Big news on potential revisions to requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) may affect local governments and their websites. While Federal agencies must comply with ADA rules on making their websites accessible to people with disabilities, local governments are currently not required (well, technically they are if they receive Federal funds).
The U.S. Department of Justice announced that it is considering revising ADA regulations to establish specific requirements for State and local governments.
From the government web administrator’s perspective, I’ll tell you that it’s never a question of – why should we care about doing that? We all want our websites to be accessible to everyone, period. Instead, the issue always revolves around the ability, cost and ultimate usability of ensuring complete accessibility. Content management systems (CMS) that help generate webpages are just one component. In many cases the CMS is just the shell of the website, especially for large communities offering numerous services. Many of our websites interface with multiple proprietary systems for permitting, payment systems, and you name it. This will be an interesting discussion for sure, and I’m looking forward to watching it unfold.
So the DOJ wants to know what everyone thinks. They are “seeking information regarding what standards, if any, it should adopt for website accessibility.” They say comments will be available for public review at www.regulations.gov.
There are only a few more days to enter your government website in the Pinnacle award competition. This isn’t one of those award programs where your entrance fee is basically paying for your guaranteed trophy. This is a hard core competition sponsored by the experts – the National Association of Government Webmasters.
A new category this year for state government websites opens up the competition even more. The Pinnacles are also open to local, regional and county government sites. Over at Reno.gov, we placed 2nd in the competition, as well as won the very cool “Member’s Choice” award back in 2007.
I’m hoping small business owners and entrepreneurs at heart will weigh in here. If you’re like me, you have half a dozen ideas at any given time for great new start-up businesses (well, some of them great). My passions are local government, web technology & communication, and public speaking. I’m always dreaming up ways to create a start-up that combines the fields I love and helps communities at the same time….. well that, and make a profit too.
Hence my dilemma. If I truly wanted to assist local governments across the country, I should just start a non-profit right? Can there be an acceptable place in between public service and a bottom-line oriented, profit-making enterprise?
Many new vendors out there are harnessing the power of the Gov2.0 movement and offering services for governments such as open data platforms, crowdsourcing tools, mobile apps, mashup products and the like. Many of these products don’t come cheap in a cash-strapped economy. And let’s not forget that the recent Gov2.0 Expo in Washington DC wasn’t exactly a non-profit venture.
So businesses are profiting from Gov2.0. But wait, small businesses are the backbone of America, right? Aren’t start-ups (and the profits & taxes that follow) the thing that’s going to give our economy and government the boost it needs? Or, should motives be different when you’re talking about services for the public good?
Somebody talk me into it, because I’m still hoping to write that business plan…
(Please note an update at the end of this article.) There has been a lot of discussion lately by everyone from IT staff to policy-makers at every level from local to federal agencies – on the topic of whether or not to block social media access to employees on the job.
My opinion (although unpopular at the moment) is in favor of blocking these sites. Please feel free to comment and lay out your point if you have another view – this issue certainly isn’t black and white.
Why in the world would a forward-thinking (I can call me whatever I want on my own blog) government web manager support such a restrictive practice?
First, I believe that SM blocking should take place only in the presence of two conditions.
Staff with the job of monitoring and posting to the SM sites should be given unrestricted access.
The government agency’s own presence on SM sites should either be unblocked to all employees, or should be pulled in to the agency’s employee intranet site. (ex. Pull your agency’s Twitter feed into the intranet; have IT unblock only your agency’s YouTube Channel)
Addressing Counter-Arguments
Why should social media sites be blocked to staff in other cases? Let me start by addressing some of the counter-arguments I have heard.
“Social media sites are just another communication tool – like email, phone, text messages, etc. Those tools aren’t blocked to staff – why should Facebook & Twitter be blocked?”
One big difference is that communications made via FB & Twitter are forever in the public timeline. However, employee emails, phone conversations and texts are not readily viewable by the general public (under normal circumstances). Why is this important? Well, which would you rather deal with – It’s 10 a.m. and your on-the-clock staff member is texting their friend about how bored they are at work today – or It’s 10 a.m. and your on-the-clock staff member publicly posts on Facebook how bored they are at their city job. The reality is that the second scenario is much more in-your-face. Or, in your taxpayers face.
“Social media abuse should be handled as an employee/manager/reprimand issue with consequences, instead of blocking use for ALL staff members.”
True that staff abuse of any privilege should come with sanctions. But what does non-abuse of Facebook, YouTube & Twitter look like? On it for 5 minutes a day, 30 minutes a day? I can think of a lot of really important reasons to need to use that city fax machine or make that long distance call (need to close on a loan, fax escrow docs to your lender, get a last-minute ride home, etc.). But I can’t think of one possible reason for NEEDING to post on my Facebook page at work. So what would a legit purpose for social media use at work look like? You need to be able to define what legitimate use is before you can say that abuse practices will be handled in a certain way.
