Fife Council Webteam Survey

Fife Council are currently trying to get access to more resource for their team so are interested in finding out how other web teams are set up throughout Scotland and down south. This will also allow them to work with similar Council’s web teams and could be useful for all of us. Please download their survey questions and return to Jude Quinn by email.  Please respond by Friday 17th Sept would be appreciated. Email: Judith.Quinn@fife.gov.uk

Web_Team_Survey_Fife

ScotGovCamp, Edinburgh, 31st July 2010

GovCamps are free, self organised unconferences for people that work in and around government.

There’s no agenda as yet – in the tradition of GovCamps – that will be set on the day. But themes will be relevant to anyone working in/with government in Scotland in the digital engagement space.

This all day (10am-4pm) event is being held at:
Informatics Forum
10 Crichton Street
EH8 9AB Edinburgh
For more information and to register visit ScotGovCamp

Scottish Webteam Forum 10th May 2010

Thank you to everyone who contributed in some way to the success of the Scottish Webteam Forum meeting held in Edinburgh yesterday, especially to our sponsors Jadu. Read Jadu report on the day including links to tweets. Presentations from the day are here to download.

Suraj Kika, CEO Jadu – Open data – an overview

Stuart Harrison, Web Manager, Lichfield District Council – Open data – under the hood

G Wain, (Stirling  Council) – myStirling

Chris Clelland, Information Services Team Leader, Aberdeenshire Council – Content management

Sally Kerr, Council Websites Manager, The City of Edinburgh Council – Web Governance: the Edinburgh approach

Time to meet colleagues and share experiences

Fiona Howie,  Scottish Lists Consultant – Scottish Navigational List update (to be added)

Tina Ho, New Media Improvement Officer, Perth and Kinross – Accessibility for pdfs

John Fox, Head of Interactive Development, Environment Agency – Live website review – `a look at how a Better Connected assessment is conducted’.

Christina Fowler, Web designer Jadu – Southwark Council – the design approach

Alison Stoddart and Graeme Mainds, Digitisation and Information Team, Edinburgh City Libraries – eDelivery for Edinburgh’s Libraries
Graeme Mainds – Friends, fans, and followers: analysing and engaging our online audience

More images of the day

Scottish Webteams Forum meeting 10 May 2010

Tweet on the Forum as the day progresses using the hashtag #scotwebforum.

7th Webteam Forum Meeting 10th May 2010

There will be a 7th meeting of the Scottish Webteams Forum on Monday 10th May 2010 taking place in the Business City, City Chambers, Edinburgh.

This event is generously sponsored by Jadu. Topics include task based approaches to local government websites, data sharing and mashups, case studies from Better Connected 2010, and Web 2.0 case studies. Download full programme. For further information or to make a provisional booking email sally.kerr@edinburgh.gov.uk or bronwen.brown@edinburgh.gov.uk, City of Edinburgh Council.

Web skills framework project off to a flying start

Lots of energy and some great collaborative working between people across the public sector got Socitm’s initiative to develop a skills framework for web professionals off to a flying start yesterday. (29 Nov 2009)

More than twenty of us sat down together in a room at the CLG offices in Victoria in the first leg of a project to define the range web roles and activities and the levels at which these operate.

Among us were web managers from Whitehall departments, the third sector, the Government ‘supersites’, and local authorities form all over (including Eden in Cumbria – thanks for making the trip Julian, it must have been a long, long day!)

The project is being funded by Socitm as part of our wider initiative to develop a web professionals group, and follows a lot of work we did earlier this year, with great support from Paul Canning, to establish the need for a formal group and to make sure we were not going to be reinventing a wheel already happily turning elsewhere.

We did find bits of activity going on in a variety of places, but nothing that recognised or catered for the wide range of people and specialisms linked together within a sector that has come from nowhere in little more than a decade. What also came though really strongly in our research was that many webbies feel misunderstood, mismanaged, and undervalued by their employers and (non-webbie) managers.

So, behind the demand for a professional ‘home’ for public sector webbies is a strong drive to define what web professionals do, demonstrate how their roles relate to other professions within employing organisations, the levels of seniority at which they operate, and how all this fits into the national skills framework and the concept of ‘professionalism’.

