Continuous feedback and improvement

Planning for products and services to be continued to be developed after they have been released.

Any system deployed by the Local Authority should have a plan for coping with the changing expectations of users and technical environment. The continuous development and improvement of any system should built into its maintenance processes and should be documented as part of any project. The continuous improvement plan should include:

• how feedback will be gathered
• how it will be reviewed and actions prioritised
• what resources are required

Checking for these considerations should also be included in the project
review process.

How can people get involved?

The Local Authority website should power the involvement process.

Educating citizens about how they can engage with the Local Authority is fundamental. This starts with  comments on content and develops into further use of communication mechanisms.

The Local Authority web service should also act to enable grass roots digital services. This could be through providing a platform or by enabling the use of low barrier to entry services. This growth of community based activity is key to getting maximum buy-in.

Analytics

Consistent user behaviour analysis tools and comparable measuring of effectiveness.

There are many suitable commercial and free analytic services already available and one of these should be selected and used consistently across all Local Authority websites.
It is essential that the selected service:

• provides an API to allow analytic reports and visualisations to be integrated into the content creation tools
• allows the extraction of the usage data for migration to a different service if necessary
• does not contravene any privacy or data sharing regulations or break the users’ expectation of privacy
• allows subsets of the usage data to be shared with site managers owners

Service enquiries must be differentiated from other involvement

Communication channels should distinguish clearly between service enquiries and other forms of feedback. User commenting on content and suggestions for information are very different to specific customer service requests. This is especially true for individuals with a currently open or recently concluded transaction who may be in contact about their case or the service as a whole. The system needs to ensure that separation and privacy is maintained while retaining the efficiency of online communications.

Services must be completed

It must be clear and obvious to a citizen when the service has been delivered and what the outcome was. Users should be allowed to pick their preferred notification channel be it telephone call, email, SMS, etcetera. The website should interface with CRM systems to help service staff see where each case is in the feedback loop.

For services that have a long cycle to completion without current built in feedback points, the user should be able to set a heartbeat feedback time so they are assured that their process is still ongoing.

Transactions must be easy, obvious and ubiquitous

All transactions, especially financial ones, must be easy and obvious. They need good process and form design. They must have well stated and easy to understand validation requirements. Help should be contextual rather than stuck away in a separate silo. All information needs to be re-used subject to privacy controls. Transaction pages have to be simple to understand, have easy to access security policies and be fully accessible.

Transactions are part of the key group of website features that should definitely be available via mobile devices.

Service improvement is part of the service

Service improvement (with involvement from the community) must be an integral part of service provision. All transactions should offer citizens the opportunity to use commenting and feedback to suggest service improvements as part of the process. Analytics and metrics should be used as part of an in depth user experience strategy to find and fix points that cause high dropouts. Services need to be provided via as many channels as appropriate and an engaging practical website will bring more people towards the self service end of the spectrum.

Online surgeries

Elected members should have tools to run structured and managed surgeries. These surgery facilities must be simple enough for the elected member to manage and for citizens to use without training.

The facility should allow for pre-booking of surgery slots, set citizen expectations and ground rules, manage the queue and allow the conversation to happen via instant message, voice or video connection.

Access to Councillors

Elected officials need help to avoid being overwhelmed with people wishing to raise issues.

As the barriers to communication appear to be reducing and citizens’ demands for accountability increase as they seek information or lobby for a cause.

It is essential that Councillors are provided with appropriate tools that allow them to manage their interactions with citizens in ways that suit their schedules and capabilities.  These tools should take into account that Councillors have large constituencies and a high work load that they may need to carry out online in between other tasks or use assistants to filter, redirect and manage online contact.

Discussions and informal polls

Providing discussion and petition facilities can divert citizen frustration into productive channels.  Angry citizens to vent frustration while at the same time those with valid and common concerns can attract a core of support. There can also be a process of natural modifications to the proposal in the informal stage before it gets taken forward.

Each discussion and petition is an opportunity for elected members to listen to the concerns of the citizens and to channel the discussion into an appropriate channel such as a formal petition or an online surgery.