gov.uk launch: a quick digression about all the nice things the government are doing

I had today's blog post all planned out in my mind. I was even going to review the other blogs covering the gov.uk launch like a grown-up sub-academic.

OK here goes -

Delib - 'Looks great! Hypothetical savings!'
Puffbox - 'Looks great! More search less navigation!'
Helpful technology - 'Looks great! More centralised control!'
Disambiguation - 'Why most UX is shite'

Haha I'm sure the timing of the last post was just an unfortunate coincidence. UX and web consultants don't like to knock the government supersite idea too much, although Puffbox's Simon Dickson is known for his healthy scepticism. Over the years Directgov must have provided a nice little earner for hired guns.

OMG a digression of a digression. No, what genuinely appalled me twenty minutes ago was the revelation that not only would gov.uk feature public services, it's going to feature extensive PR on the policies of the government of the day:

http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2012/02/03/government-policy-a-spotters-guide/

Later this month we will unveil another bit of our GOV.UK beta – the element that explains the work and workings of government. This is intended to replace the many separate sites run by government organisations, simplifying things for people who are personally or professionally interested in how government works and what it is doing.

So far so good. It always tickled me pink that the same organisations who forced Gubbins to converge to Directgov would have to find themselves going through content editors to get anything published on the web. Those editors will be sitting in separate buildings, if not separate cities hundreds of miles away. They could wait for years on end for a Project Austin to not show up as well.

Naturally GDS are putting hypothetical users first:

In developing this component we’ve found ourselves returning frequently to the question: “what is government policy?”

Not “what is government policy on issue X” (a separate problem which I will return to in a minute) but, more philosophically, what is and isn’t a government policy and how do you know when you’ve met one?

Apparently GDS need to comply with FOI as well so all this government openness and accountability would be a terribly good thing.

Here's where the stench of evil becomes overpowering:

Working definition

Our ambition in creating GOV.UK is radically to improve the user experience of government, and that includes explaining government policy in a clear and consistent way.

The current Government is on record as saying: “It is our ambition to make the UK the most transparent and accountable Government in the world”.

Being able to identify, aggregate and explain government policy is critical to our doing that.

The ICO study cited two workable definitions:

• a course or general plan of action to be adopted by government, party, person etc. (OED)
• the process by which governments translate their political vision into programmes and actions to deliver “outcomes”, desired changes in the real world. (Modernising Government White Paper, 1999)

We’d like to suggest a third, the one we’re working to in the beta of GOV.UK, which is:

• statements of the government’s position, intent or action

See the rhetorical metamorphosis there - from 'user experience' to 'identify, aggregate and explain' to 'statements of the government’s position'.

It's impossible to explain the government of the day's policies without advocating them.

Here's a quick reminder of how Alphagov looked:

Alphagov test site

Why, roughly half of it was devoted to promoting, sorry, explaining the workings, of the government of the day, wasn't it?

In the middle of the lower half there was a smiling, happy portrait of David Cameron and Nick Clegg in the garden of No 10 Downing Street. 












Presumably you need to see that smiling, optimistic picture of Dave Cameron and Nick Clegg in the Garden Of Future Promise when you're off to find out about public services.

They could have used a more neutral picture to express the somewhat dull idea of government structure and policy but I expect this was the photo the Coalition had lying around.

While charming politicians is one of the ten things Directgov actually does, to their credit, Directgov always remained politically neutral. Now GDS seem to be crossing a sinister line to appease their paymasters.

Oh dear, there I go with the rhetoric again. Here's more from GDS themselves - their italics:

Towards a language for describing policy

To fully answer the question “what is government policy on issue X”, though, we need not only to identify government policies reliably but also to find a naming convention and consistent language to explain them.

We’re trying out one possible approach to that in the beta, using a new ’policy definition’ format to apply a structured set of sub-headings on each policy, as below. The first two (‘the issue’ and ‘actions’) are mandatory headings, everything else will be optional – a flexible framework to describe policies of different flavours and at different life stages.

The issue – the problem or opportunity, and government’s aims
Actions – what government is doing/will do/has done to address the problem or seize the opportunity
Background – how the policy has developed to date, why the government has chosen this course and rejected other options, including the evidence
Engagement – who government has asked/is asking/will ask, when and how
Impact – who benefits or is otherwise affected
Bills and legislation – the legal framework in which this policy is operating, and how the policy might change that legislation
Partner organisations – what government and non-government organisations are involved, and in what capacity
Related news, speeches, publications and consultations - how the policy is evolving through announcements and publications (displayed automatically by creating associations in the publishing system)

The headings are experimental and might be wrong. The approach may, faced with the complex ebb and flow of a policy-making machine which lacks an “everyday need for a precise definition”, prove too simplistic.

