A Review of Local Government on the Web

In May 1996 Centreline 2000 reviewed all registered Local Authority World Wide Web sites. Our review aimed to identify the best of the web sites to promote the use of the web and acknowledge the excellence of those authorities.

Our winning sites were:

Overall Winner: Western Isles Council

Style & Design:

Winner: Newcastle City Council

Runners-Up: Liverpool City Council

Mendip District Council

Content and Information:

Winner: St. Albans District Council

Runners-Up: Wansbeck District Council

Birmingham City Council

Also of note:

Weymouth: (www.weymouth.gov.uk)

Chester: (www.worldserver.pipex.com/chestercc/htmls/)

LB of Lewisham: (www.lewisham.gov.uk)

We also found a disheartening number of very poor sites, which did their owning authority a complete disservice. There were no less than 11 of the 41 sites that we felt should be disconnected until they have been improved.

The World Wide Web offers Local Authorities a powerful opportunity to promote their region. Clearly, each authority has its own agenda and the web should be part of both it's promotional and information activities. Authorities could be using the web to:

• Promote inward investment
• Help town centre regeneration
• Encourage local business
• Provide health and education services
• Maximise tourist potential
• Provide local and council information

The web provides an audience of ten’s of millions world-wide - Local Authorities should be exploiting this opportunity to encourage inward investment to their region. One of our winners, Newcastle, reported they had significant activity at their web site from Siemens and Philips in Germany. This was just prior to the two companies announcing major new manufacturing facilities in the city.

Web sites focused geographically provide a wonderful opportunity to encourage intra-region commerce. These sites should be providing a low-cost marketing vehicle for local businesses.

Web sites offer a cost-effective means of delivering large volumes of regional information. This should include content that is of high value to the public.

Local authorities currently spend millions on printed literature - much of that is suitable for web publishing. Savings in reduced print runs would amount to ten’s of thousands of pounds per annum.

The web is not just a one-way vehicle - the Internet provides a two-way channel - yet no authority was making use of this feature. Authorities should be using the web to gain valuable feedback and encourage constituency involvement with the council.

The majority of the sites we reviewed were failing on more counts than they were succeeding.

Many sites were dull, unfinished and untended. The worst case, but not atypical, was the site with 2 pages that had been "under construction" for 2 years.

Most sites failed to promote any economic development.

Most sites failed to deliver any useful information

Most sites failed to provide any feedback capability

Most of the sites appear to be the local authority equivalent of vanity publishing. For the majority there was no clear objective other than to have a web address.

It is understandable at this stage of the web’s development that a number of these sites were marked as "experimental". However, many of these trials had been running for over a year and had not crossed the threshold to being an accepted part of the council information service.

The web is an exciting new tool with enormous potential that should be used by every Local Authority. There is no equivalent method of delivering cost-effective mass communication.

Those Authorities that have no Internet and World Wide Web strategy need to define one quickly. Their neighbours - and competitors - will be doing so. For those Authorities already hosting web sites they should actively review their web strategy.

Our Local Government Web Site Review shows that the best of the web sites are good and using the medium to good advantage. Sadly it also revealed a high number of poor web sites.

At present the potential of the web for local authorities is clearly under used. All the standard benefits of the web such as low-cost, timeliness, content, world-wide audience are applicable to local authorities.

Western Isles Council was selected as our Overall Winner of our web site review. The Western Isles are a small group of islands off the coast of Scotland. They were selected because their site was interesting and appealing. There was sufficient content to make it a useful visit.

All the key contact information was presented, along with some interesting looks at features of the area. Overall we felt that the visit to the site was a welcoming and worthwhile visit.

The site is bi-lingual offering both English and Gaelic versions of the pages. The site is a simple black background with text colour changes to add variety from page to page. It looked attractive and was quick to load.

Significantly the site did not suffer from failings of larger, and more heavily funded sites, namely no heavy "waffle" factor, no broken links or errors and no over-large graphics.

http://www.open.gov.uk/westisle/wiichome.htm

Newcastle City Council was selected as winner of the Style and Design Award. Their opening front page was clear and bright.

The designers had used the Internet to best advantage, with much of the site actually being developed and held on other web sites. This has enabled them to create a very powerful resource for the Newcastle community - without having to generate all the material themselves.

The site also offers a selection of six other languages, Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu. Full marks for such a broad coverage.

http://www.newcastle-city-council.gov.uk/

The City and District of St. Albans secured our Content Award. There was a very wide range of positive information about the St. Albans area. The content selection was well categorised and worthwhile.

