Academic research for local gov - LocalGovCamp

The power of suggestion (via Twitter) led to @liz_azyan and I hosting a session at LocalGovCamp on academic research for local government.
I may have been carried away in the moment when I agreed to do this but I think there were some useful points at the session. I didn't make any notes so this is all from memory - if anyone who attended to session wants to jump in maybe we can crowdsource the overview? :)
Many of the people who came to the session had been interviewed by Liz as part of her research but we each gave an overview of the work we are / will be doing. This lead to plenty of discussion and praise for Liz's blog LGEO Research (and that stands for Local Government Engagement Online). The overriding feeling here is that independent academic and active research is valuable to local government as a way of stepping back and explaining what you're doing and why (rather than the more practical how), having a way of seeing the bigger picture of what other people are up to and in some cases providing validation to the harder-to-convince within an organisation.
On a personal level several people said they had found being interviewed with Liz a cathartic, therapeutic experience which allowed them to re-focus their thoughts on their work.
We also discussed and explained the process of sharing the results of the research. Due to the research being part of our studies neither Liz or I will be able to share much as we go along. We both fully intend to publish and share as soon as we are able - Liz mentioned this may be early summer 2010 for her while it is likely to be early 2011 for my own research.
We also talked through my planned research and there were several people who felt that they would be interested in talking to me further about this and would be interested in the outcomes - I've certainly made a note of people I would like to talk to when I get underway!
We then returned to the place of academic and active research and how we can sustain this rather than rely on people like Liz and myself choosing it as a subject area and becoming part of the community. The funding available from the IDeA (session I missed earlier in the day) was mooted (not muted as I accidentally wrote earlier) as one of the possible sources which should be looked into, or whether an organisation like SOCITM may take up the role of carrying out independent research. The idea was tweeted and RT several times after the session and perhaps this is a discussion which needs to continue.
Altogether I found it really useful to talk through the reasons and uses of research and meet some people who I am sure I will need to speak to more as time goes on.

Picture credit: @JaduCMS

LocalGovCamp - an unconference for local government - Birmingham 20 June 2009

Yesterday was LocalGovCamp - an unconference for local government - organised by the wonderful Dave Briggs at Fazeley Studios in Birmingham.
To be honest I had so much fun and met so many great, passionate and inspiring people; had so many great discussions; that my head is still reeling but I'm going to try and sum up what came out of the day for me.

Top five: things in my head about LocalGovCamp:

1. Yesterday was a day full of meeting very very nice people. Meeting people you tweet with a lot, about work and about things outside of work, for the first time in person is a bit like meeting a celebrity; you feel you know them yet you know you've never seen them face to face before. For me it was less like networking and more like meeting up with great friends to talk about the stuff we're passionate about (online local gov, music, real ale, cake...)
2. That (aside from the usefulness of what was discussed) having that network of people who are willing to share their experiences and epic visions of where this is all going is the best support network imaginable. Often you may be the lone voice in an organisation pushing for change or certain projects and to be able to share this with people going through the same thing is both motivating and comforting - always good to you're not the only one fighting the fight and so aren't completely off track with your thoughts!
3. There are some great projects and changes going on around the country and it is great to be able to hear about them and think about what that might suggest for our organisation. So useful to have a space to thrash out ideas, here people's experiences, lessons learnt and the possibilities for digital enablement.
4. I've been thinking for a while about a social media cafe in Derby / Derbyshire and I've come back from yesterday convinced that it would be of benefit. Not only would it be a forum for web managers / web people from each of the authorities in the area (not just local gov but the partner organisations too) to meet and chat about things but a great opportunity for us to find out about the community groups and digital business in the area too. I'm already formulating a list of things to do in order to make this happen. Luckily, yesterday gave me a chance to chat with people who also want to make this happen - so let's JFDI!!!
5. Twitter has changed my life. Without having tweeted with people on there I would probably not have found out about LocalGovCamp, might not have gone even if I did. And this also brings us back round to point one :)

So, there are the top five things in my head at the moment and beneath these are a thousand little thoughts which came out of the sessions I attended yesterday - @timdavies session on overcoming the small hurdles to social media in organisations (his notes are here and my notes are here); @paul_cole's session on listening to the conversation happening about your organisation whether you're involved or not (my notes on this session are here) and @carlhaggerty's session on the internal network pilot he's part of (some very rough notes here by me).
I hope people found the impromptu (and definitely unexpected) session that @liz_azyan and I did on academic research into local government social media useful. I hope to speak to all of the people who came along (and more) as part of my thesis research (begins January 2010). I'll try and write up notes from what we talked about in this session as soon as I can.

