Comments on: Evaluation of ‘Improving Government Online’ Review

By: New kids on the blog

New kids on the blog — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:40:32 +0000

[...] Having first dipped their toes in the stream of wider public interest with a Twitter account and online consultation on website costs and quality measures, the team has now launched an official blog. And from the [...]

By: Welcome to Digigov! | Digigov

Welcome to Digigov! | Digigov — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:52:36 +0000

[...] For further details of the review, see fellow COI blogger Ross Ferguson’s excellent evaluation. [...]

By: Ross Ferguson

Ross Ferguson — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:08:33 +0000

Neil – thanks for the feedback on the evaluation, and I’m sure the Digital Policy team will appreciate it to. It was very handy to have had the previous examples by the likes of Steph and yourself to follow in the set up, and hopefully this evaluation will add something to that mix. Albeit, it is a bit text heavy :)

Alex – that is a picture from a Barcelona beach gym. I managed 12 before my girlfriend got bored. Please do let us know about the bid. I know that there has been some fairly regular use of ‘commentable documents’ in local authorities for a few years now. But the platforms have often been proprietary and the costs high. Now with a very stable and effective alternative available, will there be a significant increase?

By: alex

alex — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:54:13 +0000

Hi Ross

Are you missing the hills ? Pull ups instead.

Being of the school of re-use, I am going to incorporate some of this into a bid to a local authority

Will let you know how it goes

Cheers

Alex

By: neilojwilliams

neilojwilliams — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:58:01 +0000

Ross, this is supremely admirable (and shows up my nods towards evaluation of my own consultation exercises for exactly what they are).

I think it was a textbook use of the tools – in particular adding the User Voice feedback overlay and responding near-instantaneously to the comments you received. And this is a thorough and thoughtful evaluation. So end to end, it was an exemplary online consultation. As it probably needed to be, given COI’s role.

Great that you’ll be using the same approach for future guidance docs – which must be reward enough, but I hope you’ll get the credit you deserve for pushing this innovation and seeing it through.

@Steph – WP-Post Ratings is probably the plugin for the job?

By: FutureGov » Useful links » links for 2009-06-02

FutureGov » Useful links » links for 2009-06-02 — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 13:02:34 +0000

[...] Evaluation of ‘Improving Government Online’ Review « BASIC CRAFT "COI ran a consultative review of guidance on measuring website costs, quality and usage. The Review started on 27 March 2009 and ran for a period of three weeks under the banner of ‘Improving Government Online’…" (tags: government engagement poi coi gov20) [...]

By: Ross Ferguson

Ross Ferguson — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 08:09:32 +0000

They don’t call you Steph ‘Helpful technology’ Gray for nothing!

By: Steph Gray

Steph Gray — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:47:07 +0000

Great write-up Ross, and sounds like you and team had a very positive experience. That you evaluated it so thoroughly is both rare and incredibly valuable.

the fourth point related to features of the ‘Commentariat’ theme and was not actionable by the team.

… but hopefully I can help :) You can certainly display ‘recent commenters’ in a sidebar using the functionality and special page template in Commentariat 1.4. Getting users to rate posts to come up with a ‘popularity’ measure is very interesting – for long documents it could mean the commenting community can easily identify the really interesting stuff to look at. I’d imagine that’s little more than a star rating plugin plus a template/addition to the home page sidebar. Will have a play around…