Alongside more generalised information there were good sections on business within the community and leisure and pleasure activities.

The site is clearly being updated on a regular basis, a very important feature, and offered reasons for coming back. The "since history began" What’s New page shows a very active and developing site.

http://www.worldserver.pipex.com/stalbans/

Liverpool City Council and Mendip District Council were our runners-up in the Style awards.

The Liverpool site had a stylish design, carried through the pages well, in particular the opening front page was reminiscent of more commercial sites. Liverpool also had an audio welcome to the site.

The Mendips was a gentle site, you felt it was true to its location with gentle rolling countryside forming its menu structure. Sadly a note on this site reports its originator has left the council and the site has not been updated for some time.

Liverpool: http://www.connect.org.uk/liv_council/public/

Mendip: http://www.mendip.gov.uk/

Wansbeck Public Information System and Birmingham City Council took the runners-up places in our Content Award.

Wansbeck had a wide range of information and even ran its own newsgroup - although sadly most Internet services providers would not make this available. The site had both search facilities and sitemap - making it much easier to find the information required.

Birmingham’s site covers a lot of ground and is updated frequently. While not presenting the detailed level of information at some sites it did provide a broad spectrum at a higher level.

Wansbeck: http://ww.ace.co.uk/CityCard/

Birmingham: http://birmingham.gov.uk/

Weymouth and Portland shone out like a beacon in our review for having a clearly identified objective and purpose, namely to get you to visit Weymouth. The site was ultimately disqualified from being an award winner because it was felt that this was entirely a Tourist Board site, rather than the local authority’s site.

The site was a little overburdened with longs lists of selections, but everything you wanted to know to plan, book and enjoy your holiday was presented.

Technically the site was well managed. It was quick to view, with plenty of attractive photographs that did not take an age to download. The site was unique in offering a mirror site in case you had problems.

It never lost site of its purpose, with numerous routes to book holidays, including regular mentions of freephone numbers and even a discount to Cityscape Internet subscribers - although why other ISP’s were excluded we don't know.

The biggest problem is the rather obscure site name, as witnessed below:

http://www.gold.net/users/cx47

We identified eleven sites that we felt should be taken off-line now. They do their authorities a disservice and are an embarrassment to them.

We were surprised to find four sites that consisted of just one or two poor pages. These were not sites under development, but in 2 cases sites over 12 months old. The message from these authorities is clear, "We don’t care".

There were seven sites that had managed more than a couple of pages, but then had ground to a halt. The page content was dull, uninteresting and badly put together. Again these sites should be taken off-line until they can be replaced by something better.

All too often we found "Under Construction" on pages that had not been updated for months. We also found numerous dead-end links leading to empty pages. This just may be excusable to sites under-going daily updates. It is not acceptable on sites not being actively developed.

Even on some of our winning sites we found broken links within the site. It is understood that it is not always possible to maintain correct links to sites around the world that are always moving. There is no excuse for broken connections internal to the authority's site.

This review did not show local authorities in a positive light. Just like any other form of media publishing these web sites reflect upon the authorities themselves, and in most cases reflected badly.

Without wishing to take anything away from our winners, no site was perfect. Even some of our winners had a number of significant flaws within the site.

In the following pages we hope to show where sites are going wrong, and highlight the positive findings. By eliminating the bad and accentuating the good local authority sites could become a beneficial service for both the authority and its constituents.

These overall failings explain why most of the web sites are recording only a few visitors a week. The Centreline 2000 web site recorded more visitors in its first two weeks than a number of these sites have achieved in 6 months.

Only five sites showed any clear objective or purpose. We believe many sites fail today because they have no objective and so become a dull, random collection.

Authorities should approach their web site like any other publishing media - professionally. Given the potential multi-million audience and the likely long-term costs of running a web-site that authorities are not taking this issue seriously.

These objectives are many and varied, for example:

• Public Information and involvement
• Promotion of inward investment
• Encouraging town centre regeneration
• Enhanced education services
• Cost effective access to public domain information
• Reduction of service calls and cost of handling

A single site can focus on one or many objectives, but there must be a purpose behind each web site and each major component within the site.

What we found, time and again, was the 90’s equivalent of vanity publishing. Convoluted details of the inner workings of the council are not of interest to the majority of the constituents or the wider audience.

When reviewing which information to publish, Web site designers would do well to ask the reception staff which information is most commonly requested. The web site should serve to deliver the most useful information first.

