Reputation management: Conducting a social media audit

July 1, 2008 – 4:26 pm

I recently spoke at Comms 08 but had to skip the final quarter of my presentation due to time constraints. The silver lining of that cloud is that what I was going to cover then, I will transcribe for everyone now.

Conducting a social media audit

A magnifying glassWe have entered an age of social media — the democratisation of online publishing. Now anyone can now say anything to everyone. This is leading to good stuff, bad stuff, and some really ugly stuff, to which no organisation is immune.

So how do we make ourselves a little safer with the least amount of effort?

Search the Blogosphere (via Technorati.com), and create several RSS feeds

Technorati monitors and can search nearly all of the blogs that exist on the web. As of December 2007, Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs, with more than 175,000 new blogs being created each day. With numbers like these, you can bet that some people are (or will be) talking about your organisation. Conduct a search on Technorati for your organisation and variations of terms:

Use a range of terms such as: “state services commission” “state services comission” “state services commision” “state services commissioner” “ssc”

Unless you want to conduct this search everyday (/week/month) create an RSS feed of this search. This will dynamically update you and you are now close to omniscient.

Note: As pictured below (click to enlarge), Internet Explorer 6 does not give you the option of an RSS feed, so get yourself Firefox (via guerrilla tactics if necessary).
Firefox with an RSS button Internet Explorer 6 with no RSS button

Check Wikipedia, front and back, and create an RSS feed

Increasingly, our audiences are bypassing our websites, and are going straight to third parties for information. The largest of these is Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, written by volunteers, some of which may be sitting next to you. A colleague at the Department of Conservation told me that Wikipedia was the third largest referrer of people downloading their research documents.

Check your organisations Wikipedia article, making sure that all facts and figures are correct. Do not delete factual criticisms or controversies as it is underhanded, impossible to do clandestinely and will end up in the press. If you find incorrect or incomplete information, mention this on the articles discussion page. Wikipedians are supposed to act from a neutral point of view so should be happy to correct mistakes. Alternatively you can edit the content yourself. If you choice to do this, be completely transparent (ironically you preserve more privacy by creating an account versus editing “anonymously”). This links to the next paragraph. Create an RSS feed for changes to this article by clicking the “History” tab and then either the “RSS” or “Atom” button in the left sidebar (you just got a little more omniscient).

Ask your corporate IT support what your IP address or address range is. Type this number into Wikipedia’s user contribution page (this will give more accurate results than http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/) and voila! See what your colleagues have been writing about, and think about how transparent every move you make is on the Internet.

Search the “Twittersphere” (via Summize.com or a similar service), and create several RSS feeds

There are many new social media apart from wikis and blogs. One of the fastest-growing is Twitter. Twitter is a “micro-blogging” service (you don’t need to understand what that means). Currently, Twitter does not provide a search function for past “tweets” but there are third parties that do. Using http://summize.com/, enter the same search term list you created earlier. Once again create an RSS feed, sit back and reflect on your growing omniscience.  

Talk about Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn and Bebo

It is not a question of whether your peers are using these social networking tools, it is a question of how intelligently they using them (are they bringing your organisation’s reputation into disrepute?). This is perhaps the most interesting section to think about, as online, the line between our personal and professional lives is now almost completely blurred. Most social networking users keep their profiles “non-publicly viewable” (which is very different to “private”). The smartest approach might be to have an open discussion (especially with younger employees) regarding if it is appropriate to publish online and I would add (especially with older employees) what things if published online should have no relevance in the workplace.  The goal here is to avoid everyone involved potential embarrassment.

Search Youtube

YouTube does not provide an RSS feed for searches, and it may be unlikely that there are movies up there regarding government organisations. Nonetheless, better safe than sorry.

I would be very interested to hear what people discover.

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By Matt Lane | Posted in Govt 2.0, Integrity & Conduct | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

A report on the progress of New Zealand e-government

June 19, 2008 – 10:45 am

When was the last time you asked the question, “How well is e-government in New Zealand doing?”

If you are the average Bill or Moana who is not a public servant, maybe you never have. You would most likely remember government only when you have some form of direct contact with agencies—for immigration, health or the myriad of other services that government silently provides. You may not even know what “e-government” is, exactly. Read More »

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By Yenping | Posted in News, Strategy, research | Tagged , | Comments (5)

The common touch

May 30, 2008 – 4:10 pm

Last month, I blogged about the Kiwis Count survey, which is the first national survey to ask New Zealanders about their experiences and perceptions of public services.  I explained that we used methodology developed for Canadian public services for Kiwis Count.  In this post I’m going to be talking about a second survey tool developed by the Canadians - the Common Measurements Tool (CMT).

