Puffbox

Simon Dickson's gov-tech blog, active 2005-14. Because permalinks.

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  • Time for a consistent government brand

    Point one: producing documents is hard work. Producing documents in government circles is even harder. Too hard.

    I remember once hearing of another European government – Denmark, was it? – where they had a policy that documents and publications had to be closed down two days before publication. In the UK, we have allowed ourselves to get into a habit of last-minute, indeed last-second revisions.

    We need to break that habit; but until we do, and it’s going to take a very long time, we should be taking other steps to make production simpler. Unless something has to be in the process, and that may have to include ministerial whim – it should be eliminated.

    Point two: design is expensive – very expensive. Don’t get me wrong: it’s often money well spent. But it soon adds up.Ā  And the country just doesn’t have the spare cash to keep on changing government departments’ branding, or giving each individual document its own colour scheme.

    Point three: the NHS, the BBC, London Transport. All British success stories, recognised internationally. All applying rigidly consistent branding. Could the two be connected?

    All of which leads me to the conclusion that it’s time Britain – or more accurately, Whitehall – seriously considered the notion of a common government brand for all communication. And right now, we have both an opportunity, and an incentive.

    Designer Paul Robert Lloyd summed the situation up beautifully last year in this blog post reviewing other countries’ common governmental branding. He could also have looked at numerous other countries too: in fact, if you look across the major industrialised nations, the UK’s design anarchy is the exception rather than the rule. (Almost as interesting as Paul’s post are the comments which follow – indicating a sense that the design community would actually welcome it on an aesthetic level too.)

    We have a new government, and we’re (apparently) going to have it for another five years – maybe ten, maybe fifteen. We have a completely new set of faces at the Cabinet table, none of whom will have strong attachments to what has gone before (good point Jeremy). There is a desire in the population to start things afresh. And the new administration needs symbolic measures which say ‘look how we’re eliminating all that wasteful government spending of the past’.

    It’s an idea whose time has come, and will not come again for some time.

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    Our emergency theme helps Defra relaunch

    The biggest surprise about the transition to the new coalition administration is how few surprises there actually were. A quick tour of the departmental websites reveals, for the most part, the exact same websites that were there before – albeit a little lighter on content, and with new faces in the About Us section. It’s all gone commendably smoothly.

    But one or two departments have taken advantage of the situation to revamp their web presences: and it’s been our pleasure to assist with one of these already – with more, perhaps, to follow.

    In the run-up to Polling Day, we were asked by COI to provide cover for any ’emergency’ web building which might result from the arrival of a new administration. Steria provided a hosting environment, with WordPress MU pre-installed; and I worked with Zed1’s Mike Little to develop a theme which could be deployed and managed centrally, ideally very rapidly – but still be easily customisable for each individual site which used it.

    In the end, there weren’t any major Machinery of Government changes which required it: but Defra recognised the opportunity, and are using it as a base on which to start rebuilding their corporate website. They’ve worked with Puffbox on a few WordPress-based microsites already this year, so it’s familiar territory for them – and in truth, I think it’s been coming for a while.

    The theme is fairly plain, sober and generic: inevitably, given that we had literally no idea who might need to use it, or how. There’s a rather nice homepage carousel, managed via the WP media library; a widget-ised sidebar and ‘fat footer’; plus special page menus at the top and bottom. It makes for quite a nice little site: certainly enough to get things started.

    But whilst the design itself might not win awards, the behind-the-scenes stuff is pretty smart. We’ve enabled WordPress’s ‘custom header’ functionality on the theme: users simply need to create a graphic of predefined dimensions, upload it into WP, and it’ll be used as a full-width banner across the top (with the search form and – optionally – department name overlaid). In Defra’s case, they’ve gone for a fairly plain black logo on white; but it could have been a lot more creative if they’d wanted. When we’ve tried this in test, we’ve found it can produce quite dramatically different ‘feels’ to the theme.

    And then there’s the colour palette. The theme’s style.css file avoids defining most of the colours used on the page. Instead, there’s an options page in the WordPress backend, where you can enter the colours to be used for specific page elements: links, the ‘blobs’ in the sidebar and ‘fat footer’, and so on. These are saved in the database table of options for that specific blog only; and the custom CSS gets added to the top of each page as it gets generated. (It’s effectively an evolution of the work I did for BIS on Science & Society, but it takes the concept to a whole new level, and opens up all sorts of possibilities.)

    But of course, the most significant aspect is the centrally managed hosting environment, and the official recognition of WordPress as a suitable tool for the job. Precisely what I’ve been proposing on these pages for ages. And you know what? I think it actually worked.

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    Oi BBC, don't you dare diss my legacy

    The BBC published a very nicely balanced, sober article yesterday by Brian Wheeler, noting the ‘web revolution sweeping Whitehall‘. It’s been widely retweeted around the e-gov community, and is being seen as highly complimentary of civil service efficiency.

