Many of the visitors to this blog would also be aware of the work of the Government 2.0 Taskforce, and the issues they’re attempting to address.
There are some topics that are outside the taskforce’s terms of reference that we are aiming to develop new guidance on in the coming months, including:
- Using third-party hosted web services (APIs, embeddable widgets, etc.)
- Rich Internet Applications (RIA)
- User-generated content
- Web Analytics Standard Metrics
- Mobile web
Of course, the resources allocated to this work will need to be balanced against the more pressing tasks of:
- Any work required to implement taskforce findings
- Reviewing, validating and (where necessary) expanding existing content
- Consolidating existing external content
Many of these tasks will be occurring in parallel, with some external dependencies well outside our control. The ‘big bang’ launch of a new site is likely to be secondary to our core goal; getting the right advice out to agencies as soon as possible.
This means that we’ll be aiming to release guidance content as it becomes available for publishing, rather than as a ’suite’ of new guidance, stored away for the big ‘new website release date’.
Often, this may be introduced as additions to existing guidance – at which point we’ll mention any changes via this blog and the AGIMO WebManager’s mailing list.
When taking review cycles into account, a content schedule becomes less of a project plan, with fixed start and end dates, and more of a roster (particularly with varying review periods and release cycles).
With all this new content being developed and published, we’ll need to ensure that our existing information architecture is still able to accommodate the expansion of topics. Just in case it doesn’t, we’ve been exploring several alternatives.
We’ll explore some of those alternatives in the next post. In the meantime, feel free to comment below on any content schedules or review cycles you’ve seen or used before.
The content below was posted to the Web Publishing Guide between 16 September 2009 and 26 October 2009. This consultation is now closed. It is provided here as a reference only.
In early September, AGIMO launched a project to review the accessibility support of the Portable Document Format (PDF), for use on government websites. The project is being run in collaboration with the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) and the Department of Families and Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA).
The initial stage, the Public Consultation, began on September 16 and ran for about 6 weeks to 26 October 2009. We invited comments from many and in the end received just over 40 formal submissions from members of the public; peak disability groups; government departments; industry and accessibility experts.
At the risk of being overly self-referential, we thought our visitors might benefit from observing the workings behind this blog (even though the blog is offering a chance for visitors to observe the workings behind the project).
As stated on our about page, this blog’s content is produced by several authors from the review team, with posts going out on a semi-regular basis. The style we’re adopting is considerably less formal than what you may find on the Guide, and the blog content review process is slightly less rigourous, requiring a much lower level of sign-off than one would expect for a significant policy addition/modification to the Guide.
That being said, a workflow is still in force. Our content authors are responsible for identifying, drafting and requesting publication of a new post, who then submit it to our team’s director. If approval is given, the approval is noted and the post goes live, otherwise, further refinements (and possible rejection) of the post will need to be carried out by the original author. Occasionally, the director may have to consult with a branch manager for approval, but most blog posts are expected to be fairly uncontroversial, ‘what-we-did-this-week’ style writings. It’s a fairly simple workflow, but one that, given our goals, subject matter, technology and target audience, was deemed by our branch manager to be suitably lightweight.
Were this blog’s primary subject matter to be somewhat more controversial, or of interest to a wider audience, more rigourous authoring processes would need to be explored.
While a major site redevelopment and renewal is underway, business as usual still needs to continue. Some of the minor technical changes which don’t require high-level sign-off are easy to roll-out in parallel.
So, this week, without any major changes to our underlying technology, governance arrangements or content scope, we’ve been able to quickly perform the following:
1. Customised Agency Search results
Previous implementations of our search results page relied on an XML wrapper to process the results from Funnelback’s Agency Search service – with our move to some new infrastructure a few months ago, this process ‘broke’, and the quick fix was to move back to the hosted variation of the Agency Search Service (using the default look and feel).
Only recently have we been able to secure some development time to align the search results screen with the rest of the site’s look and feel (and meet WCAG2 checkpoints regarding form input). Previously, we had a script-only solution to prevent empty searches being run – now we’ve been able to adapt the Agency Search template tags to provide a server-side check (the belt and suspenders plan). We’ve included the code snippet for re-use by anyone else using the Agency Search service:
<s:Compare <s:cgi>query</s:cgi> == > <p id="noSearch">No search term was entered. Please enter one or more search terms.</p> </s:Compare>
Thankfully, the web-based administration and customisation process provided by Agency Search was very straightforward, and we were up and running and fully ’skinned’ in only a couple of days. That said, let us know if you spot any problems.
No business case or high-level sign-off required for this one – it was regarded as restoration of an existing service. Design, test and development time: 10hrs.
