A few notable successes for UK e-government at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations awards earlier this week.
The Parole Board won the title of best website, with the citation calling it a ‘tribute to open communications [which] has received widespread praise from the industry as well as from its victim and offender audiences.’ Designed by ECRU, it’s actually a fairly modest site: the Board’s own press release quotes unspectacular traffic figures of 275,000 page views and 115,000 visits between January and August 2008. And whilst it’s unquestionably pretty and well laid-out, there’s nothing especially exciting about it: no social tech, no RSS even. It just does what it does, but does it well. The plain-English writing is particularly impressive.
And excitingly, there was actually a government winner in the Social Media category too – RAF senior aircraftsman Paul Goodfellow‘s video diary from Afghanistan on YouTube, on behalf of RAF recruitment. ‘With some videos achieving tens of thousands of views, the content proved to be compelling fodder for online and offline mainstream media publications,’ said CIPR.
In local gov, there were awards for Hull City Council’s ‘Slavery – Unfinished Business’ campaign, recognising the contribution of local man William Wilberforce; Westminster’s quarterly tracker survey of public opinion; Tyne & Wear Fire and Rescue Service’s fireworks campaign; Colchester’s quarterly print magazine; Gloucestershire’s guide to flooding; and a second successive award for Devon County Council’s ‘InTouch’ email service to elected representatives and parish magazine editors (again, a modest audience of 530).
Plenty of other local and national nominees too; see the full lists in the event brochure, including details of the rather fabulous menu at the Hilton Park Lane event.