs on the newest trends.
I ran across the Technology Adoption Lifecycle the other day, and immediately started applying it to different people I know and different situations I’ve been in. The rest of this post heavily concerns the TAL, so it might be helpful to have that link open in another tab.
You’ve got the innovators, who come up with the great ideas in the first place, and then you have the early adopters, the people hop on the newest site, gadget, or trend as soon as it appears. The online conversation about eGovernment takes place almost totally between these two groups. Eventually they catch the interest of the early majority and you end up with the Feds starting to use social media to help expand their capabilities.
The problem with this paradigm is that the innovators and early adopters are too busy creating new envelopes to push and early majority folks are too busy settling in to their new digs to pay any attention to the two remaining groups: late majority adopters and laggards.
These are the CTOs, CIOs, PIOs and department heads who are still running Windows 98 at 800×600 screen resolution and using Netscape or IE6 as their browser of choice. They don’t use the Internet for anything but email (even though email has nothing to do with the Internet) and they get their technology news through print media trade publications.
The trade rags are fairly good at what they do, but it is in their nature to direct their content toward late majority adopters and laggards. You don’t read much about the possibilities of the Internet, information design, or web design in these publications. When you do read something about the Internet it is usually framed programmatically or in terms of infrastructure; how so-and-so used WiFi to make their job easier. From time to time they touch on Facebook (security risk!) or Twitter (security risk!) but the tone of the articles tends to run along the lines of “Look at this new-fangled contraption. Huh. Amazing what they can do nowadays.” Emphasis on they. There’s no encouragement, education or endorsement of what the rest of us are so gung-ho about.
The late majority adopters and laggards need to be brought into the conversation, and it is high time that the rest of us work on doing so. They aren’t going online to get their information, so we have to reach them through the channels they are used to. Working with trade publications to improve their reporting and coverage is a great way to start, since these new ideas will be presented in a familiar format. It also couldn’t hurt to send your boss, colleague, or peer links to relevant sites or articles online as a way of broadening their horizons. I’ll even start the email and let you fill in the links: “I noticed you read [Generic Government Trade Magazine], I thought you might be interested in the sites listed below, which offer a lot more content on similar topics. In particular, I found these articles to be very informative.”
Part of the reason the late majority adopters and laggards are who they are is because the rest of us aren’t talking to them. By engaging them in the work we do, it’s quite possible that we can increase the pace of the cultural change needed for truly effective egovernance.
Perils of the In-house Designer
16 June 2009
This post is my own personal opinion and is not necessarily the opinion of my employer.
While not explicitly part of my job description, I feel that it is incumbent upon me to keep fairly up to date with the State of the Art in web design. This typically entails reading a bunch of weblogs and testing out new techniques as they show up on my radar. Eventually I hope to even use a few of these in sites I design. For example, I used CSS rounded corners on this site, but you won’t see them if you’re using Internet Explorer.
And that’s exactly where the biggest peril I run into as an in-house designer rears its head. Most of our clients and managers expect websites to look the same in every browser (c.f. Do websites need to look exactly the same in every browser?).
The chatter about design in the freelance (or self-employed) design world (which is where just about all of the web designers who write about web design make their living) doesn’t have much sympathy for the in-house designer. There is much talk about refusing to support or debug a site in IE6 when designing, or forcing IE6 users to pass by a nag-screen, or providing a completely different stylesheet (by far the nicest route) for users of that most-wretched of browsers.
I completely agree with them in spirit. In practice, however, these methods are impracticable. The market share for IE6 is 14.5% as of May 2009, three times that of Google Chrome & IE8, and nearly 5 times that of Safari. Most of the agencies we do work for have employees who are restricted to using IE6, and blocked behind a firewall so they can only access pages on our network. I’m probably the only one at work who cares if a site looks right in Opera or Safari, but I’m definitely not the only one who feels that users of our sites should be able to do just as much in IE6, and have just as nice of a time doing it, as folks who are using Firefox or some other browser. Even if it is a pain in the ass.
So when I read about the newest hotness in HTML5, or CSS3, I long for the chance to try and implement just a few of the options provided. At the same time, I know it isn’t worth my time to try it, because I’m going to have to spend a day or more tweaking a design to look right in IE6. I could probably get twice as much work done as I do now if I constructed a site’s layout using tables, or just sliced it up in Photoshop, and no layman would notice the difference. My work would be half-quality though, not coded to standards, and a nightmare for anyone with accessibility needs.
