Last week, a county government communications director in Oregon asked me to help her put together a session for their annual state meeting. We agreed that a “show and tell” hour, where attendees volunteer to show their county’s website and let their colleagues tell them what they think, could work well. I offered to doRead… Read more »
At the end of my last course, I asked everyone what one thing they were going to do when they got back to their agencies. One participant surprised me by saying he was going to organize a meeting of all the web managers and major web contributors in the agency and share what he’d learnedRead… Read more »
When citizens come to your website, what’s the first message they get? Is it, “we care about YOU, and we’re going to make sure you can do what you want?” Or is it, “first let me tell you about me?” I read two interesting articles this week about how important it is to show yourRead… Read more »
I am up to my ears judging Clearmark Plain Language Award entries, but I just had to raise my head to comment on Andrea DiMaio’s latest blog piece, “How To Love Government 2.0 and Be A Contrarian at the Same Time.” I so agree with him that we can’t just rely on technology to engageRead… Read more »
Here’s one of the top stories on the U.S. Department of Labor website today: DOL announces $2.5 million grant to continue to aid Maine workers impacted by Base Realignment and Closure actions [03/01/2010] It links to the full 200 word press release that ends in a link to a DOL page about National Security Grants.Read… Read more »
From my very first presentation about being a government web manager – way back in the mid-90s – I’ve said this: “if you listen to your audience, they will tell you what to put on your website.” Listening to your audience is absolutely the cornerstone of great customer service. But it doesn’t stop there. YouRead… Read more »
A recent Federal Computer Week article began by saying that, for fun, I sometimes ask a question through various channels at a government agency to see if I get the same answer. Well, I’m not sure I’d call it “fun.” But I have done just that when preparing to teach a class – mostly toRead… Read more »
And the award for Best Customer Service goes to…USAJobs! Finally – a federal agency (the Office of Personnel Management) that really, really listened to its audience and gave us what we want. Plain. Simple. To the point. The new USAJobs website looks like Google. It’s a stripped-down version of its former self (which really wasn’tRead… Read more »
Open government. Public participation and collaboration. Awesome! So let’s make it work. Let’s learn from the mistakes a bunch of us made back in the 90’s when we put up online “discussion” rooms and held online “town halls.” If you want the pay-off – if you want good ideas and positive outcomes – you haveRead… Read more »
A little more than a year ago, the Federal Web Managers Council issued a ground-breaking white paper entitled, “Putting Citizens First: Transforming Online Government.” Yes, I’ve referenced it many times. But as we begin a new calendar year, it’s a great time to take a fresh look at those 6 terrific Customer Service Standards thatRead… Read more »