    Which makes it all the more curious to see the pictures they’ve chosen to illustrate the story: and the presumably humorous captions added beneath them.

    As you may or may not know, I was the individual responsible for the FCO web presence during those formative years. I designed and built every page of the 1997 site with my own two hands; and led the development of the 2000 (actually, 1998) site. And I’m going to defend them.

    The 97 site was redesigned, top to bottom, during purdah… and launched on the morning after the election. Never mind ‘few frills’: its design was pretty close to cutting edge at the time. That image of Munch’s The Scream was actually an animated GIF, which morphed into a globe – OK, maybe that was a bit pretentious on reflection. We even had RealAudio clips of Robin Cook’s comments on arrival at King Charles Street, thanks very much. Grr.

    The 98 site had a hell of a lot more than ‘a dropdown menu!’ (sic). In fact, it was absolutely groundbreaking, internationally speaking: and it had more functionality than the majority of Whitehall departments’ sites have now. Actually, if it launched now, it would still be one of the top handful.

    You could register to receive email alerts, based on news items ‘tagged’ with certain policy areas, or updates to country Travel Advice notices. And the list of latest news on the homepage was then personalised according to those same preferences: so you’d instantly see news items of interest to you, and a chronological list of changes to country Travel Advice for countries you cared about.

    On the back end, it was the first in government to use a web-based content management system – a custom-built thing, courtesy of a truly heroic developer called Ian Lathwell at Bates Interactive (laterĀ  known as XM London). And if you’re not impressed by that, maybe I should tell you about the several large Whitehall departments which still – a dozen years later! – haven’t evolved that far. We had a simplified markup language – […] for bold, {…} for italic – which was flexible enough for our purposes, and yet simple enough to explain to those who had never seen the web. Nothing too extravagant, but it just worked. We won enough awards to justify a trophy cabinet.

    And you won’t believe how little we paid for it. Buy me a coffee and I’ll tell you.

    So, less of the smart-alec captions, Mr/Mrs/Miss BBC Production Assistant. Thank you.

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    New Cabinet's online footprint

    I make it seven members of the new Coalition cabinet with Twitter accounts: although of course, some have been more personal than others:

    It’s worth noting that only Hague and Pickles have been active since polling day; and judging by one recent tweet, Pickles seems intent on maintaining pre-poll levels of activity. I wonder how many others will restart… has Twitter served its purpose, now they’ve been re-elected?

    We also have a few bloggers:

    Some of the senior Tories have made frequent contributions to the Conservatives.com site’s Blue Blog – among them David Cameron and Eric Pickles.

    The case of Sir George Young is worthy of special mention: his ‘on a lighter note’ writing goes back as far as 1999. And whilst it wouldn’t really meet the definition of a ‘blog’ – no feed, no commenting, etc – he surely deserves some credit for getting started so early. And indeed, for publishing his full constituency diary, ribbon-cutting by ribbon-cutting!

    Update: Although not strictly Cabinet, it’s also worth noting reports that the Conservatives’ head of press, Henry Macrory is to take ‘the same role at Downing Street’ (although his Twitter biog hasn’t yet been updated). Henry has been a prolific tweeter, and as you might expect from someone in his position, they’ve usually been rather partisan in nature. Can’t quite see that continuing somehow, especially not the anti-Clegg stuff.

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    Why WordPress is a good fit for government

    One way or another, it’s going to be a momentous week for UK government. A lot of people will be leaving their Whitehall offices on Thursday evening, not quite sure who they’re going to be working for – in terms of the boss, and the organisation – on Friday morning. I’ve had calls from literally all my government clients over the past week or so, just checking that I was going to be around in case of changes needing to be made. And that’s before we get into the short-term chaos of any large-scale departmental reconfiguration.

    All of which makes it a good moment for a blog post I’ve been meaning to write for some time now, on the subject of WordPress in government.

    I’ve been banging the WordPress drum up and down Whitehall since late 2007. At first, it was small tactical builds: the Darzi NHS Review in November, followed by the Wales Office in February 08. From there, over the road to Downing Street, and thence to half of central government departments – thanks in no small part to Steph Gray’s Commentariat theme, first published in February 09.

    So what exactly is it about WordPress in particular, that makes it so attractive for government in particular?

    Cuts out (the worst excesses of) procurement: In my experience, procurement teams are very good at explaining why their role is crucial, and why they need to be invited to all your meetings. But when the best available product is available free of charge, you can instantly cut out a large portion of your project schedule.

    Cheaper and friendlier suppliers: So far at least, WordPress has been the domain of the small-scale agency, or even the solo operator. We don’t have tiers of business analysts and project managers. We don’t have CMS solutions we built at significant expense several years ago, from which our product executives are trying to milk every last penny of profit. Generally speaking, the guy you speak to is the guy doing the work. No intermediaries, and minimal overheads.