Having a standard in place gives web designers the benefit of something to strive for. The tug-of-war between keeping my skills bleeding-edge sharp and meeting the needs of our clients means that I will probably never meet those standards or the expectations of my fellow web designers. Sometimes it is tough to read the derision directed at designers who don’t have the choice on what or how to work on a project. For the people like me who’ve been following along, web design weblogs have convinced us that a site can have some flex across browsers. Now it is just preaching to the choir. If anyone has figured out how to convince a non-technical-oriented director of a government agency (who has a lot more important things to take care of than listening to a web designer explain why IE6 is the problem) that a site doesn’t need to look the same in all browsers, I haven’t seen it. Please advise.
Them’s the breaks in my little corner of the web world.
Ask Design State
26 May 2009
I added a new section to The Design State tonight. It’s called Ask Design State, and if you submit a question, I’ll do my best to provide you with an informative 1-minute video answer that will be posted here. If you’ve got a question that relates to anything listed on or related to the items listed on the question page, send me a note.
Waterwings: A Quick Start to Online Communities
19 May 2009
A month or so ago I spoke about creating hyperlocal community websites at the Cleveland Westside Leadership Training Collaborative. This is a three session course offered by a group of Cleveland CDCs to assist in training up-and-coming neighborhood activists/leaders. I was part of their guinea pig group the first year of the program.
I was asked to speak because in a previous life I spent four years running a hyperlocal community weblog for my Tremont neighborhood. I spent around a half hour or so giving an overview of the possibilities and answering quite a few questions about implementation. I was asked to put together a quick start guide with some links to the options I was talking about.
I’ve finally finished a first draft of the the guide, which I’ve called Waterwings: A Quick Start to Online Communities. This guide is deliberately targeted to folks who don’t have a strong technical background, and is meant more to help get them online doing anything at all than teach them how to be an award-winning A-list blogger.
It is deliberately simple and sparse. I don’t want to overwhelm these people with facts, figures and options. I’d rather help them get their feet wet online in the first place, and they can learn to do the butterfly or backstroke later.
I recognize, however, that my guide is still quite rough around the edges, and that I might be missing some good sources for these folks to utilize. I’ve deliberately left out social media sources like Twitter and Facebook, because I feel they might be initially too intimidating for users to adequately direct and form an online community. So please, if you disagree with anything in the guide, think I’ve left out something important, or have a question, comment, or point to make about it, let me know.
PART 2 – W3C eGov Note: Improving Access to Government through Better Use of the Web
14 May 2009
Read Part 1 of this post here.
Yesterday I made it up to the Interoperability section of the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) eGovernment Interest Group Note: Improving Access to Government through Better Use of the Web.
I finished the document today, and instead of examining the remaining items in detail I’m going to just spin out some different summaries of what I see as the points of the thing.
The final four issues in the note; Open Government Data, Interoperability, Multi-Channel Delivery, and Identification and Authentication all deal with the technical side of eGovernment, the backend geekery that I love to jaw with the developers about for hours. These are important topics, well worth detailed consideration, but their success depends very much on maneuvering through the challenges of the cultural bureaucracy I described yesterday; the stuff that Gov 2.0 proponents end up jawing about to the decision-makers.
It seems like the W3C eGov group has a good handle on the current state of eGovernment as I understand it. The Note identifies socio-cultural and technological challenges to providing useful and cutting-edge eGovernment services and acknowledges that economic and legislative obstacles to implementing those services exist. At the same time, the note also describes the benefits that an engaged eGov action plan can have for both the efficiency of government agencies and the effectiveness of their interaction with citizens.
Basically, government entities need to simultaneously:
- Focus on providing secure, open, useful and reusable data:
- while engaging with their citizens on mutual terms; and
- welcoming citizen interest, input, and feedback; and
- Reassure senior decision makers that:
- the benefits of providing secure, open, useful, and reusable data outweigh the risks; and
- that welcoming citizen interest, input, and feedback will increase the trust and confidence that citizens have in their government.
This note isn’t meant to offer solutions or guidance for eGov proponents. It’s a State of eGovernment Address, an important calibration point for folks to use in their own quests to create their own solutions and guidelines for the future of eGovernment.
The W3C group knows just how big this eGovernment sandwich is, and has a pretty comprehensive list of all the ingredients it contains. Now all that remains is figuring out the best way eat it.
PART 1 – W3C eGov Note: Improving Access to Government through Better Use of the Web
13 May 2009
Today the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) eGovernment Interest Group published a Note which is the culmination of their first year of analysis on the history, current state, and hopeful future of eGovernment. Entitled Improving Access to Government through Better Use of the Web, the document serves as a great first step toward codifying the ways which eGovernment should be utilized to serve a variety of roles and interests. Much of the document provides an overview of the materials and assumptions used to develop the analysis and direction of the Interest Group; I’m just going to pull out a few of the ‘graphs that caught my eye and comment on them. This is the first of two posts on this note, as I’m only halfway through it.