Read More »

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By Louise | Posted in research | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Government website assessment

May 23, 2008 – 4:40 pm

The 2008 assessment of government web sites is under way now, coordinated by the Web Standards team at SSC.

We have 500-something sites to test and QA, so I hope it’s useful to talk a little about the process, how it’s being handled and - in later posts - how it’s progressing.

What’s the objective?

The objective is to provide a 10-point ‘health check’ based on the Web Standards 1.0 and good practice. Some of the 10 points are direct measures of compliance with specific standards, some are indicators of good practice, such as; Read More »

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By Rowan | Posted in Standards & Architecture, Web Standards | Tagged , , | Comments (1)

Calling Beta Testers - National Broadband Map

May 22, 2008 – 11:39 am

We’re not too far off from going to private beta of the new National Broadband Map and we’re welcoming anybody who wants a sneak preview to be a beta tester. It will be an informal testing process and it would be great if you could let us know if you have any issues or suggestions. We won’t get too upset if you don’t.

We’ll add the caveat that while in beta, if the application appears broken, it probably is and if you find something not working, it’s probably not working. In other words, please be patient.

If you are keen to be a tester, or maybe you are just nosy, please e-mail us at beta@broadbandmap.govt.nz and we’ll get back to you with details of how you can use the new National Broadband Map.

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By Jamie | Posted in Govt 2.0, News, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments (2)

Technically Creative

May 20, 2008 – 3:51 pm

Behind the scenes we’ve kicked off the design of the website that will surround the National Broadband Map. This is an interesting part of any web project and can be a welcome diversion from the more technical aspects. This is where we are creating the look and feel of the website, it’s where we’re working out how to best communicate information around the mapping application and it’s the stage where we make sure we have an accessible website and adherence to web standards.

We can break this part of the project into four parts, that may appear separate but are all dependent on each other. The component parts:

  • Information architecture
  • Visual design
  • CSS/HTML
  • Technical integration

Information Architecture

When you visit a website you expect to find the information you want and when you do you probably don’t notice how easy it was, you’ll probably notice when you can’t find what you want leading to frustration and annoyance. Good information architecture in this context is about constructing and presenting the data to the user in a meaningful, logical and intuitive way to avoid that frustration and annoyance and more importantly to make the website more usable and relevant to the user. With the web we can’t pick our audience, but we can identify it and we’re very aware that we can have a wide and varied audience with the National Broadband Map from central and local government, to network suppliers to a curious New Zealand public to developers; we’re covering Grandmas to geeks. We need to make the information relevant and navigable to these audiences and this is where information architecture comes in.

There are a number of outputs from the information architecture process these include a site map, a navigation structure and wire-frame diagrams of the website outlining where content components are to go.

The sad thing is if we do a great job of the information architecture you probably won’t notice. If we get it wrong you will.

Visual Design

Visual design is the look of the website, it takes some of the outputs of information architecture and pulls them together into a design, it’s not about making the website visually stunning, it’s about making the website more usable in a visual way. As human beings we think visually and we look for visual cues to help us use websites, good visual design provides these cues. Part of it is ensuring the website is visually attractive but more importantly its about communicating in a visual way and making it easier for a user to traverse the website.

The outputs from the visual design phase include the graphics and logos for the site, some iconography to help identify demand points (for the mapping part of the website) and a more complete design of all pages, we now know what colours will be used, what graphics will be used, how wide the web pages will be and where individual content elements lie on the pages. We’ll have three ’styles’ of pages; the home page, section pages and detail pages.

CSS/HTML Production

HTML and CSS are where we bring the the visual design into the web so as it works with your web browser.

CSS, or cascading style sheets, define the look and layout of the site. They tell the web browser where to put everything and how to make it look, they tell the web browser to put the banner at the top and the footer at the bottom, they tell the browser what colour and size the headings will be, what font the text will be and how the menus behave.

HTML, or hypertext markup language, is where we put our content, it’s the information we display on the website. The way that we are applying HTML deals specifically with content, we don’t define they way anything looks within HTML, we only define what the content is. We will define that an item of text is a heading but it is the CSS that defines what the heading looks like.

