WIREDGOV

Key results from this year’s survey are:

. Nine councils (2% of all sites) have achieved the survey’s top, four-star ranking. These are: Brighton & Hove, Bristol City , East Sussex CC, Eden DC, The City of Edinburgh, Lewisham, Richmond upon Thames, Salford City and SurreyHeath BC

. This compares with eleven last year, of which only two have retained four star ranking this year (East Sussex CC, Salford City ).

. The number of three star sites is 131 (30% of the total 433) compared with last year’s 106 (24%). The remainder comprise 187 two star sites (43%), compared with 199 (46%), and 106 one star sites (25%) compared with 116 (27%)

. In terms of performance by type of council, London boroughs come out with 67% three and four star sites, significantly higher than shire counties with 44%. Groups that perform the worst are NI districts (0%), unitaries in (28%) and metropolitan and shire districts (both with 28%).

. Top performance by region is London (67% three and four star sites), the North East (42%), South East (38%) and the North West (37%). Lowest performance is the East Midlands (19%) and the East of England (29%). All the others come within a couple of percentage points of the average (35%).

. Overall, council websites have made a modest improvement since last year. But this follows stagnation reported in last year’s survey. The judgement is based on comparison of standards across twelve criteria for usefulness and usability

. A 12.7% increase in usage of the web by the GB adult population in the last year (Ipsos MORI) is matched by a 12.95% increase in usage of council websites (Socitm Insight’s Website take-up service)

. 21.89% of visits to council websites during 2010 ended in complete failure, potentially creating wasteful avoidable contact in councils’ other customer channels

. Levels of satisfaction with visiting council websites have gone up over the year as a whole by 7%, reversing a gradual decline in recent years.

Results from Better connected 2011, the annual survey of all council websites, published on March 1, suggest that most councils are still to recognise that digital delivery is faster and more convenient for the public as well cheaper for the taxpayer.

This conclusion is based on the fact that 68% of councils fail to achieve more than two stars out of a possible four in this year’s version of the annual survey by the public services IT and digital professionals’ body, Socitm.

Overall improvement in council websites is modest, with a degree of progress this year following stagnation last year, despite significant increases in numbers using the internet and the opportunity for councils to reduce their costs significantly by shifting more enquiries to the web.

In order to reduce their dependence on the traditional, more costly-to-serve, channels of phone and face-to-face, Better connected 2011 suggests that councils evaluate their website performance and focus on three interconnected themes - think customer, focus on ‘top tasks’, and go mobile.

·      Think customer: managing the website should be seen as a broader part of managing customer access. The web team should be seen as part of customer service, and should see this as its primary goal.

·      Focus on top tasks: for website performance to improve, visit failures must be reduced by identifying and managing top tasks on the principle that the more the site is used for any task, the more important it is to make that task quick and easy to use.

·      Go mobile: local authorities are not immune from the trend to smart phones and their websites must be able to respond to the demand for web access ‘on the move’. A ‘top tasks’ approach to content presentation plays to this agenda as mobile devices are ideally suited to responding to a person wanting to complete a simple task.

The report provides additional research on each of these three themes, and covers two other key developments affecting councils-on-the-web: interaction with individuals through social media and with local communities through neighbourhood websites.

A survey of social media activity covers interactions by councils with the six most common social networking facilities – Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, blogs and LinkedIn.

A guest article covers research, originally carried out for Capital Ambition, into hundreds of local neighbourhood sites in London and their impact on relationships with the local council.

Better connected 2011 is based largely on analysis of the annual survey of the 433 local authority websites in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland that has been carried out since 1999. This year, 49 other public sector sites were also assessed, including fire and police services, PTEs, RSLs and a range of other government and third sector bodies.

As in previous years, a lengthy (136-question) survey was carried by a team of reviewers in November and December. Around half of the questions were designed to test the information content of websites by focussing on a selection of six from the twelve most-used parts of a typical council website:

. Leisure

. Business

. Council tax

. Social care

. Parking

. Highways

The remainder of the questions assessed performance around the criteria used by Better connected to assess website performance, including currency, links, transactions, location, navigation, A-Z, search, and accessibility.

The report also uses six additional surveys to support the main survey:

. Severe weather

. Response to e-mail enquiry

. Phone contact details

. Mystery shopping in libraries

. Mobile device (iPhone)

. Social media

Other information sources used for the report are:

. The Socitm Insight Website take-up service used by 139 councils

. Review of forms by Effortmark

. Website accessibility review by RNIB

. Website readability tested by The Writer

. Benchmarking of various technical measures by SiteMorse

. Access to the internet data from Ipsos MORI

. Data on usage of websites from Experian Hitwise

. Visitor feedback on 70 councils from GovMetric

. Broken links from Local Directgov

Commenting on the findings of Better connected 2011, Socitm President Jos Creese said: ‘The web is no longer about technology. It is about delivering lower cost services designed around the user. Any public service organisation, therefore, which is not fully integrating the potential of web delivery in financial and customer service strategies is likely to be under-performing in both areas’.

Writing in the report foreword, Christine Farnish, Chair of Consumer Focus said: ‘At a time when government is seeking to make online access to public services the default channel, it is more important than ever that the need of consumers be placed at the heart of this process. That means starting from what works for consumers, rather than what works for providers’.

Better connected 2011 (the Main Report) will be available to Socitm Insight subscribers from 1 March 2010. An expanded version of all the results (the Full Results Report) will also be available from 15 March 2010, but only as an electronic version. Non-subscribers will be able to buy a printed version of the Main Report (available from mid-March) at a cost of £495 (£475 for Socitm members in non-subscribing organisations).  It can be ordered from www.socitm.net

Spreadsheets available to subscribers include:

. A summary of the results of the main survey, together with the supporting surveys

. An index of council references contains all references to examples of good practice, entries in the lists of top sites etc, so that subscribers have a quick reference to their council

. A summary of the accessibility results brings together all the detailed information about the accessibility assessments produced from the three stages of the testing process, using the automated testing software and RNIB expertise, and highlighting those who have passed or failed the Level A and Level AA standards (and the reasons why).

Like last year, a summary of the results for all local authorities will be made available as open data under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA licence on www.socitm.net .

Further information

Vicky Sargent, Socitm Press Office

Tel: 07726 601 139  email: vicky.sargent@socitm.net

Martin Greenwood, Programme Manager, Socitm Insight

Tel: 01926 498703 or 07967 383755  e-mail: martin.greenwood@socitm.net

Notes for Editors

Socitm Insight runs the the Web improvement and usage community within the IDeA Communities of Practice. The space enables networking and the sharing of ideas and best practice around all aspects of website development, content and take-up. More than1,000  people have joined the community since the space was launch last year. The community will host discussion around Better connected 2011 and anyone interested is welcome to join and get involved. Registration is at www.communities@idea.gov.uk.

 
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