There are some videos by David Wilcox and photos from the day on Flickr and once again, thank you Dave for organising and thanks to the sponsors also. Really great to meet you all :)

Updated (22 June 2009): I was also interviewed by @podnosh about our use of social media in the recent election. You can see the video and post on the podnosh blog.
And there is a round up of all the stuff being said online at the LocalGovCamp blog.

Internal networks - #localgovcamp

Updated (21 June 2009):
I admit I missed the first couple of minutes of this session (having too much fun chatting) but I am really interested in the pilot that Carl Haggerty and Rob Gray were discussing about the internal social network they have set up at Devon County Council with Blue Kiwi (please correct me if I am wrong about this!).

It's interesting to me both in a professional capacity as we'll be doing some work around internal communications / our intranet soon (ish) and also because my thesis next year is on the place of social media in local government internal communications.

It was a busy session and there was lots of great information about the reasons behind the pilot, the practicalities of setting it up and where they are now. There were lots of questions around the pilot and about internal communications in general.

I tried to make some notes at the time and I hope @liz_azyan captured some of the discussion on video as well. There is this video with Carl Haggerty and Rob Gray by David Wilcox:

Notes I made during the session (posted 20 June 2009):

• Great slides by @caralhaggerty - hoepfully these will be shared so I don't have to make too many notes. I'm having too much fun listening.
• Lots of really great suggestions backed with practical examples about how to get people internal to the organisation connecting online.
• Lead by example - great complete profiles including information on where to be found online, cvs, personal information, image, networks, where to find me online, skills etc
• Manage expectations but encourage people who are unsure to join. There is an optimum number (25-35) where a community becomes self-sufficient.
• Tell people what eblic engaging allows the system to do for them
• Coventry use Yammer internally - why not use a system that everybody already in and by default follows each other and then opts out. Saves having to rely on it self propogating
• Be great not to have to pilot but organisations don't always work like that - particularly public sector
• Make them give something up to use social media - so no more emails. @carlhaggerty does this with his team - no more email in their team! Sometimes generates social media envy, hopes pilot breaks down the barriers and answers questions while trying out new systems
• Great for early conversations
• How do you measure success?
• How do you overcome resistence to change? Nurture and support those that do adopt early, suggest people take the question / conversation into the internal network
• Currently 4 months into pilot Devon CC and Blue Kiwi
• Try and encourage people to be more informal as well as having social conversations alongside the business questions - change of culture for many public sector orgs perhaps?
• Fit in with existing internal business strategy - where there is a communication problem - is there a social media solution?
• Didn't see a lot of the benefits they have already reaped from the pilot
• Would organisation see benefit of getting 250 ppl together in a room to talk about issues?
• It's not an instant messaging service - is asynchronous. It's basically a large chat room - tells you to refresh when new information available
• Will be happy to share the results and lesson's learned
• More business conversations - not set out to replace email etc although that could be outcome!
• Is marketing to council staff based on the interests they put in their internal network profile a step too far?
• Target people who can help shape it - don't want it to be an internal version of Facebook but legitimate business tool.
• Only people with core access to business systems at the moment.
• Could be used to identify gaps in training by HR to enable more people to get involved
• Share details and skills - by having this information in the network allows HR and teams to work more efficiently and identify exisiting skill base?
• Put the network in and let the business evaluate what the benefits are...don't anticipate how this benefit each individual
• Users who are engaged and finding benefits encourage others to join and so the conversation widens and benefits and could drive change
• Middle managers important as they are vital in strategy
• There will always be those who converse more
• How much did it cost? Less than £10,000 but not much!
• Around 100 users is good number for pilot
• Deliberately seperate from ICT - intranets etc

Are we listening #localgovcamp

Updated (21 June 2009): I made the notes below as the session was in progress and I won't change those.