The web site also serves to market - a theme we will return to later. Despite many authorities having a range of marketing materials prepared - and often whole marketing departments - little of this is shown on their web sites.

Good web sites are typically active, developing and ever-changing. Visitors return to the site regularly to find new information and current information. If the site is to provide an active service to the constituents, it must be kept current.

We found sites where the "What’s On" page (a good indicator) listed events months old. We found lists of councillors retired in last years elections. We even found a site for an authority that no longer exists!

Many of the sites had failed to address the technical issues around Web publishing. The gratuitous use of over-sized graphics makes a web-site slow to view and navigate, and over a third of the audience cannot view graphics on their web browsing software.

Many times we found graphic images that took a minute or more to download. Applying the correct graphics preparation tools would reduce these load times to seconds.

The failure of internal links between pages on the site was all too common. It is like reading a book with pages missing. The use of validation tools would quickly eliminate this problem.

Most sites offered the chance to send electronic mail to the sites' designers. A number of sites offered "Visitors Books". Strangely, unlike their physical namesake, or their equivalent on other web sites, only two sites allowed you to view the visitors book.

Interactivity is another key attribute of a popular site. This lack of interaction shows up in stark relief when compared to any active web site.

This lack of interaction also misses a major opportunity to allow constituents to directly participate in local democracy and decision making.

We targeted only 41 web sites - identified from the CCTA directory, the UK Local Government Directory, the Alogic Local Government Directory and our own directory. Yet we are aware of other sites by word of mouth, or finding references to them as we reviewed the 41.

Failure to register the site at any of the appropriate locations means that it is almost impossible to find an authority's site. Authorities failing to publicise their site are wasting all their effort and expense.

Over one third of all sites did not have their own domain name registration or required non-standard naming to find the site. For example:

http://www.gold.net/users/cx47 or http://www.cityscape.co.uk/users/bd90

These would be better identified using their own names of Weymouth and Newcastle-Under-Lyme.

Over 90% of all sites clearly had no means of managing the site in the long-term. Although there are a number of tools and practices available these are not being used. In consequence these sites are difficult and time consuming to maintain and develop. They are likely to contain multiple errors.

Deployment of tools would ensure accuracy and validation. Hand coding of each page would be eliminated. Style changes could be made across the web site in minutes.

The biggest failing of sites in our review was a clear lack of objective for the site. Clear objectives ensure that the time and expense is clearly directed and the outcome can be measured.

The objective allows the web creation staff to determine the type, depth and priority of the information required.

If the site has several objectives, it may be necessary to sub-section the site. For example, economic development could be separate from social services.

The site should have a consistent appearance to it - which may be tied to the current authority house style. Multiple departments may be responsible for development of site content - this should be cleared through a single editorial point.

Valuable content is the key requirement of a useful web site. Content should be matched against the objectives for the site. The content must represent valuable information - not a mass of worthless data.

Content should change and be updated frequently. Sites that are static and unchanging give the impression of lack of care. The medium is not like printed matter.

The site should provide clear pointers as to where users browsing can find information and how the user should move through sequences of information.

Links to other sites are a useful way of increasing the value of the web site - within reason. Only use pertinent and relevant links. Only link to other quality sites. Links away from a web site should be clearly marked

The web technology provides many opportunities for gratuitous technical displays. These displays are often to the detriment of the value within the site.

Many users will be connected using slow modem connections. A web site should be responsive regardless of the speed of connection. Similarly facilities within the site, such as databases or searches, must execute quickly.

Visitors to a web site should be able to contact the web creators at a minimum. However, this undervalues the opportunity for constituents to communicate directly with council officials.

Many web sites also provide on-line forums for discussion on relevant topics - this provides a useful service as well as an increase in web site usage.

Finally, allowing constituents to post their own information to a site reduces the overhead of site management. For example, What’s On pages could be generated by the venue's management directly over the web, rather than involving council staff in data preparation.

The content and purpose behind a web site are similar to other, traditional forms of media - in particular printed matter and advertising. However, it is a different media and needs to be treated as such.

There are a small number of technical tricks that can and should be applied to make a successful web site.

• Manage graphics size and formats for best response
• Do not overuse the linking capability
• Navigational clues within pages should be used to assist the reader
• Sitemaps and tables of content are valuable pointers to information
• There should be components that change daily or weekly to provide current information.
• The first screen is important and should be used to best effect.