“Ok, maybe social media shouldn’t be used on official government time, but what about breaks and over lunch?”
I don’t see a problem with this, but why should the agency be on the hook for providing the hardware and internet connection for it? Plus, you wouldn’t want to get into monitoring who’s on break and who’s not. Many people who are active on social media sites also connect to them via their mobile devices – can’t we just let staff access Facebook on their break using their cell phones?
My biggest issue with social media use at work (specifically at a tax-payer funded job) is that the biggest contenders – Facebook, YouTube and Twitter – can be some of the biggest time-wasters. Sure, you can send around an email forward to 10 people and get some non-work conversation back and forth by a bunch of your friends. But this isn’t a typical and normal use for that medium at work. With Facebook though, almost EVERYTHING you post is designed to encourage non-work conversation back and forth by a bunch of your friends. See the difference?
And then there’s YouTube. A huge bandwidth-eater with tons of informational value – if people used it that way. Hey, I love a good squirrel video just as much as the next person, but at work I saw how YouTube was being used and I pushed for restricted access to solely our government channel. Now, if we can just shoot a good squirrels-teaching-about-city-budget video, we can all be happy.
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Update to article: June 30, 2010
Twenty-one comments later, and a gazillion tweets… I wouldn’t say I’m a convert, but some good points and arguments were shared. For someone with basically a ‘how-to’ blog, I was a little nervous making what I knew would be my first unpopular post. To my pleasant surprise, everyone politely disagreed. Strongly, but politely. Good folks here trying to do what’s right. Thanks for taking the time to comment, I read all of them.
I would say that I agree with most of the philosophical themes in the comments (i.e. you should trust employees, problem should only be if staff isn’t getting work done, social media can help staff do their jobs, we should be communicating same way the public is, and happier workers are more productive workers.)
So, philosophically I generally agree. The challenge for me is how these things look in practice. And remember, I’m talking specifically government agencies here.
Our story
Let me share a few more details. Facebook, before we blocked it, was the #1 most visited site by our staff, at least 10 times above the next most popular. Our IT staff faced a huge bandwidth challenge. We were at 95% capacity and slow internet connection was noticeable – the same connection used by our cops on their mobile police car devices. IT was looking at paying huge bucks monthly to bump up our connection. Then they purchased a traffic restriction device and blocked the biggest offenders, including Facebook and YouTube (excluding our channel). Now we’re at 50 something percent capacity, and we avoided paying for more bandwidth. Bottom line costs become extremely important when you’re talking about a city government that has laid off 200 employees in the last year because of the economic crisis.
Teach them the right way
Several of the comments to my original post brought up the point that employee education and training is essential for the management of internal social media use. And… you’re probably right. I wonder if we introduced a program like this and slowly opened up SM access if it would work and we wouldn’t have such a problem with constant use. This would necessitate us clearly identifying what acceptable use looks like. Although, I’m still unclear on what it would look like. A minimal use policy as Steve mentioned seems appropriate.
All social media is not equal
I like the discussion about the nature of different social media channels being distinct, such as Bowen and others mentioned. I agree that Govloop and LinkedIn are totally different than Facebook. And that is different from Twitter use and purpose, and that is different from YouTube. I honestly want to say that we should treat them differently. Then Chris brought up a point warning to be careful of making a distinction between what social media goes in the ‘good’ and the ‘evil’ pile. I’m still on the fence on this one.
Why bother?
Regarding the issue of – why block, when employees can just use their smartphones – I do think there is a distinction. They’re using their own phones and internet service. Not using our bandwidth or risking our hardware getting viruses from bad SM apps. So they’ll get there anyway, but they won’t use city means. Get my drift, or am I way off here?
DOD does it
I think it’s difficult to compare other agencies to the DOD, especially local government. A huge part of their charge is recruiting young people to the military, so they absolutely want their staff to engage in those social networks. I think the public understands that. Lil old City of Reno is charged with providing public services and spending taxpayer money wisely in those efforts.
We’re a little different
Ok, be honest here. We’re a little different from many (but not all) of the staff members at our agencies. If you’re reading or commenting on this blog, it means that you are the type of person who actively engages in the up-and-coming topics in your profession. You care and you read blogs, you network with other professionals, you utilize these mediums for all you possibly can to do the best possible job you can. You…are a little different. I believe the norm for using Facebook at work is for posting random status updates to friends and reading & commenting on theirs, and to play those darn addictive apps. Every once in a while, the average staff person makes/utilizes a professional connection or gets a question answered on the job, but it’s not the typical use for this medium. The potential is there, but how many staff members are actually doing that? You are, but you’re a little different.