    Speed of implementation: WordPress’s finest hour in government circles surely came in June last year. One Friday, two departments – BERR and DIUS – were unexpectedly forced together by a Cabinet reshuffle. By the Wednesday, and for minimal cash outlay, the newly merged web team had built a WordPress-based site for the new department. An almost incredible achievement, given the usual glacial pace of Whitehall web development. It just shows what can be done.

    Focus on content, not process: For me the key strength of WordPress is that, as soon as you log in, you’re looking at an authoring screen. If you haven’t seen many CMSes, that may sound odd. But believe me, most platforms would much rather you waded through several layers of menu before you even get close to writing some words. And that’s what policy officials and press officers are paid to do: not worry about taxonomies or systems admin.

    More than you bargained for: Time and again, I find new things WordPress can do, which I hadn’t previously known about. Things I’d never have thought to request in a tech spec; but because someone else did, or because it was a happy bi-product of something else, or because a geek somewhere fancied coding a quick plugin to do it, it’s in the package. And one day, you’ll suddenly be very grateful.

    And last, but definitely not least:

    The ‘open source’ principle: Open source does mean cheap code, but its true merit lies in what comes next. When government spends public money on IT development, the public has a right to expect to derive the maximum benefit from it – and that can mean so much more than simply getting a prettier or more efficient website out of it. In the same way that taxpayers now have a right to raw data, the same can – and I’d say, should – apply to software development. The use of other people’s code – in the form of themes and plugins – is fundamental to WordPress; and it provides an easy framework to introduce the notion of releasing HMG-commissioned code.

    If you’ve ever wondered why I’ve pushed WordPress so hard all these years, the answer is encapsulated in that last point. It represents a gentle introduction to some potentially huge concepts. I’ve seen too many people trying to pitch the concept of open source in philosophical terms; it rarely works. WordPress makes it real, and has already delivered tangible results. And we’ve only just got started.

    Footnote: this post was prompted by Dave Briggs’s reference to this video of author and blogger Aaron Brazell talking about ‘WordPress and government’ – which doesn’t really say anything specific to government. Still worth watching though.

  • Lonely this purdah!

    For those of us in the extended family of government webbies, it’s very quiet. Once the election was called, almost everyone inside the Civil Service took a cautious reading of the guidelines regarding the ‘purdah’ period, and cut all online communication: blogging, tweeting, whatever. As I wrote, it’s an entirely understandable reaction. But it’s getting very lonely out here.

    And now, with William Hill’s now putting the odds on a hung parliament at 8/15 – in other words, almost twice as likely as not, it poses a tricky question: what happens on 7 May, the day after polling day?

    The guidance on elections and government formation, published in draft – ahead of its inclusion in ‘a broader Cabinet Office manual that the Cabinet Secretary plans to publish later in the year’ (!) – seems to suggest that the (largely self-imposed) restrictions should continue:

    As long as there is significant doubt whether the Government has the confidence of the House of Commons, it would be prudent for it to observe discretion about taking significant decisions, as per the pre-election period. The normal and essential business of government at all levels, however, will need to be carried out.

    Hardly crystal-clear as regards the already grey area of professional (as opposed to directly job-related) publishing and communication: but I guess the same ‘safety first’ principle will be applied by most.

    Which could mean staying silent until Parliament sits again on 18 May… or potentially, even later.

  • Transport's web design spending

    A PQ from Lib Dem MP Jennifer Willott:

    To ask the Minister of State, Department for Transport how much his Department spent on external website design consultants in each of the last three years; and if he will make a statement.

    To which Parliamentary Under-Secretary Chris Mole responded on 30 March 2010:

    Tables have been placed in the Libraries of the House showing websites operated over the last three years and how much has been spent on external website design consultants for website design work. Costs provided are total external costs and do not include internal staff costs.

    Depositing something in the library makes it a little more difficult to trace online; but not impossible. A little-known area of the Parliament website listed such Deposited Papers: and lo and behold, here’s the Word document in question: a simple table, over just two pages, which could surely have been reformatted for Hansard relatively easily? It includes:

    • over Ā£160k spent on design of Transport Direct
    • Ā£178k on the Think! road safety microsite…
    • … plus a further Ā£100k on the Think! drug-driving micro-microsite
    • … plus a few quid short of Ā£88k on the Think! early years and primary micro-microsite
    • Ā£138k on the Flash-y, child-focused Tales Of The Road microsite (which prompted this most amusing Lords PQ last year)
    • and a whopping Ā£343,207 on the heavily-promoted Act On CO2 site – which, in its defence, has claimed 1.1 million unique visitors between Sept 08 and Dec 09. Mind you, with an advertising budget in excess of Ā£10m over 3 years, so it should.

