Setting the scene & challenges
In tough times what can the UK public sector’s “digital community” do to support each other and move forward in lateral ways? When there is little or no money, what resources can we all bring together to ensure results and support? This was the theme of the Digital Momentum in the Public Sector meeting on 3rd September 2010.
IBF has been involved with the public sector since 2004, starting with a usability benchmark with a small group of public sector organisations. Public sector intranets have generally improved but the question is how organisations can maintain this momentum in more austere times.
There are many parallels in the challenges faced by both central government, local authority and charity organisations and some of those challenges include:
• How to support collaboration and crowdsourcing
• Meeting the expectations of increasingly digitally savvy users/ distinguishing between what people want and what they will actually use
• Providing a seamless experience to the user/ need to rationalise multiple intranets and tools
• Varying degrees of openness to social media depending on culture
• Implementing SharePoint
• Senior management buy-in to the intranet and social media in particular
• Increasing need to support flexible working as pressure on physical office space grows
• Pioneering the digital/ information workplace rather than just the intranet
• Restrictions of GSI platform for social media/ open source
• No internet access for some areas of government
• Closing the gap between new collaboration tools and legacy intranet environments
Benchmarking the public sector since 2004
IBF benchmarker and usability expert, Louise Kennedy, discussed some analysis of public sector benchmarking over the last six years. Highlights included:
• The biggest improvements have been in visual design and consistency
• Least change has been in engagement and content
• User satisfaction scores have gone down somewhat. Possibly due to users becoming more sophisticated and demanding/ or visual changes being more superficial.
• Public sector score well in accessibility, the private sector has been playing catch-up in this area.
One area of particular importance that emerged from the meeting was the ability to extract metrics from benchmarking. An example was given from a recent member benchmark of how the organisation was able to demonstrate time savings achieved as a result of improving efficiency scores in usability benchmarking.
Two major themes that IBF has identified from public sector strategic perspective interviews are:
• Employees still feel that the intranet is top down
• Senior management buy-in is still an issue
Participants at the meeting discussed specific issues in break out groups and all participants will receive a full resources pack. IBF will continue to help the public sector maintain digital momentum moving forward.
If you would like further information on how IBF is working with the public sector please contact Karen Gurvis: Karen@ibforum.com