But simplification is absolutely the point here. The goal is to produce a comprehensive, coherent, constantly updated list of everything government is saying it will do or is doing, and to allow people to dig into that information in ways that makes sense to them.

That's all right, then - they're on a mission to explain. And if the government of the day's policy happens to be an illegal war or a bank bailout, you'll find plenty of information which justifies their position; published by the same people who publish all other government content, on the only government domain left.

I remember from visiting Directgov there was an air of nervous excitement when a member of the cabinet office was in the building. They're a lot closer to people in power than they are to people answering the phone in stressful government call centres.

In What happened to that £400 million? Part 2 I wondered why the Tory like Francis Maude would support a government supersite in principle - "less individual responsibility, more 'government knows best'". Now it seems the politicians have a vested interest in supersites which go beyond hypothetical savings.

Apart from the fact that 72 hours after the gov.uk launch GDS already seem to be losing interest in the task at hand, this predicts the worst scenarios yet for new versions of Directgov.

Next time maybe I'll get back to gov.uk's shortcomings - if GDS let me.

Betagov launch: how wrong I was

I'm the kind of contrarian who enjoys being proved wrong. In my posts Betagov, Betagov - wherefore art thou Betagov? and Dear GDS: when's that Betagov launch date? I strongly implied that the Betagov launch was going to drift and probably wasn't going to happen at all.

In Absolute control: why Betagov will fail I gave my criteria for Betagov to succeed. The first one was:


1. It's launched on time
31st of January 2012, I believe.

Yet here we have it in all its minimalist glory: www.gov.uk

I'll be happy to be proved wrong through criteria 2-5 as well. So, hats off to GDS and let's keep the skepticism for another day. 

Betagov, Betagov - wherefore art thou Betagov?

With apologies to the Bard. As you might recall from your A-Level English, Juliet's lament means 'why are you Romeo?' rather than 'where are you, Romeo'? Indeed, over 2012 people might be asking where Betagov has gotten to. They've got a lot of user testing to do before they come up with something that isn't worse than Directgov itself. Combining a government supersite with accessibility is like ... damnit, Dorian ... Shakespeare would have nailed that with a simile. What's wrong with you tonight?

Nonetheless, the question that the test subjects, the big players like DVLA, DWP and Student Loans Company and eventually GDS themselves are going to be asking is: why do you have to be a Betagov at all? What was so wrong with government services having a website each?

GDS are doing their homework, of course:

http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2012/01/27/search-data-user-needs/

There are over 300,000 searches carried out weekly on Directgov, with over 125,000 different search phrases. The most popular term, ‘jobs’, is searched for 4,500 times a week. At the other end of the spectrum there is a ‘long tail’ of 100,000 phrases that are only searched for once ...

Using this data to identify needs that are not being met by government can be daunting. However, it is possible to filter or group it to pick out emerging trends and unsatisfactory user journeys.

125,000 different search phrases. I would expect the number of different search phrases was somewhat lower on each of those 287 websites you killed and absorbed like some glutinous horror from a John Carpenter film. You're going to have your work cut out improving public services now.

It's OK though, you give one example of something Directgov's dramatic intervention managed to improve -

During the run up to a recent Christmas, a growing volume of searches that included the words ‘Christmas’ and ‘payment’ was spotted. We also noted that users were not clicking on the (irrelevant) results presented to them. Delving deeper, we were able to see what else those users looked for. This identified an unmet user need: benefit payment dates over the Christmas period. HMRC published an article on Directgov and, as we were able to supply the relevant keywords that users were searching for, the search engine-optimised article ranked well in Google quickly.

Do HMRC not listen to customer phone calls at all? Or check their own web analytics? I would have thought that people have been phoning up about their xmas benefit payment dates every single year since the dawn of the welfare state. Some local knowledge would have paid off there.

Luckily Directgov swooped and stuck their HMRC article on a seperate supersite; and thus another feel-good piece of anecdotal evidence about public services being improved by centralisation was born. [note before publish: explore Spielberg metaphor here].

