The web must fully support a strategy for personalisation and choice.
This means that:
It must be clear what services the Local Authority provides and how users can access them. This requires detailed design of the user journey which delivers the service. Services (and all potential synonyms) must be have a privileged place in search results.
Services, and the portfolios that manage them, must have “homes” on the website. This means pages designed to be usable and welcoming with a persistent location.
Language differences are a barrier to connecting people and information. Providing the following facilities for language translation will improve the cohesion across Local Authority services.
Local Authority activity must be consumable by individuals, content aggregators and publishers they way they need it. Content curators should push relevant news up through the site’s hierarchy. This activity in itself can be hierarchical. Pull news should be provided by providing generic and specific news feeds, email subscriptions and other notifications. Tools should be evaluated to provide these services in tandem with event and press release information in useful formats and with the maximum re-use of relevant content.
Knowledge may be power, but too much information stops you from gaining any insight into it. The Local Authority’s website should provide the ability for users to choose what information they wish to see and the information should displayed in ways that allow it to be understood quickly. This implies the need for a consistent dashboard interface data using visualisation techniques and good interface design practises. Dashboards as a collection of widgets, often overlaid on the pages they refer to, are an engaging way of showing metadata, analytics etc.
The Connected City 