Thursday, September 20, 2007, Meeting Minutes

More than 70 Forum members in attendance

Conference Call Topic: Plans for the Future

Agenda

Recap of Gerry McGovern's webinar
Roadmap to a task-Focused Website
How to join a Task Group
New collaborative tools for our community
Upcoming events for the rest of the year

1) Recap of Gerry McGovern's Webinar

Gerry McGovern's webinar on September 18 was a great "call to action" for all of us, and we hope you took away some practical strategies for making your web content even better.

Feedback from Gerry's presentation:

It was sometimes hard to hear Gerry. But we really appreciate Web Manager University sponsoring the seminar; he's a great speaker.
His presentation is a great springboard if you can get other folks to listen to him. You can engage “non-Web” folks in your organization to get motivated and energized. We liked specific recommendations for how to get started and advice about cutting down to essential tasks.
Will slides from presentation be available? Yes, the presentation will be available for download in a week or two.
If you want to learn more about the “carewords” approach, you can read Gerry's book Killer Web Content. (Note, it will be available for purchase in the U.S. in October.)
The Usability Task Group is working to develop specific strategies to help our community use the careword approach.
Some of the “carewords” Gerry chose for his survey were a combination of top search terms (“top universities”) and values (“prestigious school”). To come up with both of them, you need to identify the task first, then the values behind it – by having direct conversations with your customers.
One of the obstacles to gathering customer feedback is the Paperwork Reduction Act, which requires agencies to get OMB approval before surveying the public. This can be a lengthy and cumbersome process.
One alternative is to consider getting feedback from other web managers or “non-web” folks within our agencies. There's no restriction on surveying federal employees. They could provide just as valuable feedback on what their “critical tasks” are and what things are important to them as they try to complete those tasks.
Another idea is to collaborate as a community and ask to incorporate questions into the ACSI (American Customer Satisfaction Index) survey, which many agencies use.
As an example, you could build a question into the ACSI to ask folks if they'd like to provide feedback. AHRQ (part of HHS) added a custom question to their ACSI survey and got lots of volunteers. Now they use those folks as a sounding board and get their general feedback, feedback on beta testing, etc.
Can get out in the community, fairs, expos, etc., and do informal polling, don't need OMB approval to just ask folks while at a public event. Attend partner meetings; use WebEx to set up remote meeting, use “polling” feature to have them vote in words, etc.
Proceed until apprehended!

2) Roadmap to a Task-Focused Website

Rachel Flagg and Sheila Campbell presented Forum members with the “Roadmap to a Task-Focused Website,” a resource to help government agencies transform their sites around their customers' top tasks. Callers were asked to provide feedback about the roadmap. A summary of the feedback:

Members gave positive feedback. They like step-by-step instructions.
In developing a metrics strategy, agencies should have an integrated approach and cross-reference various metrics. Don't just look at page views or ACSI score—look at all the data to get a true picture. If you just look at traffic numbers, it might tell you that a lot of people are coming to your site. But you won't know if they're finding what they're looking for.
We should add to the roadmap books and other resources that are related to each step in the process. (We've done some of this already with the “Summer Reading List” on webcontent.gov—but we can do more).
The Usability Task Group has developed several materials to help Forum members implement the Roadmap. Nicole Burton, chair of the task group, reported that the group is:
- Developing a “Quick and Easy Customer Profile” tool for web managers to have a “desk-side” conversation with customers. The tool should take only one or two hours to complete and will give you a good start to identifying your Top Tasks. It'll be ready by the end of September. They're piloting the tool now with a few agencies.
- Working with the Metrics Task Group to develop a strategy for using metrics to identify your top tasks. This guidance should be done by late October.
- Working on a “carewords” strategy, ready by November.

3) Forum/Advisory Council/Task Groups—Who's Who

We thought it would be helpful to provide an overview and update of “who's who” for recent Forum members and as a refresher for veteran members.

Forum – our listserv community of over 1200 federal, state and local web content managers.
Advisory Council – This is the group that made recommendations to OMB in June 2004 that resulted in the OMB Policies for Public Websites memo to all agency heads. This group will continue to address strategic and policy issues facing the government web manager community and develop guidance and best practices. It includes departmental web managers from each cabinet-level agency, Task Group Leaders, and web managers from high traffic and high impact agencies (such as SSA, NASA, etc).
Steering Committee – This group manages the Forum, but will be folded into the larger Advisory Council soon. It's sponsored by Bev Godwin, Director of USA.gov. The co-chairs are Sheila Campbell (USA.gov) and Rachel Flagg (HUD), and includes Joe Pagano (Library of Congress), Rand Ruggieri (Dept. of Commerce), Kate Donohue (Dept. of Treasury), Gwynne Kostin (DHS), Natalie Davidson (Webcontent.gov).
Task Groups
Web Governance - Chair: Rand Ruggieri, Commerce
Usability, Accessibility, and Design - Chair: Nicole Burton, GSA
Web Metrics - Co-chairs: Joe Pagano, Library of Congress , and Brian Dunbar, NASA
Training and Development - Chair: Eric Ramoth, HUD
Technology and Innovation - Chair: Rezaur Rahman, ACHP
Go to webcontent.gov for more info on our task groups.
Contact the task group leaders to see how you can help!
Most meetings are conducted by phone, because we want to involve folks all over the country, so if you're not in DC, don't worry, we still want you, and need your help! Our mantra is that “Many hands make light work.”

4) New collaborative tools

We're evaluating some new software tools to help us better communicate within our community:

We're planning to implement a “contacts directory” for all Forum members. It would allow each person to create their own profile and include their contact information, area of expertise, interest areas, etc. It would be a sort of “MySpace” where folks can enter anything they want others to know about them—photos, bio, location, etc. You can share as much or as little info as you want. We can use this to strengthen our community and encourage collaboration. We will let you know when we have more specific details, and give you a chance to comment!
An event calendar to help us to share resources across the community. For example, we would like to post Web Manager University courses, Plain Language group meetings, and other activities and events that would be helpful to the folks in our community, happening anywhere in the country.
We'd like to upgrade our listserv.
We are also looking at blogging tools—to give us a better way to have an interactive discussion on various topics. It will serve a different purpose than the listserv – and complement it—by providing a sort of “library” of discussion threads on specific topics, instead of trying to manage tons of emails from the listserv.
Our ultimate goal is to do a better job “managing” the communications for our community, to make us all more efficient.

5) Upcoming events

Web Manager University (WMU) classes:
- Rachel McAlpine, Plain Language – Oct. 11 (webinar)
- Ginny Redish, Website Makeover – Nov. 7 (Washington, DC)
- Candi Harrison, Leading Change – Oct. 30 (webinar)

Check webcontent.gov for more!
Mark your calendars:
Annual Web Content Managers Workshop, May, 2008, Washington, DC

6) Next Forum Call

Thursday, October 18, 2007, from 11AM-12PM Eastern

Page Updated or Reviewed: February 13, 2008