I expect you've got your beady eyes on the vast HMRC website these days; not the complicated transactional stuff where you submit your tax returns, of course - just the pages of static content. They should be easy enough to prune, transplant and paint a non-branded Betagov white. You'll be needing some success stories in the next couple of years so converging HMRC might do the trick.

Haha, oh dear, I slipped into the second person again. I used that trope on my last post. Probably best I leave this one be. Maybe I'll go and comment on GDS a bit.

Dear GDS: when's that Betagov launch date?

Dear Government Digital Service (GDS),

To avoid making the same mistakes as Directgov, and condemning the public sector web to another decade of malaise, you need to change your approach. In theory you've been given absolute control and absolute authority. You need to use your powers wisely.  The first step? Abandon government supersites.

Martha Lane Fox's open letter was enough to save Directgov and put you on a path of even greater centralisation, based on the same hypothetical savings as Varney. Maybe this open letter will get you to start engaging with the public sector. 

What you've promised us

In theory Betagov (that probably won't even be what it's called) will have a huge impact on the UK public sector. It could even have a huge effect on life in the UK.

Fox and Francis Maude have promised a billion pounds worth of savings in the public sector web. As we saw in What happened to that £400 million? Directgov received £83 million over several years in pursuit of £400 million in web-related savings that never materialised. A billion pounds is a lot of money - chances are we'll notice having that extra amount in the bank. You therefore have a lot at stake.

If you succeed in creating hyper-efficient online services and close co-operation between government departments and bodies, much of the existing government infrastructure will become obselete. We won't need as many job centres, DVLA offices, or local authority offices; while the call centres and response handling offices for post will have a far lighter workload. Citizens will use online services without having to write to the government or call. In theory, Betagov could make much of the public sector vanish, in the same way that Amazon and eBay are laying waste to our high streets.

I assume my own job will be part of this billlion pounds in savings. Don't worry, my inner Tory rejoices at this. A lot of my job involves arguing with Directgov editors and emailing word documents around.

If Betagov creates a system where my job is performed more efficiently from London, and no-one needs to phone our call centres, I could go off and work in, oh, I don't know, ecommerce. I'd become a private sector producer instead of taking the government's money as a foot soldier in an army of bureacrats.

So when's the launch?

As far as Gubbins know, Betagov is due in January 2012, so it's being launched between now and a week on Tuesday. Directgov will be closed completely by August 2012.

Your blogs have gone a bit quiet on the matter. Why so coy?

You've published slides to show that in the case of 'Tax' and 'Going to court' Betagov shows some improvements on Directgov -

http://www.slideshare.net/DigEngHMG/betagov-content-testing-1312012-final

Smashing, that's a start. Your new supersite may work better than one which is virtually unchanged from five years ago.

You've shown that 'Betagov works better than Directgov for two sets of users, under two limited sets of conditions.'

Next comes the extrapolation. From Nick Breeze's blog post:

http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2012/01/13/quantitative-testing-betagov/

By way of context, if (and it is a big if) the same level of improvement were mirrored across the live service, a Betagov-style product could lead to:

• Over 1 million more user needs being successfully met each month (aka a million frustrating & expensive failures avoided)
• Users saving over 215,000 hours of their time each month
• Quantifiably lower levels of user frustration, and higher levels of user reassurance

Come on. Tell us how much that would save? Don't be shy. We love hypothetical savings here at Gubbins. Sometimes we dip into them and go for a slap-up feed at Witherspoon's. Mum's the word!

Hypothetical users

Time to re-cap Leisa Reichelt's blog post Opportunities lost – AlphaGov from 19 May 2011.

Who is the audience?

At no point that I saw did the AlphaGov team ever apparently think deeply about what kind of an end user they were going to prioritise. They talk about ‘thinking about who our users were’ and having a ‘user-base of all the entire adult population of a country’.

As User Experience practitioners we know that although you might want the whole country to use whatever you’re designing, you need to put a ring around the kind of users you MOST want to support ...

You can’t take a User Centred approach to design when your user is ‘Everyone’. You need to define who your users are. You must clearly identify the behavioural characteristics that you most want to support and focus on designing to best support these ...

AlphaGov sends a message that you can say you’re doing User Centred Design but you don’t have to show any evidence of a UCD process – audience definition, research, user involvement, design principles that actually track to specific behaviour attributes.

