Inform

The Local Authority should provide tools to ensure good quality content.

This is not just about creating content but ensuring that, that content is easy to find and use. There should also be tools designed to find related content on partner/associated sites so it can be referred to. All content should be web content created using strict, but easy to apply, design guidelines and be machine-readable. Proprietary formats which hinder sharing and reuse should be avoided. All creators should be trained in content quality and given access to a ‘style guide’.

Digital Inclusion

Ensuring that the all sections of the community are able to take advantages of using the web.

Web usage is not evenly distributed across all sections of society. Unless positive action is taken the people who use council service the most won’t be able to take advantage of them online.

Such is the importance of digital inclusion that it warrants the appointment of a Digital inclusion Champion within the local authority. Their role will be to ensure that digital inclusion is tackled using all of the available support from national and local programmes and initiatives.

Compliance

Ensuring that the all sections of the community are able to take advantages of using the web.

There are numerous standards which every Government website must comply with, some of which are listed below. The development and governance of these standards is often already well defined by the Local Authority and checked by industry and commercial bodies.

The standards and guidance for accessibility, metadata, security, data protection, credit card payments, and others, should be reviewed and, if necessary, reworked for publication to a wider audience within the Local
Authority.

System and service procurement criteria

How to select and buy products, services and systems that will work well together.

The need to get diverse systems, products and services to work well together and with the web platform introduces significant new requirements and selection criteria into all procurement processes. These new criteria need to be understood and assessed for all new system procurement.

A guidance document should be created and disseminated that explains the relative importance of particular system attributes and the impact of not meeting the required standards so that informed and pragmatic procurement decisions can be made.

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.

Information Architecture

Information Architecture principles should be defined to allow future web properties to be built with some consistency.

It would be impractical to attempt to define the information architecture for all of the websites and systems that a Local Authority will need now and in the future. Therefore information architecture guidelines should be designed that include the methods, mechanisms and information used to create the user journeys for any associated website. This should include practical aspects, such as navigation, information consistency, search results and links to related content; but also provide the reasoning behind the principles to allow them to be flexibly applied in future updates.

Global interaction standards

Designing and defining common user interactions in order to keep them consistent.

Having a consistent set of user interactions for the most common activities is not just an issue of corporate branding or appearing to be joined up, it is essential in order to reduce the ‘cognitive load’ (the amount of thinking that has to be done) required by users.

Guidance documents should be produced covering common interactions, for instance:

• site registration (where single sign-on is not used)
• date inputs
• forgotten password processes
• form save and retrieval
• pagination

Global visual language

Providing standards and guidance for the look of all council websites.

A global visual language would define the layout, element position and priority as well as imagery treatment. It should seek to allow creative flexibility for website owners to make distinctive and appealing websites while providing guidance on how to ensure that it the site is clearly part of the the Local Authority portfolio.

The guidance should contain specific advice on such aspects as: page layout, common navigation positioning, image treatment, font and HTML/CSS usage and image content, and should be provided for multiple devices and platforms.

Guidance and Standards

Providing people with the information they information they need to make good decision.

A key theme of the strategy is to change the governance methodology of the web strategy from one of command and control to a more disseminated model where staff are informed and skilled enough to make good decisions on the ground.

This will necessitate the creation and adoption of numerous sets of guidance and governance documents and processes. It is incredibly important that these are understood and adopted and so they should be designed in collaboration with the people who will be using them and be documented to be easy to understand.

How do parts of the Local Authority fit together?

Knowing who is responsible for what is a fundamental need of the community.

There should be a clear map showing lines of management through the authority and where democratic accountability is placed. This should include an indication of how engagement systems such as petitions tie in, which committees have oversight of which services, what powers are vested in which posts and the like. The democratic process including information on election frequency, ward boundaries etcetera will also need to be shown on the map.