“While increasingly cognizant of the opportunities afforded by social media, typically governments are still operating a broadcasting paradigm. Web sites are a vehicle for mass communication and for the delivery of transactional services. In this environment statistics showing the scale of usage are celebrated as indicators of success in themselves. The structure of a government Web estate is often organizationally driven. This is problematic as the structures of government continually change, resulting in significant disruption to the presentation of government on the Web. Government departments can be surprisingly transient entities. Transposed to namespaces and URIs this is quick sand [sic] on which to build an essential information infrastructure using the Web.
…
Firmly in the provide mode many governments have devised a channels strategy for their Web estate. This has been developed primarily from a communications perspective. What is more generally absent is a data strategy from a Web engineering perspective. It is rare in government to think about Web site development as the engineering of basic information infrastructure.
…
The reality is that not many officials responsible for commissioning or managing government Web sites are familiar with the basic principles of the Web‚ for example Architecture of the World Wide Web [WEBARCH]. Unfortunately, lacking a government context and being aimed at a more expert audience, the W3C guidelines and specifications are almost impenetrable to many Web decision makers in government.”
Trends and Modalities of the Web and the Information Consumer
This essentially boils down to the idea that most government entities are stuck talking at their constituents instead of to or with them. It’s like watching the evening news, citizens have to take whatever is given to them, and don’t have easy means of responding or interacting, other than passively. It’s a Web 1.0 mindset, but one that government entities are very comfortable with; it provides total message control and requires the least amount of overhead both in terms of the work required to post and thought required for how useful the content will be. That sounds pretty harsh, but I’m building a picture here. (I think it is the same one that the Interest Group is building as well.) Consider that
“David Weinberger, one of the co-authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto [CLUETRAIN], observes that, “there is an inverse relationship between control and trust”. If true that has profound implications for government. Governments may seek to trade a loss of control through greater transparency and openness in return for an anticipated increase in public trust.”
and that
“Public servants need to be given access to the Web sites that citizens are using in order for them to be able to engage. The “lock-down” culture that exists in many government IT departments often restricts access to the more interactive Web sites for security reasons. This badly hampers the effective engagement with online communities by public servants. Many governments are blocking employee access to Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, and others where conversations occur, interaction is embraced, individuals align around similar goals, issues, and interests, and participatory and engaged communities are formed. Security issues, employee rights and misdeeds, and lack of familiarity with the tools are impacts that governments must content [sic] with, however, in taking time to do so limits the amount of participation, feedback, and interaction from constituents.”
(emphasis mine) – Access of Public Servants to Web Sites that Citizens Are Using
and it becomes obvious that
“There needs to be training and support for public servants in the use of appropriate tools and techniques to use the Web to engage, particularly for the development of public policy. Engaging with online communities over the development of public policy will involve significant culture change in government. To achieve it will require clear leadership at senior levels. As the use of the Web for engagement is so new in government there are few people with both the practical knowledge and the seniority and experience to provide this leadership.”
(emphasis mine) – Training, Support and Cultural Change
The emerging picture is described quite tactfully, but the easiest way to explain it is by being quite blunt. Many senior decision-makers at government entities are any number of the following:
- Ignorant of the opportunities that the Internet has to offer them in terms of engaging their citizens;
- Aware of the opportunities, but afraid or ignorant on how to implement them;
- Unwilling or afraid to release control over their message in order to provide additional services outside of the “broadcast paradigm”; and
- Unable to implement or utilize these options due to budgetary, personnel or various other economic or bureaucratic reasons.
This is a great justification for continuing the W3C eGovernment Interest Group. As I saw on a Twitter feed today, someone needs to be able to “translate tech to wonk.” That’s definitely something that this Interest Group can do, by
- Providing guidance for senior officials – walking them down the path to more effective use of their web presence;
- Defining best practices and standards for the implementation of current and developing web technologies; and
- Offering direction toward other possibilities that will encourage further innovation in eGovernment practices.
One last quote for today:
“When government information is made available through portals, e.g. the so called one-stop shops, the government intends to build the consumer’s view in order to provide the information in the most usable way. Even when the PSI is provided by means of an API, the methods to access it are often restricting the view that a given consumer can have or need of that information.
Providing Open Government Data allows the consumer to use the information in the most appropriate way to achieve the intended goal.”
What Are the Main Benefits of Publishing Open Government Data?: Multiple views, not just one
This is exactly what Jeff Veen talks about when he encourages folks to not tell users a story with your site or application, but instead allow visitors to use your site or application to tell their own story. I talked a bit about this in my post about Jeff Veen & Hay Net. User-empathy is definitely something that many government websites could use a bit more of.
More on all of this once I’ve had a chance to read the rest of the note. You can read Part 2 here.
