LG/WWW

This week I finished the draft of a digital best practice check-list. It's not digital strategy, in fact I'm increasingly thinking organisations don't need a digital strategy, they need a delivery strategy. My draft has check-list of seven questions and recommendations, with one overall recommendation regarding best practice for delivering digital. Ideally it would be incorporated into a wider service and information delivery strategy. Below I've omitted the bulk of the content, the reasoning behind arriving at the recommendation from the question because it's still in draft, but here are the seven questions and eight recommendations: 1. Is the council properly promoting its digital services and content, to reduce avoidable contact? Recommendation: Establish a “digital first” ethos to the promotion of services and better targeting what, when and where they're promoted. 2. Are the digital services the council offers, especially where the design and...

There's a lot been written about LocalGov Digital, the national network for digital practitioners working in Local Government since it started in 2012. The one thing I've not seen discussed though is how much it's cost to make or put on the things we have. That's until now, so here goes. The first thing we produced were the Content Standards , a resource to help local authorities create better digital content. A few councils came together to create this, rather than writing their own individually. Our first creation sums up the ethos of LocalGov Digital, working together to create something better than we might have on our own, and then sharing it with others. The Content Standards cost the time that officers spend creating them, so this is a few hundred pounds of taxpayers' money. Contributors needed to put in far less time than if each council had created something individually however, so this a saving and since they're free to use by any local authority,...