Directgov dog and the magic comments box

There is a lesson for Alphagov/Betagov in today's blog post. This is what happens to revolutions when they start trying to build and fix things.

The first casualty of war is innocence. After Directgov's £83 million pound annexation of public sector websites, in pursuit of £400 million in savings that, like WMD, were never found, it's easy to forget that the regime's victims included its own people.

Directgov Dog

This cute pointy critter showed up for a couple of weeks back in 2009, if memory serves. Directgov Dog is a rare example of Directgov delivering on one of their plans.

Naturally, it took a bit of outsourcing to get this online - as I mused in Hands up who likes Directgov? the organisation doesn't seem to employ people who design or build websites. 

I rather liked Directgov Dog, though. He was a bit of light relief when one was trawling through pages of web content formerly owned by Gubbins, which had been hacked, slashed and stomped into Directgov's generic and unusable pages, to try to find where one had left that pesky paragraph of information that caused all those arguments with the editors when they tried to cut it down and rewrite it.

Mysteriously, after a couple of months (weeks?) Directgov Dog disappeared without trace. I've never heard why.

If there's one thing Directgov do, it's customer engagement. Perhaps they surveyed an ethnic minority who perceives dogs as unclean; or worse, misinterpreted the icon as indicating pages about food.

Talking of symbolism, the reason Directgov is orange is because Directgov's  research found orange to be politically neutral. It's a shame Directgov's London-based execs haven't paid more visits to Scotland or Northern Ireland.

Sorry, I digress again. Directgov Dog was even shortlisted for a design award -

http://awards.designweek.co.uk/benchmarks/2009/category/public-sector/directgov/directgov.php

Here's the summary:

Directgov is a Government brand that unites all its public services, making it accessible for everyone to understand and use. Bostock and Pollitt conducted a complete overhaul of the existing branding. A playful dog character was created by using key elements of the brand, such as an orange arrow for its head. The animation explained the services and where to find them. Other elements of the campaign were brought to life by creative agency MCBD, which developed animations for television and print advertising.

Let me see, now ... that was 2009. The Gubbins pages of Directgov haven't changed since 2007. It looks like the complete overhaul was only applied to the home and top pages of Directgov, the ones the politicians see.

We were lucky enough to get one change in the three years between 2007 and 2010, however.

Comment On This Article (COTA) boxes

Directgov must have been spending a lot of time and energy closing down other people's websites between 2007 and 2010. They didn't seem to invest the £83 million in their own website at all. If they'd remembered to visit Gubbins during this period they might have amended The Directgov Problem. A solution - for example, tabs or local navigation - wouldn't have been complicated or expensive and would have brought the Gubbins content on Directgov closer to the level of useability it enjoyed on gubbins.co.uk back in 2007.

We did get COTA boxes, though, in summer 2010 -

Directgov were so proud that they launched this new function with a personal email from one of their executives, complete with his picture.

They even remembered to copy in Gubbins this time.

To this day, the Directgov wikepedia entry contains details of the for-Directgov-groundbreaking achievement:

Comment on this Article

In April 2010 Directgov launched a "Comment on this Article" feature on each page. Users can give articles five ratings:
• Very useful • Quite useful • Unsure • Not very useful • Not at all useful

Directgov also invites users to leave comments (up to 500 characters) about how the page could be improved, but asks that users don't leave any personal details like name and address.

The data captured from Comment on this Article will be used for customer insight and product improvement. An overview of monthly ratings is available here http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/SiteInformation/DG_188378.

There was also a Directgov TV channel on Freeview at number 106. It closed down in 2010.

 Oh, that's a shame. the overview of monthly ratings is no longer available.

Hey, there's a forum post about the Directgov TV channel. Apparently they bought the license back in December 2008 -

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=951216

DirectGov new Freeview channel from Teletext

---

Teletext have obtained a licence for a Digital Television Programme Service (DTPS) called DirectGov.