It's therefore going to be difficult to mirror the results of your testing, on two limited scenarios, across a supersite which offers a range of vastly different services.

And thus your new website will fail to offer the usable experience we should expect from a modern website.

You might improve the overall supersite experience, you might not. I haven't seen any navigation so far. Without local navigation, you get the Directgov problem.

But to build tailored navigation, information architecture and content, rather than 'one size fits all' pages spat out by your CMS, requires considering individual user experiences. In other words, you need to start treating motorists differently from people wanting to find out about their pension and people looking for jobs.

But it's a lot easier to do this on individual websites rather than government supersites. And the organisations who provide public services know a lot more about their audiences than you do.

Are you starting to see the problem?

What you can accomplish in 2012

We're already a year on from Martha's open letter to Francis Maude. Again, in theory you've been given 'absolute control' and 'absolute authority'. What are you going to do with it?

Redesigning and relaunching Directgov is the easy bit. The content is already there. Word 2003 documents full of tracked changes are flying around through cyberspace as we speak. It's funny how your technological revolution doesn't involve that much new technology. But you know best.

You'll probably encounter some resistance from the government departments and bodies who actually provide public services. Hopefully they'll be polite about it. But they'll have a 'myopic view of their own service' as you put it on that training course I went on in Hercules House. They'll want improvements for their own customers, not theoretical improvements for 'the entire adult population of a country’. The debates will become drawn out and complex.

Not to worry, when you do launch Betagov (February? time to publish that date somewhere) it's only for public feedback. Hopefully you can get that bland sort of 'yes looks better' and 'yes I'd tell my friends' feedback you can pass upwards to the politicians.

If you stay the course and don't allow Betagov to become another Project Austin, you will launch it in earnest and close down Directgov. I think August 2012 is somewhat optimistic, based on the amount of stakeholders you have currently using Directgov.

Let's say you will migrate the content by the end of 2012. Two years after Fox's open letter, you will have completed the first step of your revolution, replacing Directgov.

Years three and four - things start getting tricky

At this point, you're going to need to start producing some kind of measurable improvement in public sector usability, as well as the billion pounds of savings.

If you continue on the path of centralising the rest of the public sector on to a single domain, this will take up all your time and resources. You'll have crossed paths with HMRC by now - are you going to bring online tax returns, and a mountain of web pages on to Betagov as well?

Because the first two years of GDS' existence were spent on creating a government supersite, you'll have to stick with it.  Trouble is, the new Directgov will ensure that the front end for government services remains poor. They'll reach for a phone or letter rather than using online transactions.

You won't have addressed the transactions themselves, much. The power to change these will remain with the public sector organisations who process the application forms and own the customer accounts. You may plan to build and host new versions of the transactions under your direct control down there in Whitehall. However, this will take decades rather than years.

Governments will come and go, and as your existence relies on the good will of politicians rather than on users, you will need to keep proving yourselves.

The solution

There is a way out. Prove your absolute authority by giving us our websites back.

The majority of Directgov traffic is dominated by a small number of services - motoring, jobs, pensions and student loans, if memory serves. You call these 'flagship services', which is nice. Unless that's a euphemism for the most complicated services with the most demanding owners.

These are big organisations with their own web teams. Let them do their work. We're not converging all the public sector call centres into one, so why have we tried to do this with websites? Focus on something achievable.

Become an organisation that tracks the progress of government services. You will have the power to censure those that fail to make any progress, or even threaten them.

If you like, focus on reducing the amount of avoidable calls and lessons people make to HM government. Measure the overall number over time and get the public sector to put plans in place for how they'll get people to use online services instead.

When you discover an area of government where the rules are too messy and complicated to develop effective online services, feed this back to the civil service and parliament. Public services are only as complex as they want them to be.

The alternative? Years are going to go by while the theoretical savings, based on the experience of theoretical users, aren't going to show up. Expect commiserations from Martha Lane Fox while your board resign and retire one by one; or a new government move you and change your name again. 

I feel for you GDS, I really do. I wish I had more power myself - working on a public sector web team, you rely on government policies which change year by year. Websites can only do so much. Some transactions were probably easier to complete on bits of paper. Our customers will always give up and phone us when they encounter something tricky. You need to decide what is possible to achieve while you still have time and good will on your side.

Time to choose your battles.

Yours sincerely,

Your nemesis,

Dorian of Gubbins.