The initiative is timely too. As I was preparing for the workshop last week, I received this depressing, but sadly familiar story from a highly-respected web professional: ‘Single status has graded online comms officers below colleagues in other areas of communication. A real blow for having online comms recognised for the skill set and responsibility of publishing online to a potentially global audience’.

Its not easy for webbies in Whitehall either. One of their frequently heard grumbles is that the civil service doesn’t really recognise web work as a specialism – I gather their idea of a suitable career development opportunity for an web or e-comms professional is a spell as a press officer…… .

With these sort of issues in mind, the key foundation activity for Socitm’s proposed web professionals group is this work on skill and role definition. The ideas is to build this into a framework within which anyone who has a web role will be able to see the things they do, and the level at which they do them, set out clearly. The framework will be hugely useful for identifying discrete web roles, writing job descriptions, defining training needs, plotting career development – oh, and of course, for using in grading appeals………

What we did yesterday was compile a (huge) list of web roles and activities and then start to define (an even larger) list of sub-roles and activities. Then, guided by workshop leader Mary Wintershausen, a veteran of many similar exercises in related professions, we started to put these into the sort of levels of responsibility/seniority defined in the national skills framework.

With that work completed, there’s now a pause while Mary goes away to look at the material generated, plus some other material we’ve gathered from what you might call ‘adjacent’ professions in publishing, marketing and ICT, plus lots of web job descriptions we’ve been supplied with (we could do with more – please email vicky.sargent@socitm.net .

Before Chirstmas we will be seeing some draft skill/role definitions for us to do some more work on, and then some time on in late January we’ll be getting together again to chew over what we’ve done, before putting the results out to wider consultation in the webbisphere.

Report from Vicky Sargent,
Marketing Consultant,
socitm

 

Learning from Better Connected 2009 Scottish edition

Please see the attached flyer for the planned  LearningfromBC2009Scottishedition13October to be held in Edinburgh running as a satellite to the national SOCITM conference.

This event has been arranged with the co-operation and support of the Scottish Webteams Forum. Please take special note of the optional Web professionals meeting as this is an opportunity to learn more about this new group. We ensured that this was included in the programme so that the members of the Scottish Webteam Forum had an opportunity to provide local input. We hope that as many as possible will try to attend, and we look forward to seeing you there.

e-Newsletter Software

Dumfries and Galloway Council are looking at e-newsletter software so we can create our own branded external / internal e-newsletters quickly and easily.  I was wondering what other Councils use and if they have encountered any problems with uploading staff emails to send out an internal e-newsletter?

Kind Regards, Chari

Chari Laurie | Corporate Website Co-ordinator
Communications Unit | Chief Executive Service |  Dumfries & Galloway Council | Tel: 01387 260335 | Fax: 01387 260334
E-mail: chari.laurie@dumgal.gov.uk
Visit us online at www.dumgal.gov.uk  

Scottish Improvement Service website redevelopment

The Improvement Service website has been live since early 2006, so we are currently undertaking a redevelopment exercise – both to enhance the content and improve the user experience. We are, therefore, very interested in getting an understanding of why you use the website and how you think it can be improved. We would be very grateful if you could provide feedback by taking the time to complete a short survey.

It will take between 10-15 minutes to complete and will begin when you click on the survey link below:

https://www.questback.com/theimprovementservice/improvementservicewebsitesurvey2009/

 

We are also interested in volunteers from the Web Teams forum to provide feedback on the new site and an  opportunity to register an interest is given at the end of the survey.

 

Once the new site is live we would also seek to ask your group to create links from  their own council websites to the IS site.

 

Any questions please contact Mike Mclean, Knowledge Projects Manager, Improvement Service, Tel: 01506-775558, Mobile: 07767248653
email : mike.mclean@improvementservice.org.uk
Website : http://www.improvementservice.org.uk/

eParticipation Baseline Workshop, Edinburgh, 27th Nov 2008

Free eParticipation workshop –where are we, how do we move forward etc.

 eParticipation involves using technology (especially the Internet) to broaden and deepen political participation by helping citizens to connect with one another and with their elected representatives and governments.

Download Draft programme
Download Workshop invitation

To book a place email Ella Taylor-Smith

 e.taylorsmith@napier.ac.uk