Download Managing Municipal Information Online - e

Managing Municipal Information Online
Presented by: Joanna Cummings,
Snelling Center for Government
October, 2011
© 2011 Vermont State Colleges/ © Vermont Small Business Development Center
Webinar Topics
1. E-Government and Best Practices
2. Social Media
3. How to be Found on the Internet
4. Cloud Computing
What is e-Government?
E-Government is the use of information
technology to facilitate useful and
innovative ways of conducting government
business, and distributing community
information.
Check out:
http://evermontbroadband.org/test_site/
Best Practices for Municipal Websites
Strategic Planning
 Outline where your organization wants to go, and how to get
there.
 Write a plan that staff and the public can understand, and
post it so the public can read it.
1. Create a Vision – Describe what success looks like. What will
citizens be able to do with your website or other online resource.
2. Goals and Objectives – List your major strategic goals.
3. Timeline – Create for all phases, from planning to
management.
4. Budget – Do you need approval from the Select Board?
Website Governance
Who has final decision making
authority about how the website is
managed, who will approve
content, budgeting, etc.?
Write Web-specific polices that
will reduce risk to the
organization.
How you organize staff roles,
responsibilities and
authorities, along with
policies, procedures and
relationships is critical to how
your website information will
be organized and managed.
If your town office implements Web Governance, has a
Web Strategy, a sensible and unified approach to Web
content and application development, and effectively
measures Web performance, your Web presence will be a
great asset and not a liability to the town.
Managing Website Content
All content is approved before posting to the website.
 Provide dates in content and keep it current.
 Write content in plain and easy to understand
language.
 Follow Web accessibility guidelines for text and images.
 Post documents in PDF format.
 Images size should be at 72 pixel resolution.
Web Accessibility and Usability
More and more citizens are reaching out to government to
find information and services to improve their daily lives.
Web Accessibility
*Millions of people have disabilities
that affect their use of the Web.
*Web accessibility means that people
with disabilities can use the Web. It
means that people with disabilities
can perceive, understand, navigate,
and interact with the Web, and that
they can contribute to the Web. Web
accessibility also benefits others,
including older people with changing
abilities due to aging.
Usability
Usability refers to how well users
can learn and use a website to
achieve their goals and how satisfied
they are with that process.
 Navigation design for websites
 Writing content in plain language
 Web pages can be viewed in
different browsers
 Images can be viewed easily
Social Media for Towns
Quotes from the Sept. 12, 2011 Addison Independent article on how
social media played a big role in flood response:
 … as roads washed out, power went down and travel … Internet technology and social
media stepped into the spotlight.
 … the town of Middlebury was also posting regular updates to its own Facebook profile,
and partway through the week following the storm the Middlebury Police Department
set up its own Facebook page. Officer Vegar Boe said it became clear that having a
Facebook page would be a useful tool for direct communication with the community.
 … the disaster … has pushed Vermont further into the digital age in emergency
response … over the past couple of weeks he’s watched many across the state using
the potential of broadband Internet and the mobile web to create and share resources
in ways that had only been talked about in the state before.
From the Front Porch Forum:
… I recently posted on Front Porch Forum a call to arms for clean up help at our new home
in Richmond after Hurricane Irene. Within 2 hours a fleet of kind, loving and generous
people were at the house… Words cannot express our deep feeling of gratitude. Although
it has been difficult to be so intimately involved in such tragedy it has shone light on the
things that matter most in the world. Community.
Considerations for Town Officials
When Using Social Media
Benefits
 Direct communication with the community.
 Social media facilitates sharing of information.
 Changing the way towns are delivering government services and
connect with citizens.
However:
 Social media not a substitute for towns to fulfill their statutory
duties and responsibilities
 At best another component of a town’s marketing, customer
service and public outreach.
 All social media posts and comments are subject to VT’s Public
Records and Open Meeting Laws, and all other applicable laws,
rules, policies, etc.
Town Social Media Policy
From the VT League of Cities and Towns:
Adopt a social media policy that will balance but not replace
the need for a website. Search their resource library for the
policy at:
http://vlct.org/league-resources/search-vlct-resources/
Answer the questions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
What do you want to accomplish?
Is social media the appropriate tool to accomplish goals?
Weigh the risk and benefits.
Who will be responsible for account/content mgmt?
Does your town have the resources to implement it?
What are the costs?
How to Be Found on the Web
Promote, Promote!
 Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
 Website address added to official town
stationary, business cards, email signatures.
 Links to website from social media.
 Links from other sites to your town’s website.
How to Optimize Your Website for Search
 Altering your website to improve the visibility, getting a
higher ranking in search engine results. It means your site
does well for particular terms or a range of terms at search
engines.
