CouncilView at 2010 Local Government Technology Conference
Datalink will be giving a short case study of CouncilView at the 2010 Local Government Technology Solutions Conference: "Navigating the Path of Change".
The conference is co-ordinated by the Municipal Association of Victoria and is being held on 12 - 13 August 2010 at Sofitel Melbourne On Collins with representatives from about 50 councils from around Victoria likely to attend.
Datalink's Managing Director, Scott Davey will present "Web Innovation" including CouncilView.
City of Maribyrnong signs up with CouncilView
The City of Maribyrnong has signed up for CouncilView. An initiative of the communications department, Maribyrnong City Council will use CouncilView to provide a map based view of local services for residents.
The City of Maribyrnong is a Local Government Area located within the metropolitan area of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It comprises the inner western suburbs between 5 and 10 kilometres from the Melbourne city centre. It was formed in 1994 from the merger of the City of Footscray and part of the City of Sunshine.
According to Local Government Victoria, Maribyrnong has the second most ethnically diverse population in Victoria, with 40% of residents born outside Australia. At the 2006 Census, Maribynong had a population of 63,141.
City of Wyndham launches first CouncilView
Wyndham City Council is the first in Victoria to pilot the innovative CouncilView application.
Wyndham has two CouncilViews launched to councide with a website redesign.
Branded "My Local Services" by Community Services, CouncilView allows residents to enter their postcard and receive map based views and content of their nearest services.
Branded "Experience Wyndham" by Visitor Services, CouncilView allows visitors to receive map based views of local events, attractions and facilities.
The City of Wyndham is a Local Government Area in Victoria, Australia, located in the outer south-western suburbs of Melbourne, between Melbourne and the regional city of Geelong. It has an area of 542 square kilometres (209 sq mi) and at the 2006 Census Wyndham had a population of 112,695.
Comments (0)Council e-Services - the current state of play
In introducing CouncilView to the market, we looked at the current state of play of e-services among many of the local councils in Victoria and found things lacking in key areas.
So we thought we would list some of the few councils that have implemented Web2.0 type functionality and online e-services and give them a quick scorecard. If you know of other councils with such systems, feel free to comment below.
Bayside City Council
Bayside City Council has a section of its site called "My Local Area" which aims to engage local residents and was developed by Aussoft Solutions in 2007. It is linked prominently from the homepage menu and redirects to an "Online Maps" section.
It is not integrated well with the website, it takes users to many new windows before finally arriving at the mapserver/MyAddress page. This page can be incredibly frustrating for users. The address finder does not accept many address combinations. The map is slow to respond and clunky resembling the sort of GIS that planning officers spend years getting degrees in. Novice web users are presented with redundant technical options such as "pan" and "drag" and "zoom". You have to really know what you are looking for (such as bin times) to get the most out of this system.
While this is a good effort, there are a few issues with this system, CouncilView offers a far superior user experience with its simplified postcode/address wizard an easy to use Google Maps interface.
Shire of Yarra Ranges
The Shire of Yarra Ranges which is based on MapInfo and recently added using Intramaps software's MyControl system. As well as a general map which is reasonably usable, this is used to power an e-tool called "Find your Collection Day" which allows residents to put in their street address and returns there waste collection times with a simple map based view of their property.
However the application does not tell users other useful information, such as their local councillor, local facilities and attractions.
Ballarat City Council
Ballarat City Council has a set of useful "e-tools" which are also linked off the homepage including the "Bin Collection Calendar", "eMap" (for local attractions and "Bus Distance Calculator" for public transport inforamtion.
While these tools are quite usable, they are disparate and not presented in a single convenient screen. Additionally, while they claim to pass WAG Level A and AA accessibility requirements we were able to find basic problems with the accessibility which lead us to believe that while the rest of the website may, the e-tools themselves do not comply. It also appears as if significant expense (internally or by a contractor) has been made setting these up as custom tools, however the investment would be recouped from significant call centre savings.
While this is one of the better systems out there, CouncilView would provide all of these functions from a single usable screen, saving much time for users and simplifying their searches.
Wyndham City Council
Wyndham City Council uses Datalink's CouncilView for both its "My Local Services" and "Experience Wyndham" sections of the website and is much easier to use with a single address wizard to save the details for the user's postcode. The Google Maps integration is much more intuitive than custom built GIS style systems.
Counclusions
The Local Government market is really begging for an application that can provide an easy one-stop-shop for residents online. Few councils were found to have such systems and the few that exist were rarely done well. The potential net cost savings in call centre costs across the sector is massive. CouncilView is that solution.
Comments (0)Linking CouncilView to your Website
When implementing an e-services tool such as CouncilView is easy with a simple hyperlink being all that is required, one of the first decisions from a communications or public relations perspective is how best to link in the system with your website.
Here are some quick tips.
On the Homepage
Putting some sort of link or banner on the homepage is probably the easiest option. This is because users will usually start here and then look for easy ways to interact with council services.
City of Ballarat uses this method with its e-tools section.
An attractive graphical banner could be created or a panel utilising the Content Management System (CMS) in use by council.
However there are some downsides to this approach. Firstly consider that residents will not be the only audience of your website. There are businesses and other audiences too for which these tools would not be useful. You don't want to clutter your homepage with too many options which may distract or discourage users.
In a Navigation Menu
Putting a link in the main menu is generally not a great idea as the main menu should be reserved for important content. Bayside City Council takes the bold step of making resident focused ("Your Local Area" however is not a CouncilView implementation) content the first item in the main menu.
Putting it in a secondary menu can also be an acceptable idea. Secondary menus, such as the one one usually used for functional navigation (Tenders, Payments, Community Directory) is probably a better idea, however the problem is that it is the sort of information that people will not necessary look for or expect to find.
On Every Page
It is generally not advisable to put the link on every page, as mentioned before, not all page visitors will require to use it.
However quicklinks or functional secondary navigation could be used to link to the CouncilView mini-site.
On every council website, however, there should be tools, such as search, sitemap, alphabetical index to allow content to be found by any page and in any case such an application should ideally be able to be found easily by these inbuilt navigation tools.
Section Quicklinks
Wyndham City Council takes a subtle approach of putting in "Popular Pages" (or Quicklinks) within the residents section. On the Wyndham site, quicklinks actually appears as part of an innovative and dynamic Web2.0 styled navigation. While the link may appear to some to be hidden within the site, it actually works quite well in filtering the audience and highlighting the availability of the e-service.
Offline Marketing
Another option is to market the application offline. This reduces the need to have the link feature heavily on the website and will target residents who habitually interact with council in ways that are resource intensive (such as phoning the call centre or writing letters). A special URL that is easy to remember could be emailed or sent in the post.
The advantage of CouncilView over other systems is that this URL can be easily made user friendly. Other applications will have cryptic difficult to type in URLs such as http://etools.ballarat.vic.gov.au/COBWebTools2/BusDistance/default.aspx while CouncilView can be accessed from a URL such as http://www.wyndham.vic.gov.au/residents/home/my_services or myservices.wyndham.vic.gov.au
Conclusions
As discussed, there are no right or wrong ways to approach linking in your CouncilView or e-Services applications. It will depend on your own situation, the system you use and your website's information architecture. It will also not likely make or break the success of the application. A combination of these could be used just as effectively.
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