Sharon O'Dea

UKGC10 session four: The future of journalism

February 4, 2010 · 1 Comment

Eve Shuttleworth proposed this session in response to a question that arose earlier in the day: Where is journalism heading, and how do press offices need to change in response?

The web professionals session I went to earlier touched on the same issue – how do we develop the skills we need within our web and communications teams to respond to changing media demands?

Journalism has changed enormously over the past decade or so. News organisations large and small have woken up to the web, and are developing a wider range of rich media content. Local papers as well as national ones are using audio, video and interactive graphics to enhance their stories.

This has led to a huge cultural shift in news, with print and web journalists being located together and badged as content producers. The overwhelming feeling in this session was that communicators need to adapt in a similar way.

Press officers can’t focus solely on writing and selling-in written press releases; we need to take a broader approach to content, producing material for the corporate website as well as complete asset packages for the media to use.

Several of the group gave examples of journalists accepting their video content, although there’s a clear divide between the specialist and local press and the big boys on the nationals.

Major national news organisations are reluctant to take video material from the government (and rightly so in my view). But local and regional press are poorly resourced and more inclined to accept PR material.

Someone asked: the budget-slashing job cuts and subsequent culture of ‘churnalism’ that one sees in much of the regional press is beginning to creep into the national press too, in response to the poor advertising market and declining sales. Does that mean even major news organisations will start accepting complete packages from us too?

There was deep unease about this from much of the group; while an under-resourced press makes PRs life easier, it’s not exactly indicative of a free press performing its fourth estate function of holding government to account.

Many of us said we’re troubled by the lack of critical analysis press releases get. All too often, journalists will take a press release, find any contrary opinion, and present this as reasoned analysis. This over-simplification of debate does neither communciator nor journalist credit; it’s rare that there are two sides to every story. Usually there are at least three or four, and sometimes there really is just one.

This isn’t the fault of journalists, but of proprietors who have cut editorial teams, merged titles and slashed budgets so there simply isn’t enough journalistic resources to get out and report the news. One press officer said “make life easier for journalists and they’ll bite your hand off”.

Sarah Lay gave a great example of how they did this during the local elections in Derbyshire. Making a wide range of material available to journalists online meant that they recieved more coverage than they’d normally expect, yet had to take fewer calls from journalists. That’s a win-win for everyone (especially Sarah and her team, who took home a PR Pride award for this).

89% of journalists are using blogs and social media to research their stories, and it follows that the public sector need to engage with these too. Communciations teams need to keep an eye on blogs, Facebook, etc so problems can be identified and dealt with early before they become more reputationally damaging.

Alastair Smith explainined how Newcastle City Council managed a story which sprung up on Facebook. By responding to the group and offering to meet and talk about their concerns, they managed to turn what was a negative story into a positive one that helped the campaign group get what they wanted.

Communications teams just aren’t set up to respond to social media. Reporting lines for press releases usually require signoff from senior staff and politicans, a process which can take days – a timescale incompatable with the demands of social media.

Neil Franklin told us how he used to manage the Twitter feed at Downing Street, arguing that communicators need to be realistic about responding in a timely manner.

I suggested we borrow the concept of ‘presumed competence’ used by the Foreign Office. Back when an ambassador was sent to Ouagadougou and not heard from for months at a time, their masters back home had to assume they were capable of getting on with it. Social media has the same disconnect between local demands and ability to get sign-off from the centre. We may find it easier to respond to social media if we have a set of agreed ‘lines to take’ that we trust our teams to deliver, and refer upwards only by exception.

Whatever you chosen approach, organisations need to develop a policy for dealing with social media comment. Michael Grimes adapted the well-known US army model into this very useful process model for dealing with social media comment.

Others said it was difficult and unhelpful to have two different approaches to responding: It’s just media, and media is social. We need to have a vision for content generally, and plan our resources accordingly.

Someone added that we need to think about tone, and “don’t treat citizens as journalists”. While it’s true we speak differently to journalists as customers, the rise of the citizen journalist – and initiatives like Talk About Local – mean the distinction between the two is blurring.

Someone talked about this Clay Shirky article, which argues “we will always need journalism, but we won’t have journalists”. The fourth estate is vital in a democratic system, so if we’re seeing less meaningful analysis of our work by the traditional media, then we should welcome it from non-traditional sources.

Online journalists, of the traditional as well as citizen variety, are becoming as much curators of content as creators, aggregating content from the wider web and bringing it to the attention of their networks. Communications teams should try and emulate this in what they produce, for instance by linking to related articles or useful background information.