A great demonstration of how CSS can change the entire look of a website can be found at CSS Zen Garden, under the ’select a design’ menu you can select a design and see the entire look of the website change. The HTML and hence content isn’t changing, only the CSS.

There are very good reasons why we use the combination of CSS and HTML in this way when we could build the entire site in HTML and not even use CSS. Here’s why:

  • Ease of site management - we can change the the look and layout of the website by changing the CSS rather than changing every single page. If we need to create a new page, we only need to create content, not design.
  • Accessibility - separating content from layout makes the content more accessible. Not every user will be using a common browser, some may be using tactile braille machines, screen readers or text only browsers, the content will render much more effectively when the HTML contains only content rather than content and layout.
  • Editors of the site can concentrate on writing content rather than defining its layout.

The outputs of the CSS/HTML stage are some text files, some with a .css extension and some with a .html extension.

Technical Integration

This is where we pull everything together, we need to get the CSS, HTML and images on the web-server and in the right place so our content management system can read them. We need to make sure everything is working and working as it should across a range of browsers, unfortunately not all web browsers behave the same.

The output of the technical integration is a functioning website that looks and behaves how we want it to.

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By Jamie | Posted in Govt 2.0, News, Standards & Architecture, Web Standards | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

A first hola from the Web Standards team

May 20, 2008 – 3:44 pm

I’m Anthony Hawkins, project manager for the 2008 web standards review.  Which seems a good place to kick off the blogging …

The review and the wiki

It’s annual review time. It’s also your annual chance to influence the direction of standards. This year, through the magic of the Government Web Standards wiki, you can be more influential than ever.

The wiki allows registered users to comment on each existing standards, discuss things that are not yet standards, or raise more general standards-related issues. Generally, the standards get more brickbats than bouquets, which is fine by us.

Later in the review process, the Web Standards Working Group will consider all material provided via the wiki in their assessment of the standards. We’re considering wiki feedback a key ingredient in the process.

This year important themes will include the so-called AJAX apps, user-generated content and our response to the W3C’s revised web standards. We note that the web has changed.

The team are also working to develop we’re calling (still with a slight grimace) our Outreach programme, in which we aim to play a greater role in the making standards compliance easier for departments. We’re increasingly seeing the need for departments to talk to each other about problems and solutions in web development. We’d also like to advise more on standards compliance at the start of projects. We’re on-hand to talk with management, Communications, the business and IT about accessibility and usability. (You can email us here.)

I’ll be using this blog to publish details about the review (what we’re looking at and how you can help) and our new initiatives throughout the year.  

So why web standards?

Web design is getting harder. As developer Tristan Nitot puts it, designing a site now means addressing “more customers, a broader audience, more diversity in terms of browsers, more accessibility for disabled users, users asking for more speed, while spending less to maintain or redesign a web site”. It’s an increased challenge from many angles.

Web standards were specifically developed to address this. They help ensure near universal access to online information as well as making for faster and cheaper web development by ending the expensive “build, break, rebuild” cycle.

The term “Web Standards” for some people, often those with a communications or design background, still has a constrictive, vaguely Orwellian feel about it. That’s based on misunderstanding, as many top web designers such as Andy Rutledge will attest. Rutledge (who admittedly isn’t sure about the term itself, but we’re talking about the same things) aptly calls his response Web Standards: it’s about quality, not compliance. A List Apart’s Jeffrey Zeldman also makes a strong, entertaining case for web standards.

Governments, including ours, are the largest single producer, collector, consumer, and disseminator of information in the country, most of which, along with services, is being moved onto the Internet. It’s a democratic imperative that none are excluded from this vast online resource.

And getting it wrong can cost. Lost revenue from the UK’s HM Revenue and Customs’ “maze” of a website sees taxpayers underpay by £330 million a year.

Our advice is to get in early. Ensure standards and usability are core parts of your project plan right from the start. Engage a developer who cares. Make sure management know web standards are crucial to a good site (we can help with that). Please get in touch with any and all questions or requests.

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By Anthony Hawkins | Posted in Govt 2.0, Web Standards | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

We’re Open-Minded

May 9, 2008 – 5:16 pm

Open source, open standards, open data - we’re using them all with the National Broadband Map. This isn’t out of an idealogical view point, it’s just that these tools are helping us achieve what we want to.