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/ifi/tvlic...monthly/200811

I bet that was expensive. Must remember to look up that loose end some time. Directgov TV.

Why a comments box was really really tricky for Directgov

A comment box isn't hard to make or implement. If you Google 'html contact box' the options come up fairly quickly. Most modern Content Management Systems allow you to implement the code yourself. So, if you run your own website and services for your own organisation, this would be a trivial improvement. If you create a comments on your own website, you can route it to the department or team who should be getting the comment.

Comments boxes become complicated when you implement them on government supersites.

If you have been forced to use Directgov you no longer have control over these small, cheap, localised improvements. You wait for the grace of Directgov to bestow one upon you.

The changes become vast because you have to have them agreed by (I presume) multiple executives and committees. Plus, Directgov don't have people who build and fix things (at least none that I've met). And the budget is being spent on adverts and cute pointy dogs and digital TV stations instead of websites. After all, the politicians won't notice whether or not Directgov are delivering comments boxes.

Gubbins had to request the results of the comments boxes to be sent to us. The first batch arrived a few months after they were launched. Of course, Directgov doesn't tailor its service to the various organisations it represents; so they were sent to a central team who had to censor out any personal information, sort it and forward it to the Franchise team, who forwarded it to Gubbins.

The COTA results showed that the 'Not at all useful' rating was, on average, over 50% of the results. Come to think of it, it's a shame that  Directgov feedback page has been taken down. Anyway, the results were sort of useful because we could compare the ratings across different pages and get verbatim comments. We still get these from Directgov every few months, as long as we request each time them and are prepared to wait.

I just went in and made a COTA comment to Directgov just now. A very constructive one involving Martha Lane Fox.

The future of web gizmos which we can do but Directgov can't

When it comes to innovation, government supersites with highly paid executives talk a good game, but we've seen how the reality ends up as pure spin with no substance.

At the time of writing, at the end of nearly five years and £83 million of Directgov convergeance, all Directgov had to show for their talk of improving the public sector web were COTA boxes and a few weeks of Directgov Dog.

Returning to Sharon Cooper's conference comments as reported by Computer Weekly in May 2011:

http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/public-sector/2011/05/500-rogue-gov-websites-nabbed.html

"We are thinking, should there be a DirectGov in five years time? Or should there just be a wholesale market-place of open APIs so every transaction is available, so that anybody can use that transaction and embed it in their own service?" said Cooper. "Should there just be a great big asset database on which we can build a version of DirectGov?

It's interesting that a senior Directgov executive should be considering a future without a Directgov, or even Alpha or Betagov. The 'wholesale market-place of open APIs' is certainly closer to Directgov Must Die's liking than a small group of London-based suits spending millions on marketing, with a tri-annual, derisory innovation for the people who actually run services.

I started Directgov Must Die in less than a minute, thanks to Google. The innovations don't come from governments. The commercial, decentralised, capitalist web spat out the code for comment boxes well over a decade ago and it's there for anyone to use, immediately, for free. Unless they're on Directgov.

I'm afraid, then, that the solution is for the government to go back to writing cheques for individual organisations to run their own websites, so that we can take our pick from the best technology out there. Whether than means a comments box or our own pointy dog.

Hands up who likes Directgov?

Not Gubbins, that's for sure. Back in 2007 we began the process of shutting down our own website and moving the content across to Directgov. We had our own website, just as we have our own forms, letters, marketing, call centers, IT, mailroom, lawyers, accounting, printing, reception and tea lady. We clean our own offices. None of these things are run from Whitehall. But it was deemed that our website should be.

In 2007 Directgov were already running a Product Review. direct.gov.uk was going to get new colours and layout. It was a brave new world. Directgov accepted they weren't very good and needed to change.

We didn't have anything planned for gubbins.co.uk. Everyone agreed it was fit for purpose.

We went ahead and converged anyway. There were a few tense meetings about it at Gubbins board level. One of the Gubbins board also sat on the Directgov board, although I'm sure that had nothing to do with it.