 Most town websites will not pay to get a higher ranking, so
depend on natural or organic (free) search techniques.
 SEO is important to consider because more people visit sites
that show up higher in the list of search results.
 Make improvements to your website so search engines can
successfully interact with your site, or incorporate them
while designing a new website.
Methods to Improve Search Results for Your Site
 Websites that are handicapped accessible are easier for search engines to
crawl because they contain much less Flash, javascript and frames coding,
which can’t be read by the engines. How to test for accessibility http://www.washington.edu/accessit/articles?87
 Make sure your site is W3C compliant - http://validator.w3.org/
 Quality content on each page: hierarchy of headings, use keywords in
headings and in the first two paragraphs of text. Use keywords that people
will enter in a search to find your content.
 Submit your site to search engines and directories, create a Wikipedia page.
 Include a sitemap on your website. A sitemap links to all your pages.
 Get other sites to link to you including social media.
 Use descriptive “Alt” tags for images.
 Use descriptive text for all of your links: describe the link’s destination.
 Add the Meta tags “Description”, and a descriptive “Title” for pages.
 Do not practice “search engine spamming” on your website: hidden text,
artificial links significantly lower ranking or mark the site as spam.
 Make sure your website appears correctly in different browsers.
Cloud Computing
What is Cloud Computing?
You are probably already using a cloud-based service:
 Gmail
 Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc.
 E-Commerce
 Newspaper subscriptions
 Online banking
Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves
delivering hosted services over the Internet.
It is sold on demand, a user can have as much or as little of a
service as they want at any given time, and the service is
managed by the provider (the consumer needs nothing but a
personal computer and Internet access).
Video: http://www.commoncraft.com/video/cloud-computing (3
minutes)
Pros of Cloud Computing
 Back up and protect data from natural disasters.
 Increase data storage space without having to purchase and
make room for more equipment.
 Possibilities of sharing cost of building useful applications
with other organizations storing the same data in a cloudbased system.
 Computer and mobile devices can be in sync all the time.
 Organize and mine data form online sources.
 Share data easily and quickly.
 You are not loosing control of data, but increasing capacity
or adding capabilities on the fly without investing in new
infrastructure or training new personnel.
Are there Cons to Cloud Computing?
Research vendors and sign contracts that address service level
agreements, data processing and access, provider infrastructure
and security, and contract and vendor management.
Security issues you should raise before selecting a cloud vendor:
(from Seven Cloud-computing Security Risks, InfoWorld.com)
1. Regulatory compliance
2. Privileged user access
3. Data location
4. Disaster data recovery
5. Data segregation in the shared environment
6. Investigative support
7. Long-term viability of the company
Helpful Resources
Upcoming e-Vermont Workshops and Conferences
Webinars and Town Workshop Series – visit http://e4vt.org for the
current schedule.
e-Communities in a Digital Age Workshop - brings community leaders
and learners together to share what they have discovered so far.
• November 19, 2011 – Lyndon State College, Lyndonville, VT
• February 16, 2012 – Vermont Technical College, Randolph, VT
Registration for November 19 starts soon. Contact Joanna Cummings for
more information: [email protected]
Envisioning Vermont’s Digital Future Conference
April 25, 2012 – UVM Dudley Davis Center, Burlington, VT
Registration begins during November 2011. Contact Joanna Cummings for
more information: [email protected]
Helpful Resources
Other Upcoming Events
Vermont Transparency Tour – Dates in October and November, 2011
Secretary Jim Condos and staff of the Office of the Secretary of State
in a discussion of the new public records law and a review of the
current open meetings law.
Please contact Nancy Lynch @ 802-828-2148 or via email at
[email protected] for more info and to RSVP
Helpful Resources
Very good overall resource for government websites - HowTo.gov
Website accessibility testing
The National Center on Accessible Information Technology in Education
http://www.washington.edu/accessit/articles?87
Markup Validation Checker
W3C Markup Validation Service
http://validator.w3.org/
Broken Link Checking
W3C Link Checker
http://validator.w3.org/checklink
Plain Language Writing for the Web
Plainlanguage.gov
http://www.plainlanguage.gov/
Helpful Resources
Dial Up Speed Testing
https://secure.dslreports.com/speedtest
Social Media
Vermont League of Cities and Towns Model Social Media Policy
http://vlct.org/league-resources/search-vlct-resources/
Search Engines Optimization
How Search Engines Operate
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/how-search-enginesoperate
Cloud Computing
Common Craft Video on Cloud Computing Basics
http://www.commoncraft.com/video/cloud-computing (3 minutes)
For more information contact:
Joanna Cummings
Snelling Center for Government
[email protected]
802-859-3090
Also visit http://e4vt.org
© 2011 Vermont State Colleges/ © Vermont Small Business Development Center