Eve Shuttleworth said the Ministry of Justice is starting to monitor blogs and social media to get a feel for what the issues are, but has not yet made the decision to respond. One of the issues they’re grappling with is whether press officers should respond as the organisation, or as themselves.

Identifying individuals could have security implications, especially where issues are controversial.

All of this points to an urgent need to reassess the service we provide. We need to develop a vision for how we provide content, and ensure we can resource this in a way that meets the media’s diverse and changing needs, the needs of the audience and those of the organisation.

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UKGC10 session three: Google Wave

January 27, 2010 · 1 Comment

Shane Dillon led the post-lunch session on Google Wave. I’ve blogged about Wave a couple of times before, one a general overview and another looking specifically at what application it might have in internal communications. That being the case, I’m not going to repeat my comments here, but instead on my notes from the session itself.

Shane had set up a reasonably successful UKGovCamp wave ahead of the event, so those who attended the session had some practical experience of using Wave beforehand. It was perhaps telling that a few of us remarked this was the first time we’d logged on to Wave in weeks.

Shane is clearly a fan of Wave, and in many ways I can see why. It has some top notch features, enabling users to embed documents, maps, pictures and so on, and to play the conversation back.

In the context of the FCO it has particular relevance as it combines collaborative features with the asynchronicity of email – making it especially good for working across a number of time zones. In my earlier blog I made the same comment about its potential for use in the global charity where I previously worked.

Collaboration is good, and anything which makes collaboration easier should be applauded. But Wave doesn’t make collaboration easier, because the user experience is appalling, as everyone in the room agreed.

As one Tweeter remarked: if even geeks like us struggle to get to grips with Wave, what hope does anyone else have? Motivation is everything, and the effort vs. reward ratio is too low for Wave to make it worthwhile.

Part of Twitter’s appeal is that you can be up and running in seconds, and it’s so intuitive you can get to grips with it right away. Wave on the other hand, had a hour-long instruction video.

Wave also has heavy demands on technology, requiring an up to date browser and broadband connection. This could prove a barrier to adoption in the public sector, many of whom are still running IE6. Our customers and residents may find connection speed a barrier to adoption too, as broadband connections are unavailable in many rural areas, for instance.

One participant asked if Wave was something young people would be interested in. Whilst there’s evidence young people use the internet in different ways from older ones – eschewing email in favour of instant messenger and social networks, for example – I’m not sure this is something that would appeal to Generation Y, not least because it doesn’t (yet) work on mobile.

Wave’s apparent lack of success is seen by many to be a sign Google has lost it. The success of Google Search and Gmail – which totally changed the game in the respective sectors – means we forget that Google do fail occasionally, and should be allowed to if it encourages innovation. Who remembers Google Lively?

Perhaps we shouldn’t see Wave as it currently exists as a finished product, but rather a sandbox for potential features to be used elsewhere. If these are adopted on other platforms, they could become altogether more useful and user-friendly. Similarly, Waves could become more attractive once they can be embedded within other web content.

Wave is undoubtedly a powerful tool, and one Shane would argue is worth spending some time getting to grips with. Get you head around the clunky interface and strange public wave search, he contends, and you’ll find thousands of debates and discussions on subjects from climate change to Pakistani politics.

But while I can’t say I have such a yearning to relive early 90s ICQ chatrooms, I can see Wave functionality having some useful business applications – for online meetings, document sharing, newsgathering or planning, perhaps – if the user experience improves considerably.

So while Wave isn’t a roaring success, it may be too early to write it off as complete a failure either.

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UKGC10 Session two: Socialising Internal Communications

January 26, 2010 · 6 Comments

The second session of the day was the one I was looking forward to the most, having discussed it ahead of the event with Kim Willis and Mark Watson.

Kim took the lead on facilitating, but as it turns out the discussion managed to veer though the full swathe of internal comms issues without the need for much facilitating at all. It seemed like we covered an awful lot in under an hour, and could have talked for at least another hour.

Almost everyone agreed  social media could play a much bigger role in internal communications, but within the public sector at least there hasn’t been widespread adoption yet.

Someone described social networking as “what intranets are supposed to be” – enabling you to connect and collaborate with colleagues, share information and improve communication.

A social intranet enables the recording and sharing of organisational knowledge. But while knowledge management looks at how we manage our intellectual capital, we need also to look at how we record, share and pass on social capital too – that is, sharing that knowledge of people and processes that we all build up over time.