A final note I forgot to mention in my original post. We do temporarily unblock sites on an individual user basis when staff members indicate they need to do something job-related. Usually, it’s watching training videos available on YouTube.
Thanks again for the great discussion My little update here isn’t meant to gloss over some of the other great points made.
Every once in a while, I come across an online resource that just blows my mind and is destined to be added to my Favorites bar. The State of California Webtools website is one of these amazing sites.
A tweet from Carolyn Lawson tipped me off about the Webtools site, which is an outstanding collection of resources for government webmasters. Technically, it’s designed for webmasters from California agencies, but it’s available to the greater government web community, too.
The site features basic resources on web accessibility, usability and design – similar to sites like Usability.gov. But going beyond those fundamentals of good web development, Webtools delves into step-by-step ‘how-to’s’ on embedding sophisticated Google maps, creating a mobile stylesheet, incorporating YouTube videos, creating a widget, writing your own RSS feeds, getting started with social media – and tons more.
Frustrated with ‘resource’ websites that show you what’s possible as an end result, but never actually show you how to do it? Not Webtools. Here you’ll find code snippets, examples in practice, and even downloadable templates.
I’m not sure if this will work, but I thought I would put a request out there to the gov community to sponsor my travel! The Summit is designed to “bring together rising government leaders at the federal, state, and local level.” I think local government has an important voice, but unfortunately gets left out of the conversation at many national events.
The feds & fed-centered businesses are great at organizing government leadership events, but they typically happen near the US capital. Geography and travel budgets are a challenge to getting everyone involved. Especially the governments of the west, when events like this happen on the east coast.
P.S. Obviously, please note that if you sponsor my trip, as a government employee I still can’t endorse your product or take crazy perks like an Aruban vacation or anything. I *will* give you a hearty handshake and will tell people who sent me!
I’m not alone in the quest for Gov2.0 – friendly government websites, so I would like to ask the government web community for input and ideas on enhancements to Reno.gov. Please comment below with your suggestions and input!
Background
See how the City of Reno, Nevada website has changed over the years below.
1999
2000
2001
2005
2007
2009 to present day
Process & limitations
Considering my web budget has been slashed to $73 through July 2011 (I’m serious), I will have to work with accumulated maintenance hours with my contracted vendor. Certain layout & graphic changes are doable, but I can’t reinvent the wheel on my budget. I will do a basic wireframe for webpage layout, then use their expertise to massage the graphic design.
Reno.gov enhancement ideas
So here are my initial thoughts. I’m also requesting input from our internal Web Committee.
Optimize for 1024×768 screen resolution. Reno.gov is optimized for 800×600 (currently less than 4% of our site visitors).
The most important menu, “Self-Service”, is located ‘below the fold’. The service menu needs to have the most prominent location on the page.
Add our social media links. This is becoming standard for gov sites. Reno has tons of fans and followers on our social sites – imagine how many more we’ll draw in with links on our homepage.
Reduce size of rotating photo. Great for a gov site that receives a huge # of outside visits from potential tourists, but takes up a lot of prime real-estate. Also difficult to take photos that work well within this size.
Introduce ‘Live Chat’ link somewhere on the homepage for this new service. Must be in header to appear on all interior pages as well.
Simplify navigation. We’ve currently got header links, main nav links, graphic links, left sidebar graphic/text links, and footer links.
Love the Reno skyline graphic, but it’s dated and needs to be updated. A better angle will show our downtown as a more vibrant city center.
The new wv.gov and texas.gov websites place a big emphasis on Search. Possibly make search tool more prominent? Must be located in header to appear on all interior pages as well.
Standardize fonts to sans-serif & update main header text from “Reno, Nevada” to Reno.gov to promote our new URL.
Please comment below with your suggestions and input!
Let me qualify this video by letting you know that this is the first time I have ever edited a video. My co-worker Sharon Spangler was nice enough to give me a rundown on how to use Adobe Premiere. My friends shot this with a flip camera. I hope I inspire you with my deep, insightful thoughts about government innovation in this high quality production;-)
*I should further note that if I win a ticket, I will probably need to produce another video begging for a sponsorship for my flight & lodging.
Cue Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath my Wings,” because I’ve got some Gov2.0 Heroes to thank. My heart is in local government, as my list reflects…
Adriel Hampton
A local govie with a day job as an investigator for the City of San Francisco. He’s made a huge contribution to Gov 2.0 with his awesome weekly podcast at “Gov2.0 Radio“. I’ve honestly learned more about social media & government from reading his tweets in the last couple months than I have at traditional conferences.
