LG/WWW

It's funny how conversations on Twitter start off about one thing and end up about another. This morning I started tweeting about how we're aggregating Google Calendars (gCal) into an events search, found out Kevin Jump had written some code for pulling events from gCal too, talked about testing the Solr search engine against Google with Jason Williams , Sarah Jennings and Richard Kingston , and ended up discussing a local public services search engine with James Cattell and briefly, Saul Cozens and Tom Loosemore too. Both the first two subjects deserve their own post, but this one's about the last, a local service search engine. On 20 June LocalGov Digital Makers are running a Hack Day in partnership with Nesta and for one of the challenges we're looking at is creating a central resource for local governments, perhaps based on the some of the work the Government Digital Service have done. The discussion this morning got me thinking, what if we could p...

Ten years ago, a general view of local governments' websites was bigger is better. "We've only got 2,000 pages on our site; you've got 5,000? Brilliant!", I remember conversations at conferences going. Today however it's widely accepted that some local government's websites are almost impenetrable fortresses of content, not just through incomprehensible language but because of the sheer number of pages one has to sift through to find pertinent information. The LocalGov Digital Content Standards seek to help put this right, and these days participants in unconference conversations are more likely to take the view that it's better to have the minimum number of pages needed to do the task of delivering information and services. So what's this change in best practice for local governments' websites got to do with the number of visits? Most local governments now have some sort of Channel Shift programme in place, which seeks to direct as m...