Shane Dillion said we rely too much on traditional, top-down methods of communication that no longer suit the way we work. To become more effective, everything we learn outside the organisation should be bought back in and shared.

By enabling colleagues to connect with one another, and by making working lives a little bit easier, good social intranets have a positive impact on employee engagement too.

Many cited middle management as a barrier to adoption of social media. In some ways this is understandable, as social internal comms reduces the middle managers role as a gatekeeper of information.

Our current organisational structures are built for command and control, not collaboration. So the success of internal social media  depends on moving management towards a culture of co-creation.

The question of culture is a very important one. Technology cannot itself create a collaborative culture; if people aren’t talking to each other already, introducing social tools isn’t going to make them.

Other common barriers include silo culture and concerns around security, particularly in relation to things like Government Connect. Platforms like Yammer are incredibly simple to use, and have some great functionality, but sitting outside the firewall are considered too risky by many.

(As an aside, while I like Yammer, I find its default email setting – which emails for every notification – begins to grate remarkably quickly and is itself a barrier to adoption).

But as I blogged about recently, the business case for internal social media is strong and growing. Carl Haggerty gave an update on the Devon County Council social networking pilot he talked about at LocalGovCamp. They branded this ‘business networking’ to counter accusations of frivolity and timewasting. This succeeded in winning hearts and minds, and in evaluation recently he found it produced considerable (but non-cashable) savings.

So what do we do to hasten the adoption of social media inside the firewall?

  • JFDI. The old adage that it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission is true to some extent, but it isn’t that simple when it’s your job on the line. But start with a small, agile pilot that can be scaled up if successful. If it works, the organisation will buy into it. If it doesn’t, you won’t have lost much.
  • If you want to promote new ways of working, switch the old ones off. Carl Haggerty said his team made a commitment to use their Business Networking tool for discussion rather than sending group emails. People like their tried and tested methods, so you need to provide incentives to change.
  • Dave Briggs said change needs to be dramatic to work – new tools have to do the same thing at least nine times better to win people over.
  • Get buy in from leadership, and encourage them to use social media internally to communicate, listen and lead.
  • Don’t focus on the negatives. Yes, some people will misuse social tools, but most will not. Posts have real names on, so are self-policed.
  • Don’t reinvent the wheel. Adapt your code of context to say how it applies in an online context rather than write a new code from scratch – that way you avoid protracted negotiations.
  • Hug your CIO. Work with ICT to reach solutions to problems like security rather than focus on barriers.
  • Demonstrate value. Budgets will be tight for many years to come, so we need to set out the business case for social tools, though improving flexibility, sharing knowledge, and improving productivity.

Internal social media sits at the intersection of culture change, innovation and knowledge management. It has the potential to deliver innovation and collaboration, but to do that we need to adapt to the cultural and technological barriers in our own organisations.

This was a vibrant and varied discussion, and we could all have talked for ages. Phil McAllister suggested an internal comms barcamp, which a few of us have begun to discuss in more detail. Watch this space.

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UKGC10 session one: Web Professionals

January 24, 2010 · 6 Comments

The first session I went to at UKGov Barcamp 2010 was led by Vicky Sargent from SOCITM, who is looking at how we can develop a framework for professionalising web careers.

Vicky began by explaing that historically SOCITM have been the industry body for senior IT managers in local government. But they’ve begun looking at how we can better support people working in and with web technology – that is, not just the guys providing the infrastructure, but the content too. And not just in local government, but in the public sector more widely.

People in digital roles come from a variety of backgrounds, which is a reflection of the broad spectrum of work that falls under the umbrella of ‘digital’. These include:

  • Communications: people from PR, marketing or publishing backgrounds with a focus on producing content for the web
  • IT backgrounds
  • Web developers
  • People who’ve fallen into it as they happened to be there when this whole internet lark took off.

As the digital sector grows, there’s a real need for a recognised skills and competencies framework. There’s also a call for greater recognition of the profession, so those working in it get the training, recognition and support they deserve. 

This debate is timely for me. My background is in communications, and as such I am a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, and their sectoral group for Internal Communicators, CIPR Inside. But I recently moved into an intranet role, and as my CIPR membership expires I am wondering if there’s any point in me renewing it.  CIPR is – as the name suggests – focussed on public relations. But while my new role is certainly internal communications, I am not a PR practitioner and I’m struggling to see what CIPR can offer me.

The extent to which CIPR supports and understands Internal Communications is the subject of much debate within the internal comms trade of late, with Communicators in Business voting to become the Institute of Internal Communications in order to focus on internal communications as a discrete profession in its own right. CIPR have responded by beefing up its offering for internal communicators.