Open Data

The openness of the data is one area that we have already had an interest in for demand aggregation and other purposes. We are visualising the data using Google maps but this isn’t the only way the data can be used. We have a database API (application programming interface) which means that data can be extracted and written to the database outside of the mapping tool. It’s a permissions based so different users of the API will have different levels of access and we won’t be exposing personally identifiable data (we have to take the Privacy Act into account).

If a user of the database API wishes to access the data they have a couple of ways of doing it, one way is via the RESTful API where a carefully constructed URL will return the required data in the requested format (currently XML, XAL and KML), or they can use the SOAP API which is similar but different. There are fans of RESTful interfaces and fans of SOAP interfaces and some programming languages are better suited to one than the other.

Providing data access and tools to access the data will allow the innovative out there to find other and better ways of analysing and visualising the data.

Open Standards

We’re using open standards in the way we express our data. This means interoperability between systems, government agencies or organisations will be greater. You will know the data comes back in a format that is common and familiar to the application using it. We are working with plain old XML and structured XML such as XAL, a common standard for formatting addresses and KML the format used in Google Earth.

Open Source

The project is open source and by that we don’t mean it’s built on top of open source technologies (although it is), we mean that all code we develop is released as open source software. This means anybody can take what we have done and use the code to build their own applications. It also means people are free to build on and improve the code we have developed.

All code is released under the BSD license , a reasonably permissive open source license.  In fact, Apple used BSD-licensed software to build OSX, their current operating system.

The project has been dependent on a number of open source technologies, from the servers running Linux, PHP and MySQL to the content management system which is an open source application in itself. We’re dependent on open source and are also creating open source. Goodness begets goodness.

We’ll link to the repositories of the source code as we develop the website around the application.

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By Jamie | Posted in Govt 2.0, Web Standards | Tagged , , | Comments (3)

Social media and legal code

May 9, 2008 – 4:05 pm

The article ‘Social media and legal code’ (PDF. 371KB), published recently in NZ Lawyer, provides a checklist of governance, legal, and quasi-legal issues for those involved in the planning, design, operation, and maintenance of social media sites. Hope it’s of some use.

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By Richard Best | Posted in Legal | Tagged , , | Comments (1)

Legal liability for republishing others’ RSS feed content which breaches third party rights

May 9, 2008 – 3:33 pm

As I have noted elsewhere, UK-based Out-law has recently reported, in one of its excellent legal podcasts, on recent cases in France in which the courts have held that website operators who republished RSS feed content onto their sites were legally responsible themselves as publishers of what transpired to be posts that were invasive of certain third parties’ privacy rights. The fact that, due to the nature of the RSS parsing technology, their websites were automatically updated when the incoming feeds were updated was no excuse. In other words, the French courts disagreed with the website operators’ argument that they exercised no editorial control over the publications.

As far as I am aware, these are the first cases internationally to have considered this issue. While one needs to be somewhat cautious when considering the relevance of cases from a foreign jurisdiction in New Zealand, particularly from a civil law as opposed to common law jurisdiction, these cases are highly notable for being the first to consider what is likely - in this Web 2.0+ world - to become an increasingly important issue given the increasing number of sites that aggregate content via RSS.

In my opinion, under New Zealand law, there is not necessarily a ubiquitous answer to the question of whether populating one’s website with third party content - via an incoming and automatically-updating RSS feed - that breaches someone else’s rights, will render the website owner liable to that “someone else”. It is likely to depend on the nature of the offending content, the cause(s) of action to which publication may give rise and the possible defences to those causes of action. So, for example, causes of action could include defamation, breach of copyright, invasion of privacy or breach of confidence. Also potentially relevant in some cases will be whether the website owner added the RSS feed to its site itself, or allowed site users to add an RSS feed (as is now possible with some web services).
 
What seems clear, however, is that the French cases are a reality check for those who may either be careless about the content they parse onto their sites via incoming RSS feeds or be labouring under an assumption that “I didn’t create the content so can’t be liable for it”. In some circumstances, the website owner may well be liable.
 
Some website operators may be dismayed at the prospect of liability in such circumstances. I don’t think they should be. Either they take care in their selection of incoming RSS feeds (and, where possible and appropriate, seek warranties and/or indemnities from the feed providers) or they use or create tools through which the website operator needs to approve queued feed items before they go live.

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By Richard Best | Posted in Legal | Tagged , | Comments (0)