Paul hosted this session around the work going on in Derby to listen and capture the conversation's happening in the online space related to the area. Paul tracked this on mindmeister.com although the map he'd produced is not generally available yet.

He had searched across many networks, including the main online gathering spaces at the moment of Facebook and Twitter, to show which groups and individuals were participating in conversation about the area or about the authorities / public sector organisations in the city.

Potential issues around gathering this information and different methods of doing so were discussed as well as highlighting how this information can be a useful tool for showing the organisation the conversation is going to be happening with or without their involvement - at the very least they need to listen.

Discussion moved on to cover social media policy / usage and participation guidelines and the need for these given existing internet and email use policies. The discussion also covered the issues around the blurring of personal / professional identity online and what work or responsibility organisations have to make employees more aware (potential education task rather than policy task).

Really interesting discussion over a broad topic and a lot of great examples from a range of councils.

Notes taken during the session (posted 20 June 2009):

Are we listening hosted by @paul_cole

• At different places with projects and also personal social media enthusiast.
• Using mindmeister to showcase something he has developed around the subject
• Shows what they think is going on to show what they are missing out on. Started on Facebook (nodes) to show groups, pages etc to map what conversations are going on.
• Jack Pickard (@thepickards) - done something similar but less mapped. just poking around found existing groups.
• One group (in Derby) has 600 members - more than at any public meeting...are councils integrating comments into meetings / consultation
• Also mapped employee personal profiles
• Manual process.
• Brigton doing from opposite way - identify audience then go to networks to find relevant people.
• More credence to citizen led groups for citizens - more trust
• Easy to find people talking about you on Twitter and other networks.
• Houston, we have a problem - no, houston we have an opportunity.
• Can hear the discussions and then act accordingly.
• Brighton looking to recruit a social media officer.
• People are having conversations without the council - up to council to find and jump in
• Change the way the organisation is perceived.
• Wealth of information out there.
• May be communicating with one citizen at a time but all worth it
• Many organistions use Twitter etc as broadcast channel - good baby step to pursuade stakeholders to allow you to start
• Not about the technology, about confidence to have the conversation. Gradual process to build confidence.
• Small steps - but get involved. @danslee - diving in from day one like being trendy uncle break dancing at a wedding - people who can dance think it's appalling but gets others up on the floor!
• Camden started Twitter as emergency response to bad weather but from there kept it going and started being more conversational
• Just by putting the toe in the water is a move towards providing services to citizens and they can see the council is doing something - even if they're not doing much or well at first
• keep going at it, if the answer is no today, it might not be tomorrow.
• show what they are missing out on
• need to show be benefit of engagement, allow relevant employees to attend and use their learning and networking - today good example- we're all here on our day off!
• blurred lines between professional and personal relationships of social media / comms staff using networks. how much is work? what is allowed?
• are HR telling employees what they can / can't do? outside of work hours you are still representing organisation. have been sending staff off to events without being able to manage but now can see what staff are up to in their own time - managing organisation representation online
• starting to develop social media usage guidelines - updating internet / email use policy. can share our draft guidance with anyone interested. Jake Pickard interested in seeing draft policies.
• simple guidance - what's out there is public, permanent. informal relationships - if you're blogging someone to run it past. '
• under contract not to badmouth organisation - covers social media too. code of conduct. highlight this also applies online.
• how do you raise your voice as a citizen when also an employee? #staff #citizen lol
• never off duty - comments and personal pictures can be used against the organisation! can reap benefits from the flipside
• can be used by council's to convict benefit cheats - this could be concerning - invasion of privacy - but online isn't private the way most people use it!
• moral issues rather than technology issue. journalists now can do the death knock online - example of Express / Dunblane survivors
• younger people don't view privacy in the same way
• people forget and send wrong things - @glinner phone number, Croydon council on Twitter
• Channel 4 about to launch a game to educate children about privacy online
• we're set on digital engagement and moving people to online space from offline but we are still learning - how can we support and encourage when we don't fully understand the possibilities / consequences of our actions?
• unique and different channel for engagement. different audiences within the space.
• reach out to different, hard to reach audiences. Deaf community huge users of Bebo (pos. due to less constrained language). Lots of Eastern European migrants - use Facebook to keep in touch with family. Stats somewhere on demographics for networks - will try to find!
• @paul_cole started off by ward but biggest groups are emotive groups. names impact on popularity form meta-communities.
• Are same people joining many groups across networks? Are these the engaged people anyway, just using another channel?
• Mentioned our election Twitter and Facebook and how members were different - not following on both feeds except small number of people.
• Working out how to engage not just be marketed at. Have smaller feeds for specific groups.
• If all you do is RSS you will get companies, journalists etc. If you do it manually and converse you will get people engaging with you. Better response to having a voice - have a personality don't be personal! Issues around this - see old post about our Twitter.
• Who does this out of hours etc - back to the line between on / off duty being blurred!
• Lots of tools to manage - Hootsuite, Tweet Later etc...