But neither seems to offer a great deal for those with a focus on digital. And that’s why an  industry body dedicated to raising the status and skills of the web profession would be really valuable for me personally, and no doubt for many others.

There was universal agreement in the room about the need for professionalisation. All too often, noted Alastair Smith, the task of managing web content is given to the most junior member of the team, who recieves little training in how to do it. Job descriptions can often be poorly written or out of date, which has meant many web officers have lost out in the job evaluations required as part of Single Status initatives.

Another common problem seems to be a lack of recognition web professionals get within their own communications teams. Web officers are generally given lower pay grades than junior press officers, even though their jobs are arguably more skilled. Heads of Communications almost always come from Press Officer or Marketing Manager roles, and see digital communications as something of a poor relation.

Senior managers often say the web is their most important customer service channel, yet this isn’t reflected in the way they recruit, train and pay their web officers. Web skills ought to be seen as an investment in improving service quality.

So for instance, Socitm found that bad websites cost councils £11m a month in abandoned transactions requiring attention by other, more expensive means like face-to-face or telephone. Yet few councils have people skilled in studying analytics or improving user experience, and so are unable to tackle this.

There are countless examples of this lack of foresight and understanding.  The value of moving services online is clear, with enormous potential to reduce costs. But for this to happen, we need to focus on giving web teams the skills and resources they need to cope with this channel shift.

There are a number of other initiatives with similar aims, such as the COI’s Web Academy and the GCN. But the former is largely aimed at top civil servants, giving them a brief overview of digital and its potential, while GCN focuses on career paths for web professionals in government comms. 

Most in the room felt that while the GCN was useful, they don’t have enough focus on digital and Socitm was well placed to continue this work. However, digital communicators need to work closely with those working in press and marketing, so should keep their general comms skills up to speed too.

Vicky noted particularly the need to develop a skills framework for web, as these roles aren’t recognised in the national skills farmework. She hopes Socitm can bring web skills into the Skills Framework for the Information Age.

Those with most to gain from raising the status of web professionals are those devolved editors and authors. Too often they’re isolated and lack training, get no additional pay or support, and don’t have their web responsibilities written into their job description. A professional group and a widely-recognised competencies framework could force their managers to understand the work they do.

All of those in the group felt this would help web teams convince senior management that professional web management requires a skill set; it isn’t just something you should devolve to anyone with a half-day’s CMS training. Producing good web content is about a lot more than copying and pasting.

I also think communications teams, and particularly press officers, will be forced to develop broader content production skills, as  the news outlets they serve demand a full package of rich media content rather than simple press releases. But this is something we covered in much more depth at a session on how journalism is changing, and I’ll blog about that later.

Socitm are part way through their project, working with consultants to scope the remit of a web professionals group and draft skills profiles for common roles.

Their preliminary report is already out, and they’re holding a workshop on February 4th at the DCLG. The main output from the day will be a set of defined skills, and a draft will be circulated to those coming beforehand. If you’d like to attend, contact Vicky for more details. 

SOCITM have a web community of over 600 people on the IDeA’s Communities of Practice site (called the Web Improvement and Usage Community). This is one of the most popular groups on the CoP, and has three people faciltating it for a few hours a day each.

Vicky hopes that this group will help to identify where we go next and help to take this forward. Socitim will provide the neccessary admin support, but they people need to join in order to signal their commitment to the project and give them the funding they need to deliver this.

In my view this is something webbies would benefit from getting behind. If web becomes a recognised profession, it gives those working on the web greater credibility within their own organisation, so that their professional opinion is respected and valued, and they are given the recognition, pay and support they deserve.

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UKGovCamp 2010: it was epic

January 24, 2010 · 2 Comments

Yesterday’s UKGovCamp was predictably excellent. It was a genuine pleasure to spend the day with such an amazing group of inspirational people and hear about the great things they’re doing to make UK Government a little bit better

UKGovCamp2010

UKGovCamp is an informal ‘unconference’ event, for people working in public sector tech and comms. This was the third annual barcamp, and like the previous two took place at Google’s London HQ (which we were under strict instructions NOT to photograph). 

There were lots of great sessions, and in each timeslot there were at least two I wanted to go to. I was glad, then, that there were so many active social reporters there and I was able to get a feel for what was going on in all the other sessions via the Twitter stream and the Tumblr. I especially like Paul Clarke’s Flickr stream, even if he did get a picture of me pulling a really unattractive face.