2. Fixing broken links
This used to be a painful process given our internal infrastructure and the proliferation of clunky ‘free’ web-based tools, until the W3C link checker really took off. Revising redirects, while not ‘broken’ links, is also included in this process.
No high-level sign-off required, as it’s part of our monthly ‘weed-pulling’. Design, test and development time: 0.5hrs.
3. Fix up some typos in diagrams
These are a little harder to spot via automated spellchecking methods, and highlight the need to keep editable versions of web-friendly images on hand (and, ideally, ensure that they’re editable by almost anyone on the stock-standard SOE). We began to ponder what additional formats (if any) it may be appropriate to provide these diagrams in for agency re-use. SVG, PNG and PDF (with Visio also considered) seem to be leading the pack for now….
No high-level sign-off required. Design, test and development time: 0.25hrs.
4. Add some site-wide metadata
The site has been exposing only a bare minimum of metadata on its homepage for some time now, and we’re hoping to flesh it out over the next couple of months across [nearly] every page on the site. Given the site is presently only around 90 pages (and we expect to grow a little with some new content), it appears to be an achievable goal.
Site-wide metadata that was very straightforward to add included:
- content-type (constant)
- robots (constant)
- Content-Language / DC.Language (constant)
- DC.Format (constant)
- DC.Coverage.jurisdiction (constant)
- DC.Rights (constant)
- DC.Publisher (constant)
- DC.Identifier (system generated)
- AGLS.Function (constant)
- DC.Title (generated from CMS)
- DC.Description / Description (generated from CMS)
No business case or high-level sign-off required (internal re-use of existing content). Design, test and development time: 9hrs.
5. …and prepare for more metadata
We’ll be aiming to flesh out some of the page-specific metadata fields (DC.Contributor, AGLS.Audience, DC.Date.*, DC.Subject, AGLS.Mandate, etc.) gradually over time, particularly as content author participation is expected to be required.
National Archives Records Management Agency Support service also came in handy here (thanks David) when figuring out how to expose (and use linked data principles) AGLS.Mandate values (coming soon).
<link rel="AGLSTERMS.mandate" href="http://www.comlaw.gov.au/examplepath" title="Example Act 2009 (Cth)" />
We’ll also be pursuing a few controlled vocabularies for populating:
- AGLS.Audience (ANZCO)
- DC.Subject (Victoria Online Thesaurus)
A couple of months ago we ran some focus groups on what people think about the Web Publishing Guide – what they like and don’t like about the Guide, and what we could do to the Guide to make their jobs easier. The results are sitting in our inbox now.
Many of you will already have an inkling of what the hot topics are likely to be, but seeing the results from across all participants so far may also be useful.
We’ve attempted to summarise this 34-page document into a single blog post — most of your feedback could be roughly categorized as follows: read more…
“Hello world”. It’s a traditional exercise for programmers learning a new language, so it makes sense to use it here. It’s possible that the phrase “Hello, new world” may be more applicable – we’re not necessarily learning new programming languages, but we are modifying our use of web technologies in new and exciting ways. For example, given the inroads governments are making in the Web 2.0 space, it has come as no surprise to us that visitors to the Web Publishing Guide (the Guide) are looking for specific information on Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies.
Putting this together with the fact that the site needs a review of its content, information architecture (IA) and processes, we decided it was time to spring clean the Guide. This will include adding information on new topics and making information easier to find and use.
Most importantly, we wanted to use the Guide itself to model the guidance on the site. It does this in a number of areas already – notably in the accessibility space – but we wanted to broaden this to include background material, such as content strategies and some of the more technical aspects of the site’s development. Have a look at the about page for more information on what we have planned.
Which brings us to the blog you’re reading right now. This blog has a few purposes – firstly, we want to gather ideas and feedback from current visitors to webpublishing.agimo.gov.au about how the site could be improved. Secondly, we want to provide an example of an operating government blog, to give agencies a starting point when embarking on their own Web 2.0 projects. And finally, we want to lift the curtain on a typical website redevelopment, and show the processes and background materials that support such a project. So where does that leave the Web Publishing Guide (the Guide)?
The Guide:
“brings together Australian Government resources for website management. It makes it easy for Australian Government agencies to:
Discern their legal and policy obligations
Access policies, guidance and examples of better practice.”
- http://webpublishing.agimo.gov.au/About
We want to talk about:
… all the areas that are vital to the success of a website. We will be discussing progress and sharing our evolving thinking. The site is here to help government agencies and we recognise that we don’t have a monopoly on good ideas!
So please come and share your thoughts in the comments or, contact us directly.
We look forward to talking with you.
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