Overcoming small hurdles in digital engagement #localgovcamp

Updated (21 June 2009): @timdavies hosted this session off the back of a post he made on his blog a while back. In the post he listed 50 small hurdles he had noticed through his active research with local authorities into youth engagement.
The session was well attended with a mix of people who wanted to share the obstacles they had discovered as well as ask for advice on overcoming them and share tips where they had been successful.
I made the notes below as the session was in progress and won't mess with them now. Tim has also put his thoughts about the session in a post and has actioned one of the outcomes - to create a wiki of hurdles and possible solutions people are trying. The more people who get involved in adding information and advice to the wiki the more useful a resource it will be not only to those directly responsible for web / social media / digital engagement within an authority but managers / employees in other service areas too. So, take a look and see if you can add to the dicussion there.
There is also a video of an interview David Wilcox did with Tim straight after the session.


What I blogged during the session (posted 20 June 2009):

First session I am here at today is about the small hurdles to digital engagement:

• How to get people looking for solutions not presenting them with problems
• business has to be committed to web / social media
• technology first never work
• this technology makes the authority more fuzzy. is a huge cultural shift.
• one of the issues is about control - so many agencies want to control the space and at hint of loss they demand the experimenting stops and risk assessments etc demanded.
• the way the public is engaged is controlled, not easy for public to comment back to council's which is why discussion is happening away from the authority in other spaces
• the vision is important and stakeholder buy in essential.
• chief execs etc need to be assured of who will engage and that criticism is constructive rather than just putting themselves out as sitting duck. as principle they want to listen to what people want to tell us.
• most things happen through a series of small changes.
• finding someone else who has already gone first opens doors to other areas of the authority
• need to move to an always on nature. so many projects fail because change doesn't happen to check online every day
• overcoming small problems doesn't undermine bigger cultural change
• lots of examples of people developing under the wire and this can open doors to others once project out there and success. to some extent gets round the control issue but should we have to work this way?
• all projects should start from the point of what is the business trying to achieve? what is the communication you are trying to make. team of (under wire) communication developers then need to facilitate the best solution on a case by case basis
• need someone to who is passionate
• if we all share our experiences and approaches through the session wiki this can be of massive help and best outcome of session. there is lots of this going on informally but a shared space to help with solutions to the hurdles.
• @timdavies committed to continuing the wiki if people will find this useful. he also has a toolkit for youth engagment.
• social media strategies across the organisation needed but each service also needs to have own approach
• also great resources and case studies on IdEA CoP by @ingridk help pursuade stakeholders as they see work elsewhere and ask 'why aren't you doing this?'
• genuine examples of 'if they're doing it, we must do it'
• league tables and easy to view 'how we're losing out' to present to stakeholders
• tips from everyone in session
• collaboration sometimes is sometimes better from bottom up. have an open mind and asked what is out there, who is using it, how can we do it. look at who else is already on the journey
• if you want to be the enabler be the link between business strategy of engaging customers and what the opportunities on the ground. @carlheggarty get on and do it until someone asks you to stop. run pilot projects on key services to act as demonstrator. be persistent. shamelessly promote and explain it. be outright - say if we don't do this we are not fulfilling our business strategy.
• just do it. get some examples. under the wire if necessary.
• engage councillors. get them interested so they put pressure on chief officers.
• work around the blocks. simple things first and build up. start a blog
• find out about demographics and empirical evidence - where to find?
• demonstrate the danger of not acting. if you're not doing it someone else will. examples of campaign groups already running but council's not responding / engaging
• aggregators available for any conversation happening across the spaces in order to show empirical data and how to get involved and become more efficient.
• second view of finding one or two advocate councillors who would buy in and support. possibly a charter to overcome obstacles. started with rewired state (example)
• framework needs to be in place so things can be farmed out to services. manager convinced of worth even if still technophobe.
• conversation to continue outside of session.
• get to know the technology in your own time, keep up with the market, trends etc
• @timdavies says share even if it isn't finished or perfect. councils and communities are not perfect they are work in progress
• social media is not publishing it is conversation
• throw stuff out and show what you are doing, show the good practice and lessons learned
• the people who are trying to pursuade need to be more political with skills to pursuade and influence
• bullsh*t is your friend - chief officers and councillors love this stuff but middle managers don't
• where will this stuff be shared? IdEA CoP, SOCITM web professionals group, need a new website! lol
• SOCITM runs a CoP but will also form the web professionals group including social media pro and web