I took notes in most of the sessions, and I tweeted *a lot*, so I’m going to write those up into blogs on each of the sessions individually.

The Epic Visionary raffle was won by the lovely people at Learning Pool, and raised a very respectable £303 for the DEC Appeal for Haiti.

Massive thanks to Dave Briggs for organising the event, Huddle, Opportunity Links, Learning Pool, IDeA, Polywonk, Timetric, the Dextrous Web for sponsoring, and Hadley Beeman for sorting out the post-camp drinks.

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Epic Visionaries FTW!

January 22, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Tomorrow is the third annual UKGovCamp, when over 100 web people from across government will meet at Google’s offices in ThatLondon to share ideas on how we can use technology to change government for the better.

It’s because of that vision, tenacity and willingness to get up early on a Saturday morning to talk about websites that the UK Gov Web community adopted the nickname Epic Visionaries.

Epic Visionary by moo.com: all this can be yours

With so many Epic Visionaries in attendance, I’ve decided to raffle off the domain name I own – epicvisionary.com – at tomorrow’s event, in aid of the DEC Haiti Earthquake Appeal.

The nice people at Moo.com have very kindly turned this into an excellent prize package. The winner will not only get the epicvisionary.com domain, but also:

  • 1 x 50 Pack of Business Cards (Classic or Green stock)
  • 1 x 100 Pack of MiniCards
  • 1 x 20 Pack of Postcards
  • 1 x 90 StickerBook
  • FREE Standard UK Shipping

That’s an additional £50 worth of prizes with which you can show off your Epic Visionary status.

Tickets will be a fiver a strip, with all proceeds going to the DEC Haiti Earthquake Appeal.

For those that can’t make it, you can donate to the DEC Appeal here, and follow the unconference action via the UKGovWeb site. There’ll also be a bunch of active social reporters there on the day who you can follow on Twitter, Flickr, Google Wave, Tumblr, and doubtless all over the interweb.

Keep an eye on the #ukgc10 hashtag. I’ll try and blog on the event next week.

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Intranets are key to recovery in 2010, say surveys

January 19, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Each January, Jakob Neilsen’s annual intranet design annual is released. This showcases the top ten intranets of the year, and is a good indicator of trends in intranet design and usability.

This year’s Neilsen report found intranets are becoming a higher priority for organisations, intranet teams are growing in size, and increasing numbers feature mobile accessibility and social networking.

On the face of it, the improved functionality comes as no surprise. Mobile internet and social media has grown exponentially over the past few years. Our experience of using the web creates expectations of the kind of content and functionality we want at work too; as we rely on our iPhones to do everything for us when we’re out and about, we expect to be able to use our intranet on it too.

That intranet budgets and teams have continued to grow despite the long recession reflects a growing realisation that intranets can deliver real return on investment for organisations.

Significant and measurable returns can be made by making information easier to find – quite simply, less time spent searching for things is more time people can spend doing something worthwhile. Functionality like self-service HR can see sizable reductions in administration costs.

Less easy to measure, though, is the value of the intranet in improving engagement. Last year’s MacLeod Review on Employee Engagement (from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills) found that more widespread adoption of employee engagement approaches could impact positively on UK competitiveness and performance, and meet the challenges of increased global competition.

Good intranets not only make life a little easier for colleagues, they improve communication, facilitate collaboration, enable people to connect and have their say, and help workers feel part of their organisation. This, in turn, encourages employees to say, stay, and strive.

Another study out this month, from communication research specialists Melcrum, would suggest organisations have heeded Macleod’s call for greater focus on engagement.

In the survey of 2,212 senior communicators, 40% said the business case for social media within internal communication was clear and that there is visible return on investment, while 53% of those who responded said they were planning to increase investment in their organisation’s intranet in 2010.

The results of this study show that not only are organisations investing in good intranet design, but also in functionality and content. When asked about channels used for internal communication, the intranet ranked as the most effective channel by 73% of senior communicators worldwide, with a clear majority believing webcasts and video would grow in importance in 2010.

Respondents highlighted a wide range of business benefits from investment in internal social media. These included improved levels of employee engagement (21%), better communication with remote workers (16%), knowledge management and collaboration (25%), improving employee feedback (20%) and making business leaders more visible and accessible (14%).

Both the Neilsen and Melcrum studies show intranets are maturing. Increasingly they’re moving away from being a simple repository of information and becoming instead a platform for communication, collaboration and engagement.

