Victoria Online: Quality, Reliability & Trust

Vanessa Scott

Content ManagereServices, Information Victoria

Dept of Innovation, Industry & Regional Development

27 May 2009

Victoria Online

• Provides Victorians with a single entry point to

online Federal, Victorian State and Local

Government information and services

• Key project of the State Government’s

eGovernment policy Putting People at the

Centre

Introduction

• History of Victoria Online

• Design – different taxonomies

• Search and browse

• Why we designed it that way

• What we are planning next

Introduction

• History of Victoria Online

• Design – different taxonomies

• Search and browse

• Why we designed it that way

• What we are planning next

History of Victoria Online

• 1996 – Flat html

• 2000 – Cold Fusion

• 2003 – Accesspoint

• 2006 – Design refresh

Victoria Online – new features

• Web 2.0 features– Twitter

– RSS feeds

– Blog

• Events Calendar

• Online newsletter –subscribe/unsubscribe

• Rate this site

Victoria Online – new features (cont.)

• Number 1 search term “jobs”

– link to external website

• Cross-promotion of other

channels within Info Victoria:

– Bookshop (external link)

– Call centre number

Victoria Online – What is it?

• Discovery portal – authoratative source of government information & services, latest news and government contact information

• Main entry point (gateway)– Browse/Search/Contextual Search (Browse & Search)– Content eg. Latest News, Public holidays, Daylight

Saving, School Term Dates– Specific up-to-date content eg. Bushfires – played

central role

Search & browse

• Searches 3 tiers of government plus quasi (eg. Metlink, Grand Prix)

• Search results are relevance ranked

• Searches Topic taxonomy and Services & Payments taxonomy

• Browses to 3 levels in Topic taxonomy

• Browse results are alphabetical

• Title, Description and Keywords play important role for Search

• Keywords based on Victoria Online Thesaurus – natural language

Search results - browse

Search results - search

Search

• Integrated Search and Browse– search within a topic– search within results

• Search thesaurus provides– Did you mean– Narrow search by

Search – Victoria Online Thesaurus

• Developed September 2005

• Updated regularly (2 public releases each year)

• Nearly 6,000 terms (nearly 2,500 preferred

terms)

• Terms sourced from user’s search terms

• Focus on natural language, not ‘government

speak’

Search – Victoria Online Thesaurus

• Describing resources in Victoria Online in the

DC.Subject field

• Assists cataloguers with selection of keywords

• Consistency with use of keywords

• Reduces typos

• Improves search results

Search – Victoria Online Thesaurus

Based on ANSI/NISO Standard Z39.19-2003 Guidelines for the Construction, Format and Management of Monolingual Thesauri

Report available at: http://www.egov.vic.gov.au/index.php?env=-innews/detail:m2110-1-1-8-s-0:n-9-1-0--

HTML version available -http://www.egov.vic.gov.au/victoriaonlinethesaurus/index.htm

Quality - How metadata is used

• 4,000 “hand-crafted” links, fully AGLS-compliant with 25 metadata elements

– High Importance, High Relevance, High Hit

– 3 tiers

• Maintained by content manager at Victoria Online

• Use of natural language

• Dead-link check daily

Quality - How metadata is used (cont.)

• Structured information about a web resource

• Provides supporting description about the content, owners, context and structure of the resource

• Describing resources to help people find or ‘discover’them (resource discovery metadata)

• Informs Browse (85% of users) and Search

• Allows multiple browse pathways through our taxonomy

Quality - We analyse our stats

• Web analytics– Google analytics, Nielsen

– Analyse search terms (internal & external), top content pages, browse pathways

– Exit links

– Trends (seasonal eg. daylight saving, budget)

– Analysis assists with changes

– Responsive & reliable

Reliability

• Available 24/7 – external hosting

• Browser based CMS – ability to work from

home. This was critical during the recent

bushfires in Victoria

• Top domain vic.gov.au

• Good SEO with external search engines

• Main entry point for Vic Govt

Trust - We listen to our users

• Feedback

– Qualitative

– Downstream feedback

– Responsive – all feedback answered within 5 working days

– Action it

• Rate this site

We carried out research

• Consumer - Survey (1600 people) –

Focus Groups

• Portal Best Practice Benchmarking

• Discoverability – tools, architecture,

metadata

• Content Definition

• Content Management

We carried out research (cont.)

Research Results – Our users wanted:

• Information

• Services

• improved discoverability (browse/search)– Multiple pathways

• three levels of government (transparently)

• easy to use, fast, reliable, relevant, accessible, trustworthy

• subject-based, natural language

• directories / contact information

• citizen-centric, not government-centric

Further developments - search

• Suggested auto-text from VO thesaurus

• Due June 2009

Further developments

Packaged information and services• Aggregated content

- search results- Topically related

• Geo-spatial content

• User engagement- Subscription updates

- User polls- Have your say

- Expanded Feedback function

What we are planning next

• Continuous Improvement of Victoria Online as front door to government

• Greater citizen engagement approach via Web 2.0 tools, social media

Contact info

Vanessa Scott

Content Manager

eServices, Information Victoria

Department of Innovation, Industry & Regional

Development

e: vanessa.scott@diird.vic.gov.au

p: (03) 9938 0517

Twitter: InfoVic