#localgovcamp

Here at #localgovcamp in Birmingham today. About 100 of us local gov web geeks and communicators gathered on a weekend to talk about changing the world or at least doing a better job of getting council information out there.
First sessions are about to start and I'll try to blog and Twitter as much as I can. Follow me @sarahlay.

Power to the people

We've had some interesting discussions this afternoon and now I am a-pondering.
We're reaching the end of a project to upgrade our content management system (sort of). We've sailed on choppy seas throughout this project and now we're looking to chart a course in calmer waters. Talk turned to that most vague of things - the medium- to long-term future.
Since bringing web work in-house and into the CMS around five years ago we have worked a devolved authorship model. Once trained authors throughout the organisation were responsible for creating and publishing web content through our CMS. For some of our sites the content passed through workflow to our team for a final approval on house style and accessibility / usability before actually being live.
The question has been raised today about whether this model is working out for us or not. If not, why not. Having personally trained the majority of our authors, often on more than one occasion; classroom style with practical exercises and one to one with bespoke guidance; on writing for the web and on our CMS; and provided support (drop in sessions, online, telephone, in person) I have a whole raft of views on what the answer to the question might be.
But I wonder:

• What experience does anyone else have?
  
• Do others implement devolved authorship?
  
• What is the ratio of authors to size of organisation / website?
• What skills do those authors have? Why were they chosen as authors? Is it a dedicated web author role or part of A N Other job?
• What training is provided? What is the incidence of retraining?
• What level of support is needed / provided?
• Is content 'let free' by authors or is there an approval system in place?
• Has anyone gone from devolved authorship to centralisation of publishing or 'super users' (sort of extension of the web team)? How was any change to the process received?
• If you run more than one website do you have different levels of devolvement / approval? For example, do you approve web content but not intranet content?
  

I'd like to take the discussion further and if anyone is willing to share their thoughts or experience on authoring web content in an organisation I'd be really interested to hear this. Or if anyone wants to grab me at localgovcamp this Saturday (or maybe have a short session on this) this would also be great.

Public sector intranets

I've had some interesting email exchange with Ian Vaughan of Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council today about intranets in the public sector.
They are currently planning an intranet redesign and so Ian is looking to find out more about what other councils are up to. This got me thinking about our own position (again) and where we want to go with our own intranet and internal comms tools.
We're not in a position to go forward with the major overhaul of our own intranet at the moment due to other project work needing to be completed. But we've had it on the cards for a while and I (and the rest of the team) are itching to get to the point where we can take a serious look at what we've got, what we could have and go out and chat with employees about what they think we should end up with.
Intranets, generally, fascinate me. Possibly because I am nosey and anything that appears secret (which an intranet, by nature, is) needs investigating. Possibly because I am as passionate about the internal audience and online communication as I am about the external counterpart.
When our time comes (soon, make it soon) I hope to be able to find others willing to allow me to peek over their (fire)wall at what they've got. In the meantime I hope you might be willing to share what you've got with Ian? DM me on Twitter and I'll pass on his email address - or leave a comment and I'll nudge him to contact you himself.
Ian has also just completed his thesis research and has some info on web 2.0/social media usage in local gov which I am sure he would be willing to exchange for your intranet knowledge / thoughts ;)

