Yesterday I attended and spoke at the Potomac Forum Ltd. Symposium titled Building Better Government Websites to Meet Agency and Open Government Objectives Symposium: From Strategy to Fulfillment. A lot of great folks were also there, including Sanjay Koyani of the FDA and Christine Pierpoint of WelchmanPierpoint which made for good discussion.
In the room there was a myriad of mostly government folks with varying degrees of experience and time in the public sector. All of them were web managers, with one title or another, but in charge of the same goal: make the agency’s website relevant and useful, supporting of the mission, while leveraging best practices.
Several (still) surprising points:
- How many folks have web governance (whether it is working or not)
- How few folks have written web policies and standards (and how few know how to go about getting this done; but in all fairness, that is why they were at the symposium and that is why I spoke on web policies)
- How many agencies are still exposing themselves to risk, creating sub-par web properties and online presences, when they have very talented people working for them (goes back to not aligning resources well and web governance that may just not working to the best possible extent
While this still surprises me, I was also delighted to hear over lunch strategies and thoughts of individuals not only interest in change, but actively make it, within their agencies. It means that even while we aren’t there yet, we are on our way, to a truly better government with more transparency, more web strategy and governance, and ultimately more and better service to citizens.