The migration of Gubbins

We turned the Gubbins web content into Directgov web content. It wasn't easy. Because of The Directgov Problem we couldn't trust our customers to navigate Directgov properly. So, we had to put everything on big pages. There are no anchor links to help people find anything. We had to make the most of it. Our service is now run from Directgov and our letters and publications were updated to send customers to direct.gov.uk/gubbins.

I work in the web team. We don't like it. As a rule of thumb, an update which took an hour now takes a day on Directgov. We can't make our own updates. We have to send everything to a Directgov editor in a word document.

We keep getting different Directgov editors to work with. When a new one starts, they don't know anything about Gubbins. They don't seem to know much about writing for the web either. When we send them something to update, they rewrite it. When we explain why we want something written a certain way, they argue. When we want a new page, they have to submit a form to the shadowy Publishing Board, who we've never met.

According to Government on the internet: progress in delivering information and services online By Great Britain: National Audit Office 2007, the UK is the only country who has tried to 'centralise content' across the public sector web. It's funny that no-one's run research to see if centralising content actually works.

Directgov gave us access to the Stellant CMS and Speedtrap analytics, but these are slow, old and tired. Chances are they haven't been replaced since 2006.

Moving to Directgov was supposed to save Gubbins money, but our costs have gone up. We have our own web infrastructure, so we haven't saved any money on hosting. We have the same number of writers and developers but they spend their time negotiating with people from Directgov.

We still run the same online services. Directgov the website doesn't really do anything. You can't book an appointment with it. To do that, you have to leave Directgov and move to gubbins.direct.gov.uk. We still run these screens but they're painted orange and have the Directgov logo painted on them.

Every time we build or fix something, we have to run it past the Directgov editors, the Directgov design team, the publishing board, and usually some other executive with a clever job title who we haven't heard of before.

'Why can't we get our website back?'

Dear me, if I had a penny for every time I was asked that.

Our directors still don't like it. One of them worked out the move cost us an extra £200K of avoidable phone calls. Half of the people who phone try finding the answer to their question on the website first.

Our call centers don't like Directgov either. They keep asking why we have to use it.

Our writers and marketing people don't like it. They keep writing 'we' when we have to say 'Gubbins'. We have a teeny Gubbins logo on our landing page of Directgov, rather than a website built by our own designers.

Our customers don't like it. When we show them a gubbins.co.uk prototype build by our own designers, they prefer it.

Our stakeholders don't like it. Even people who don't work on the web for a living know about things like local navigation, breadcrumbs and tabs. 

The product review in 2007 didn't come to anything. Or Project Austin, which came after that. Apparently everyone is excited about Betagov although Gubbins aren't so sure.

Directgov don't like Directgov

You'd think there was someone out there who liked Directgov. But Directgov the organisation don't like Directgov the website either.

You'd think there was someone out there who could say - we built Directgov. We've shown that it's improved the public sector web. The design is fit for purpose. It's as good as any website that was built by the private sector.

Such a person would be a web designer. But Directgov doesn't have any web designers. At least none that have ever visited Gubbins. It has plenty of publishing, PR and marketing people. In fact, that's all it seems to have. They outsource anything technical or anything which involves building websites.

In late 2010 Directgov paid Gubbins an actual visit. They didn't meet our web team, of course, just the board of directors. It was about the time Jayne Nickalls and the top brass all resigned or retired.

They admitted Directgov wasn't very good, just as they had in 2007. However it was 'not Directgov's fault'. Plus we'd had the benefits of cross selling from the Directgov platform. And there was a radical new Directgov on its way called Alphagov.

Let's just hope it happens this time.

The Directgov Problem

I'm getting ahead of myself. I haven't covered the basics of why Directgov has to die. This isn't controversial stuff, mind you. Even Directgov don't like Directgov the website.

www.direct.gov.uk is better than your average amateur site. It looks like a reasonably modern website circa 2005. The home page is still reminiscent of the now-abandoned American government website www.yougov.com. There's plenty of Public Services on offer.