A web site of any significant size cannot be managed "by hand". Automated tools should be used to reduce the overhead of maintaining the site. There are a number of off-the-shelf tools available to assist, but some will need to be developed.

Automation should be used to manage:

• Daily and weekly changes of information
• Link checking and integrity validation
• Source code control
• Data and document format conversion

There is a clear distinction between the authoring of content based web pages within a web site and the programming required to provide additional facilities. Programming will be required to provide forum access, database usage, search facilities, interaction and feedback.

The technology around web development and delivery is rapidly changing. New technologies are being introduced weekly. Technical staff must be in a situation to keep abreast and use technology advances.

Web browsers are software programs used by users on their computers to view a web site. There are a number of different browsers on the market and each offers different levels of functionality. Web sites designed for the best of the browsers can yield unintelligible results on some browsers. One alternative is to design to the lowest common denominator, but this can result in a drab web site. The better alternative is to provide multiple format output at the time of request using special programming.

Search sites are the route maps for the World Wide Web. Our survey covered about half of the web sites believed to be available because these were the only web sites registered at key locations.

On the 18th of April we collated all the local authority web sites registered at the CCTA, the UK Directory, the Alogic Local Government Directory and our own local government directory. In all there were 41 sites.

Using special software we then downloaded all the web sites to a single off-line computer. This created a "snap-shot", freezing the status of all the web-sites.

We then examined each of the sites in turn, recording them in a standard format. Each site was awarded ratings in a number of categories - in particular for specific items of information content.

If a web site was not registered at one of the four sites above then it was not included. We did identify further sites as the review progressed. We felt their inclusion would be unfair, since they had passed the snap-shot. We also feel strongly that any site not registered with the CCTA at least is not fully serious about providing a web presence.

We recognise that good sites change often, and we re-visited all the short-listed sites before selecting our final winners. However, any changes to their site since the snap-shot are not recorded in the main appendix Individual Site Reviews and Statistics.

There were a number of places within the many sites that stood out as interesting, well executed or simply fun.

The production credit goes to "GeebInt and SpudGun Production" - an internal IT team.

A "What Shall We Do Today" search that finds the nearest place of interest based on your holiday location and means of transport.

A "Surprising Facts" page that did have some surprises.

A local route map for finding the Civic Centre.

A "What’s On" page that was full and covered the whole year.

A listing of council staff electronic mail addresses, as well more normal telephone extensions.

Intelligent use of links to other resources on the front page

A very attractive picture of a waterfall.

Two interesting and different topic areas: Archive and Roadworks.

An ecology section that was well done.

Lengthy history of changes under "What’s New" shows a long and active life

Crossword puzzles and a Lottery Number generator. The former was fun, but we question the latter at a site that also has extensive details on claiming benefits.

Under the emergency services pages it starts "Don’t Panic".

The site Surrey Link has a different objective to most of the web sites. It is trying to be an "umbrella" location for businesses, clubs, services and associations within the Surrey area.

This recognises that many small organisations would have no effective presence on the web in their own right. Yet, by placing these organisations under a larger umbrella they can make use of the Web in an effective fashion.

http://www.surreycc.gov.uk/

"Lewisham’s People’s Web" is a valiant attempt to try and close the gap between the information "rich" and "poor".

The web site itself is only a part of a larger program to provide access facilities within public buildings and to community groups. All this serves to build a greater access for all.

The overall site was well liked by all the reviewers - the objective behind the site was one of the interesting aspects.

http://www.lewisham.gov.uk/

The following tables summarise our standardised review of each web site.

These do not correlate with the awards that were selected by jury. Each jury selected site was further reviewed and marked down for problems noted at the site.

There are three summaries provided:

• Design Summary
• Content Summary
• Overall Rating

www.open.gov.uk/welwyn/whhome.htm

Welwyn Hatfield Council

www.open.gov.uk/welwyn/whhome.htm

Welwyn Hatfield Council

www.open.gov.uk/welwyn/whhome.htm

If you have any questions or would like further information then please do not hesitate to contact us.

Centreline 2000 Consulting

PO Box 2000

Pershore

Worcs

WR10 3YZ

07000 882001

info@c2000.com

www.c2000.com

We have a number of special pages devoted to Local Government needs and requirements. We provide links to the winners of our Local Government Web Site of the Year award. The site also contains a longer listing of registered Local Government Web Sites and you may register your own site there. Finally, there are a number of white papers and support documents discussing local authority web usage.