    The total of the various sums quoted: Ā£1.2 million, over the three years from April 2006 to April 2009. And I note, for the record, there’s no mention of Code of Everand.

    Please let’s be clear. All I’m doing is quoting the numbers from a document placed on the public record. It’s headed ‘DfT Websites and design consultant costs’, but there’s no clear definition of what constitutes ‘design’. In some cases, I’d assume ‘design’ covers the complete creative and technical process, from Photoshop to build to launch; in others, that’s quite definitely not the case.

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    Our new Defra site plays nicely with PDFs

    In the late March dash to complete jobs before the end of the financial year, not to mention the imminent election declaration, I pushed a couple of websites live without having the time to blog about them.

    One of these was another little job for Defra: a WordPress-based satellite site for their Science Advisory Council. It’s a fairly modest site, sticking very closely to Defra’s house style, and based to a significant extent on previous work I’ve done for them. But it does have one innovation worth flagging.

    The site’s main objective is transparency, making documents from its quarterly meetings publicly available. Inevitably, like it or not, that means a lot of PDF files. WordPress’s media library function makes it easy to upload these as attachments to posts (or indeed, pages): but we had the idea to take things a step further.

    One underused feature of WordPress is the ability to add ‘custom taxonomies’: distinct classifications based on either the (hierarchical) category or (freeform) tagging model. But if you’re smart about it, you can also hook this same functionality into the media library – allowing you to add ‘tags’ to the documents you upload. And once you’re doing that, you can benefit from all the other features you’re used to with tags and categories.

    So there’s a page on the SAC site which presents this custom taxonomy (unimaginatively labelled ‘Upload tags’) as a tag cloud. Click on a tag, and it takes you to an archive page of all uploads (ie PDFs) relevant to that tag – eg meeting minutes – which can be based on a special page template. (And you can also get RSS feeds of each element in the custom taxonomy, by adding ‘/feed’ to the URL in the usual way.)

    We’ve also written a routine into the standard post template to extract details of attached files, and present them automatically in a nice table, with a bit of automated metadata too – see this page as an example.

    There are plenty of reasons why you shouldn’t rely on PDF as your primary publishing channel; but sometimes, you have to accept it’s the only practical solution. And in this case, I hope we’ve shown it’s possible to make something of a virtue of it.

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    Civil servant socialising grinds to a halt

    When it eventually came, after two and a half years of speculation, the announcement of the general election almost felt like a disappointment. But the welcome news finally came this morning: it’s ‘game on’.

    Or rather, if you’re a civil servant – off. The day has seen a steady stream of tweets from civil servants (including the guv’nor), plus the odd blog post, warning of a period of ‘radio silence’.

    In fact, when it finally came this morning, the official Cabinet Office guidance was pretty light on detail regarding online activity: I’d heard suggestions that some quite detailed rules were being circulated.

    I spot a couple of points worth highlighting:

    • ‘Films, videos and photographs from departmental libraries or sourcesĀ  shouldĀ  notĀ  beĀ  madeĀ  availableĀ  forĀ  useĀ  byĀ  political Parties. Tools for sharing videos and photographs, such as Flikr (sic) and YouTube should not be updated with new content [but…] material previously published can stand.’

      I can see some potential for conflict there: if, let’s say, a photo of a Ministerial visit has gone on Flickr with a CC licence, is that ‘fair game’ for a political leaflet?

    • ‘News sections of websites must comply with the advice on press releases… NewsĀ  tickersĀ  andĀ  other mechanisms should be discontinued for the election period.’

      Eh? My assumption is that they mean ‘push’ apps, as opposed to an on-page animation technique; but even so, the wording is a little curious. And I can’t actually think of any specific examples of ‘push’ apps anyway. (Does Twitterfeed count?)

    But whilst there’s a requirement to limit ‘civil servants’ participationĀ  inĀ  aĀ professionalĀ capacityĀ inĀ social networks’, I don’t necessarily read that as the draconian ban it might have been. So whilst the government online community’s unanimous decision to go quiet is perfectly understandable, and unquestionably the safest thing to do, I’m not sure the guidance actually demands it.

    The calm before the storm, perhaps. Enjoy a couple of weeks’ rest, gang; things could get very busy on 7 May.

  • Directgov starts seeking feedback

    To their great credit, Directgov have added a feedback box to the bottom of nearly every page on the site, asking how useful you find the page contents. Responses are anonymous, and there’s some nice javascript to aid usability: a jQuery-based character count and validation check prior to submission. The language is maybe a bit formal, and it looks like the rating is mandatory without actually saying so; but I’m nitpicking.

    My suspicion is, it’s actually a pretty modest email form: nothing particularly advanced. But it’s a significant step forward, and perhaps, a step closer to the Tories’ stated vision of government websites as ‘places where people can come together to discuss issues and solve problems’. (And don’t forget, Directgov’s API has been promised ‘by the end of May’.)