Dustin Haisler & the Manor Texas Team
Manor, Texas is all over the internet lately, proving that even small communities with tiny budgets can cultivate innovation. Dustin and the Manor team are an inspiration for local government employees everywhere.
Chris Audano
This great lady is the Senior Programmer/Analyst for the City of Overland Park, Kansas. She’s a long-time board member of the National Association of Government Webmasters and the former President of this awesome organization. Her leadership is a great inspiration to government women in web everywhere!
Non-Govie & Former-Govie Heroes
I have to send a shout out to Luke Fretwell for great ideas on GovFresh, the O’Reilly Media team for their constant Gov2.0 conversations in the digital world and Steve Ressler for fueling the Gov2.0 discussion on GovLoop.
One great way to encourage interaction on your government website is to include a “Quick Poll” feature on your homepage. The site visitor selects an answer and sees instant results from the other visitors. We’ve had over 9,000 responses to our homepage poll in the year and a half since taking it live.
I find it surprisingly difficult to come up with ideas for poll questions. I’d love to change it everyday, but usually I wind up switching the question weekly. Although it would probably spark more participation, I’m cautious of not including questions that are too controversial. I also like to write the questions in a way where there are no losers. For instance, the “No” response becomes “Not yet”.
Below are some of the questions I’ve used on our poll. Please feel free to use these ideas for your own city poll. If you have other ideas or resources, please feel free to comment and share them!
Poll ideas – feel free to use
How long have you lived in this city?
What winter activity are you looking forward to most?
How often do you visit this website?
How do you prefer to get your daily news?
What will you enjoy most about Thanksgiving this year?
What will you most likely do to save energy this winter?
What season is best in this city?
Do you have at least one energy saving light bulb in use at home?
When is the last time you did any shopping, ate at a restaurant, skated or watched a movie in the downtown area?
How do you primarily get to work?
How do you feel about all this snow we’re getting here?
Which of the following are you most likely to watch online?
Have you ever done any of the following on this website?
Do you think cell phone usage while driving should be banned?
It should simply be another step in the event management process to select and promote an appropriate Twitter hashtag for any contemporary event.
I attended the 2010 Women’s Summit in Reno, Nevada, on June 1. Attendees were very excited for keynote speaker Michelle Obama and several expert panels, and were tweeting up a storm with notable takeaways and observations. But with no formal hashtag announced, we used what personally seemed logical to us. Several threads emerged, such as #nvws, #wms, #nvwomen, and #nvws2010. Finally, prolific tweeter Nevada legislator @DavidBobzien noted this and sent out a tweet to get us all using the same hashtag. I’m not sure that all events are lucky enough to get their hashtags sorted out midstream.
Promoting a hashtag is simple, and we should be using them nowadays even for government special events. Include it at the bottom of your press releases and post it on other social media channels of course. Have an event organizer be the official tweeter from the organizing agency perspective (here is a great example of how the USGS displays their Tweet Chat Archive. On GovLoop, Scott Horvath recommends setting up a second Twitter account specifically for event tweeting – don’t want to annoy your regular followers with all your event tweets). I spoke at a SCAN NATOA conference last week, and they placed the hashtag on the PowerPoint slide attendees saw as they filtered in the room. Good idea.
Make a hashtag announcement at the start of the event
Make an announcement about the official event hashtag when you do the other typical housekeeping items at the very start of an event. The obvious reason is so attendees know what hashtag to use, but a secondary reason is because it’s another opportunity to show the audience that you are hip to how people are using social media.
Not only would making an announcement encourage twitterers who have only tweeted maybe a few times to participate, it also lets the rest of the audience know what everyone else is doing. Many times I’ve been more actively engaged in the event content by tweeting than the regular listener is, but I get displeased looks from others simply because they think I’m playing around on my phone and not paying attention to the speaker.
I am compiling a list of U.S. city, county and state government mobile websites – sites that are specially designed for mobile phone users. Please comment if you know of any other sites and I will add them to the list, or fill out the GovLoop form. Once we get a solid list, they will be added to http://data.govloop.com.
(Want to check these sites out on your phone? Navigate to the mobile version of my site, www.kristyfifelski.com, and select this article for easy access.)
Cities, counties and states with mobile sites are able to provide better access to government services via a mobile device. The communities listed here are taking a step in the right direction.All mobile sites are not created equal. If your agency is planning to launch a mobile site, there are some things to consider.
