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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