Election 2009: Part the second

So, the dust is beginning to settle and while it will undoubtedly take a while for the organisation adjust to being under the control of a different party for the first time in 28 years now seems a good a time as any to have a look at how we covered the election in which they took the seats.
In my first post about election 2009 I looked at how we had set up a new section and added extra functionality and revealed what we planned to do as results came in. Our plan, very nearly, came together.
Our real-time reporting of events worked well as did the system we had in place for getting the results from the count rooms around the county to us at county hall.
Using Twitter and Facebook to publish the results also worked well. At one point (around 8.30am) it looked like it might be all we had to get the results out as we tackled technical problems, eventually winning most of the battles.
The problems did mean we had to jettison some of our content to get off the ground though. Sadly the detailed text pages organised by division were a casualty, as were some of automated functions of the system. But temporarily letting them go allowed us to fix the other stuff on the fly and get something out there.

What did make it?

• The virtual chamber - the little people colour in according the the result, the pie chart shows the party share and then you can exactly how many votes each candidate for each division polled.
  
• The county map - we would have liked to have done more work on this. It was intended to have interactive functionality so you could hover off and get information but also drill down to detailed info by district and division.
• Our Twitter feed - I'd say this was successful. We gained around 130 new followers as the results started rolling in. Were able to respond to queries and gather feedback on how we were doing. The Twitter feed also fed the website and the latest results featured on our home page and on a dedicated page in the results section. Lessons? Well, we could have probably used hash tags more effectively.
  
• Our Facebook page - I'd also say this was successful. The group trebled in size during the results action and, most interestingly, they started talking to each other (and kept it polite). This also allowed us opportunity to see how we were doing, allowed citizens a platform to discuss what was happening and I hope some will take the time to email us about their experience so we can learn from it further.
• Our work on your TV screen - I think we made most of the networks. This was great as it meant they thought our graphics clearly displayed the situation and was also a great morale boost for the team. We had a lovely moment in amongst the constant action where we stood around the TV in our office and all clapped and grinned like idiots as our graphics played out on BBC lunchtime news.It wasn't the most important thing to us that day but it was special all the same.

What didn't make it:

There were a couple of things in the run up to polling day which didn't make it and a few bits of the results system which also remained dormant.

• Mapping data - we really wanted to map all the polling stations in the country and link it into our public transport journey planner. Sadly, this was not to be. This time.
  
• Blogs - we initially planned to carry blogs from our first time and new to county voters to be updated through the run up to the election. Again, this wasn't to be. Instead we went for a compromise option and did case studies.
• Photo galleries - we also had some ideas around photo galleries which would take user generated content too. Images have been a problem all round for us throughout this build & deployment. We've tried our best to build a bigger stock and I think, if nothing else, a general election will give us the chance to get out and take some more pics! We've started to set up a photo album on our Facebook page and hope to add one to the website next week.
• Our text content of results - when the results were entered into the XML file powering the map and chamber this was supposed to generate a text page which gave the detailed information for each division. In turn the URL to this division specific page was to be included in the tweets & Facebook status updates. It didn't happen, autopsy pending.
• (Added 7 June): Results available by SMS - originally planned for visitors to be able to register their number and division ahead of polling day in order to receive two text messages in return; one with result of the division and one with the overall result. For reasons beyond our control we couldn't go ahead with this.
  

Generally cool things that happened:

• Opportunity to work with the rest of Public Relations, in particular the press office. This was a real test of the teams working together and it seemed to go pretty seamlessly. We got the job done and left each other to deal with the specialisms and the overall effect to the outside world was quite cool.
• Working with colleagues in democratic services and IT.
  
• Did I mention our graphics were on TV? lol
• Working with colleagues across the public sector who were kind enough to look at our stuff in advance and give us help, advice and support as we went live blind to what everyone else could see thanks to being shut out of the network. Special thanks to Dan at Redbridge, Al at Newcastle, Simon Wakeman at Medway and the districts in our county. There were lots of others who supported via Twitter on the day.
• Our visitor figures spiked somewhat. In 24 hours (Friday) we had more than 19,000 visits to our election section alone. And the site didn't fall over (too badly, as far as we know). This is our highest number of visits in one day ever!
  