Site access. Is the site accessed via a separate URL, such as /mobile /m or a subdomain? Or, is the device automatically recognized as a mobile platform and directed instantly to the mobile version with no other interaction by the user? Or, does the regular version of the site load first, with a button or link to access the mobile site?
Landing page. What information is available? Can users navigate through the entire site, or only selected content?
Interactivity. Can end users perform transactions through the mobile version, such as pay bills or register for services?
Help make this list more comprehensive! Let me know about other city, county and state mobile sites by submitting comments below or using the GovLoop form.
Congratulations! Your city has made the decision to engage in social media as another tool to connect with citizens. You set up your community on Facebook and Twitter, and now you’re wondering what you’ve gotten yourself into. I’ve learned a lot through the City of Reno’s adventure with social media, and I have some tips to save you a few months of figuring it out by yourself.
1. Extend your Facebook page
Why not integrate all your social media accounts together on Facebook? For instance, using a free application called Involver, you can create tabs to pull in your Twitter feed and your YouTube videos. The application makes it easy for fans to send a page invitation to their friends, and they don’t have to leave Facebook to watch your latest YouTube videos.
2. Automate with care
Be careful when your web folks tell you they can RSS feed your way to social media success. Citizens don’t have to try very hard to tell that a Facebook post starting with “Post ID 71654, City of …” wasn’t written specially for them. If you’re going to use RSS or a content replication application, make sure it translates well to all mediums. We learned the hard way on this one.
3. Use appropriate Twitter hashtags
I learned this lesson relatively recently. We have a city blog, called the Around the Arch Blog. I set it up to push posts directly to twitter and add the hashtag #aroundthearch at the end to aid people in finding our tweets. Sounds great, right? Wrong. I should have appended the tweets with #cityofreno and #reno, because those are the terms people are actually using. Even if we get aggregated with non-city posts, we still get our content in the middle of the conversation. Our newly redesigned blog will launch in a couple weeks with the new approach (and a greatly improved design).
4. Post your standards for comments
We did this on Facebook by posting it on the Info tab. There isn’t a spot for it, so we put it in the “Public Transit” field. Posting your standards doesn’t mean people will read them, but it still makes it public and helps keep you in check if you review and delete content according to your standards.
5. Don’t forget about LinkedIn
You may use LinkedIn for your own professional networking, but you can also use it to add your city profile. You can add your blog feed, your web address and optionally pay for a custom company profile for additional features like a careers module. Members on LinkedIn can now ‘follow’ companies, so they’ll see your updates in their Home feed.
These are just a few tips. Please comment with your own ideas for admins of government social media!
I am extremely jealous of the lucky chaps who get to participate in the Gov 2.0 Expo 2010, co-produced by O’Reilly Media and TechWeb in Washington, D.C. this week. My request for conference organizers and participants is to better understand the challenges facing local government in our adoption of Gov 2.0.
Nearly 800 city and county government webmasters across the country belong to a listserv sponsored by the National Association of Government Webmasters. Our listserv is extremely active, with dozens of new posts and responses daily relating to matters of importance for professionals in our field. Do you know how many local govies have posted anything related to the Gov 2.0 Expo?
By my count, zero.
The problem is that if municipal governments are lucky enough to have a dedicated web administrator, that person is also likely to be the web trainer, coder, developer, designer, content writer, project manager, contract negotiator, and…when there is time… champion of new web initiatives. The problem is, there is never time. Although I’m responsible for managing major web projects at the City of Reno, I’m also the person who responds to daily help desk tickets for web issues related to Reno.gov and our employee intranet.
It truly does take a village. In March, I had the privilege of participating in a presentation by the Center for Disease Control on their well-rounded use of social media and online tools (such as badges, widgets and virtual worlds) to engage the public in the H1N1 discussion. Their approach was truly a best practice in social media use and Gov 2.0, and they are known for sharing their policies and metrics with other agencies. During the Q&A session that followed, I asked the CDC presenter the question on the minds of everyone at this Social Media for Govt Conference – how big is your web team? Turns out, it included a team dedicated to writing web content, another team focusing on writing for the social sites, and a technical team for developing the widgets and other tools. Commendable approach, but I don’t know of one local government with that kind of resources available. » Read more: A message to the Gov 2.0 Expo and call to action for local government
This blog focuses on government use of web, social media and tech innovations to connect with citizens and offer a new level of government services and engagement online. This is what I love and do!
Big news on potential revisions to requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) may affect local governments and their websites. While Federal agencies must comply with ADA rules on making their websites accessible to people with disabilities, local governments are currently not required (well, technically they are if they receive Federal funds).
My little update here isn’t meant to gloss over some of the other great points made.
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