Victoria Mellor, CEO of Melcrum said: “There is a fundamental shift happening with how information flows inside an organization. Peer-to-peer online networks are enabling real-time feedback from employees to inform decision-making, not to mention facilitating collaboration between remote workers.”

With budgets tight, the pressure is on for organisations to demonstrate value for money. But with growing evidence of the business benefits of investment in intranets and internal social media, it’s clear they’ll play an even more important role in 2010.

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Intranets and urban sprawl: a postcard from down under

December 29, 2009 · 1 Comment

This month I’m taking a bit of a break before starting my new job  in the new year. In desperate need of some sunshine, I jetted off to Sydney, Australia.

After spending some time lolling about on the beach, throwing shrimps on the barbie and wandering around town wearing a hat with corks on, I decided to head out of the city for the obligatory bush walk.

As I drove out of the city in search of some bush to hike in, I realised that Sydney is huge. It takes literally hours to reach the city limits. My (Australian) host explained that this is a result of Sydney’s short history.

Sydney

Sydney: this is where it all began

You see, although the area around what’s now Sydney Harbour was home to Aboriginal settlements for many hundreds of years, the modern city is a relatively new one.  The roots of today’s city began with the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788. This was a ragtag band of soldiers, convicts and a few entrepreneurs looking to make a few quid.

They set up camp in the area that is now central Sydney, naming it New Albion. From these humble beginnings the city has grown. And grown. And grown.

As a city built largely in the age of the car, on land that is seemingly limitless, Sydney has  become characterised by urban sprawl. In fact, it’s now the third-largest urban agglomoration in the world.

It struck me that the story of Sydney is very much like that of your average corporate intranet. Most began life, like New Albion, as a bit of a side project, with no clear aims or objectives.

Sydney's urban sprawl

Sydney's urban sprawl 1917-2031: a bit like your intranet

And just as land and resources seemed limitless to those looking for their quarter-acre plot on which to build a family home in Sydney, so too does seemingly limitless server space encourage intranets to grow exponentially.

An explosion in car ownership enabled Sydney to grow to its present proportions. Similarly, the emergence of piss-easy CMSs meant that anyone can be an intranet’s content author, allowing them to add to the urban sprawl of your corporate intranet.

So, just like Sydney, the history of many intranets means they’ve become bloated and difficult to navigate.

But this is where my metaphor falls down.  Sydney householders would certainly be a bit miffed if you were to knock their homes down or move them to somewhere a bit more sensible. But for intranets, that’s certainly possible.

Here’s are some ways to prevent or fix urban sprawl on your intranet:

  1. Decide what your intranet is for. An obvious point, perhaps, but it’s important to set clear objectives for your intranet.  Think not only about what you want to achieve, but how the intranet will help you get there. Be both specific and realistic.
  2. Get to know your audience. The intranet should reflect the culture of the organisation. Adding discussion groups to your intranet will not make people want to participate if there is no existing culture of participating within the organisation. Find out what users want, but speak also to those who don’t use the intranet much to find out why.
  3. Best before end. Set expiry dates for all content pages, with owners or authors required to review them at set intervals to ensure they’re still accurate and up-to-date.
  4. Is this yours? Pages without owners are the intranet equivalent of those boarded-up houses along the North Circular. If no one cares enough about the content to take responsibility for it, it’s likely few would miss it if you were to delete it.
  5. Remember the law of diminishing returns. Every additional piece of content added to your intranet makes it a little bit harder for the user to find the actual information they need.
  6. Help people find their way around. Investing some time and money in getting your information architecture right will soon pay for itself.  Don’t just rely on the main menus, though: use the left-hand navigation lists and the footer of each page too. Help people get back to the section home,  the home page, and to other related pages. But people have different ways of looking for things, so a good search engine and A-Z are needed too.
  7. Raze your city to the ground. It’s not an option that’s open to city planners, but there are strong arguments for scrapping your intranet and starting again. A clean slate gives you the chance to get your information architecture and governance structures right, before developing your content from scratch so it really meets the needs of your audience. This nuclear option is an expensive one, but one that shouldn’t be dismissed entirely.

Over the coming months I’ll be thinking a lot more about intranets and how we can make them better. What are your tips for keeping your intranet fit for purpose?

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Fame

November 27, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Well, of sorts.

Melcrum’s Strategic Communication Management featured this blog in their November edition.

This made me feel terribly guilty for failing to water my blog garden for weeks. I’ve drafted but failed to finish several posts in the past fortnight. I will write one in the next day or so – I promise.

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