Go down to a landing page and you come face to face with the Directgov problem -

Directgov landing page

I click into 'Gubbins for beginners' and I lose track of 'Financial support for Gubbins' and all the other pages in the 'Gubbins' section.

If I click on 'Home' I go back to the Directgov home page, not the Gubbins one.

If I click on Contacts, Do it online, Newsroom or Video, I no longer get Gubbins content.

There is no breadcrumb trail.

When I reach an article page, I lose sight of all the other article pages.

This is the basic Directgov Problem.

Planning your job hunting

Here's an example from the 'Jobseekers' section. Haha, 'Jobseekers' - there's a New Labour phrase if I ever heard one. Like 'Public services all in one place'. Or 'Weapons of mass destruction'.

When I'm in the article page Planning your job junting I lose sight of the other pages in the section 'Planning your job hunting' - 'Getting that job', 'Letters and job application forms' and so on. 

'In this section' links at the foot of pages

The usual place for local navigation - links to adjacent pages in the information architecture - is on the left hand side.

People read web pages in an F-shaped pattern. The left hand side is where they are most likely to look on a web page. See F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content for more details.

Instead of putting these links on the left hand side, Directgov put them at the foot of the page.

The left hand side is used for the 'global links' - 'Crime and justice', 'Education and learning' and so on.

Global links on the left hand side

That seems inconvenient. Why not put all the 'job' links where you can click on them? We mentioned this to Directgov several years ago. Why didn't they do anything?

Because this is 'Public services all in one place'! You might want to renew your car tax or apply for a student loan after you've applied for a job. This is known as 'cross selling'.

Cross selling is the first principle of Directgov.

The myth of cross selling

Directgov suits mention cross selling a lot. These days they freely admit Directgov isn't very good but they reckon Gubbins are still lucky to have cross selling opportunities by being on Directgov. Whenever someone looks up swine flu, they'll realise they need to look up Gubbins too.

Trouble is, people using the internet blank out everything which doesn't seem relevant to their immediate task. They are blind to adverts. They scan for information and don't stop to read much. This is the first principle behind web useability. Try reading Gerry McGovern or Jakob Nielsen for more information on this sort of thing.

So, people reading up on swine flu are highly unlikely to want to read about Gubbins. Especially since government services are pretty boring. YouTube and Facebook are only a click away when you're on the Internet. No-one wants to read about car tax unless they can avoid it. 

In this way, cross selling is an idea from traditional marketing that doesn't seem to apply to the new medium of the internet. Is there any proof cross selling exists? Well, Directgov have never published any, as far as I know. They don't like to question the proposition of Directgov very much. It could lead to some big orange existential crisis.

I've got some proof, though. I checked the Directgov analytics for Gubbins. According to that, people only click on the global links 0.5% of the time.

So, your average user visits 200 Gubbins pages before viewing any other Directgov content.

So, all in all, 'Public services all in one place' doesn't seem like the best online strategy for the government to follow. This ideal has led to the design decisions made by Directgov, resulting in a rubbish website. 

Directgov's local navigation is relegated to a place where you can't see it, to make way for the global navigation. Which people don't use.

Must mention it to Directgov next time they drop by. Which they don't.

Third person government

'Public services all in one place' also dominates our web content. Instead of saying 'we will contact you by phone' we say 'Gubbins will contact you by phone'.

Instead of using Gubbins logos, colours and styles, we use Directgov logos colours and styles.

It's like Marxism - build a system perfect enough and the state will melt away.

Until your passport gets lost in the post and you need to phone an actual call center.

Lest I'm harping on about a failed website which is due to be closed down, Betagov shows every sign of taking the 'third person government' principle even further. No landing pages, no logos, no contact details.

There is absolutely no chance whatsoever this will all go horribly wrong.