Still to come:

• New councillor profiles
• Rebuilding areas of content around the new administration (meetings etc)
• Hopefully that photo gallery will make it
• European election results
• Results of the outstanding division in mid-July
• We're due a reskin of the website (when we finish the CMS) and a lot of the things we tried or learnt here will feed into that.

(Added 7 June) Looking ahead to the next elections I think we would look to do more work on the sort of systems we had this time, ensure that the complete picture of information could be presented and try to get the back office hook ups to work how we wanted them to. Beyond that I think the next step in development would be looking at online voting and widgets / other platforms (iPhone apps etc). I am sure there is lots we can do and we have four years to work it out!

And I think that's about all I can say about elections. I am still a little emotionally charged from the adrenalin of working at such pressure yesterday and giddy with the joy of how well our team worked together on the day and in the run up. Now we just need to decide what to tackle next!

Elections 2009: a post in two parts

Today is polling day in the county council and European Parliamentary elections. It's an important date in the calendar. Politically it could turn out to be a significant vote for this county. It's will also be of significance to this team and the work we do whatever the political outcome.
In a lot of ways it feels as if this day has been a long time coming as planning and work on how we will cover the election on our website and in the greater online space began at the tail end of last year. In smaller ways I would still like a bit more time to tweak and improve and do even more than we have. But time and voting waits for no web team and so here we are: polling day 2009.

What have we done so far?

• We've created a new section of the site expanding and improving on content which first served in 2005. We changed to a three column layout (rest of site is two column) and tweaked the design without moving radically away from the main look.
• We added social bookmarking to the election section. This is something we are waiting to implement across our main site and other sites we run from here so it seemed a good idea to give it a go and see what feedback we could gather and tweaks we needed before a bigger roll out.
• We tried to make it as easy as possible for visitors to find out all the information about what they can vote for, the different methods of voting, registration, key dates in the run up, candidate and division information, other things they can vote for at different times, why it is important to vote and how and when they would be able to access results information.
  This included us linking to and featured multimedia content from The Electoral Commission, the Every Vote Counts campaign, a press section with copies of the offline campaign and linking through to the district and borough councils own information.
  We also created two short case studies - first time student voter and new to county voter - with real-life people to help people understand what they should do. This also allowed us to make links with our youth brand.
  
• We have Twittered throughout the run up to elections - @Derbyshirecc
• We made our first venture onto Facebook with a page dedicated to the elections. This provided prompts to 'fans' about the key dates and links through to relevant information on our site. We have also been able to use this and the associated event listing to send an email reminder (within Facebook) to 'fans' to remind them to vote and where the results will be.

All of this has been going on for a number of months (not full time) and has been a learning curve and exciting project for this team to get into. For the first time we have had a significant presence internally in promoting and reporting on elections. It's provided an opportunity for us to raise awareness of our work internally and work with colleagues in other departments to enable everything to happen.
Our results system will hopefully be the jewel in the crown of what we've done so far. We won't know until the dust settles tomorrow and we have some feedback from Derbyshire voters, councillors, other officers and colleagues in the public sector who are kind enough to take the time to have a look.

What we can say about our results system:

• For the first time for this organisation we will be featuring near-to-real-time results displayed in more than one way.
  
• A virtual chamber which will fill up as seats are announced - also provides break down information for all seats as announced
  
• A pie chart showing the total seats held per party as the seats are announced
• A county map with divisions colouring in as seats are announced
• Text pages showing a break down of votes for each division
• Twitter of results as they are announced. This will be available through our Twitter profile but also on our website.
• Facebook page updated as seats are announced. A Facebook update will be sent to all 'fans' once all results are in.

These displays are also being used internally in our members' room. On two pretty impressive big screens they will watch the results as they are announced via the virtual chamber and the county map.

So, this is what we have done and what we have in store. All that remains now is for the team to find time to go out and vote themselves and then some serious finger-crossing and possibly some flying-by-seat-of-pants action in the morning.
But, like the swan, we aim for everything to appear seamless on the online surface even if we are all paddling like mad underneath!
Counting in Derbyshire begins at 10am so keep a weather eye on the horizon for http://elections.derbyshire.gov.uk to ramp up and send us a good luck vibe, if you have one spare, for our maiden voyage in these waters.