Victorian
Government
Contact Centre
1300 366 356
Government
Contact Centre
1300 366 356
Main Menu
Resize Text
Categories, RSS and More
RSS News Feeds
Rate this Site
Members Forum
Government Websites - Topics A-Z
Topics A-Z listing of articles and resources about government websites.
8
Site Articles
- Renovating the Government Portal
- Citizens have always needed information from government. With the advent of online platforms in the 1990s, government portals provided an additional way for citizens to find that information. As the unified point of access to online information from a range of diverse sources, the portal had the advantage of providing a consistent look and feel for an array of otherwise different government agencies. Bringing together a mass of aggregated government information via numerous hyperlinks on the home page, portals became the virtual front door to government. In today's more complex digital era, with both the massive expansion of the digital consumption of information, along with the emergence (and convergence) of a plethora of new mobile devices with which access this information, the debate centres on the continuing value of such portals. This paper explores the way online government information is discovered and accessed and the implications for government in presenting this information. In so doing, it suggests ways to renovate the portal to better meet the needs of citizens.
Added: 21 December 2011
Page views: 2,317
Rating: 5
Votes: 2
- 20 Do's and Don'ts for Clickable Calls-to-Action
- Familiarize yourself with these 20 critical CTA do's and don'ts so you can create marketing calls-to-action that get visitors clicking.
Added: 28 March 2013
Page views: 247
Rating: 0
Votes: 0
- 2010 New Zealand Local Government Website Survey Results
- In New Zealand, the Association of Local Government Information Management (ALGIM) conducts an annual survey of local council websites to assess them from both a technical and content point of view. The external review of all 85 Local Councils looks at compliance against New Zealand Government web standards for information and services content.
Added: 5 October 2010
Page views: 1,624
Rating: 0
Votes: 0
- Achieving best practice in delivering government information and services online
- Smart Government Australia 2010 Conference - Paper presented by Cheryl Hardy, Manager eGovernment Research, Information Victoria, 15 September 2010. Provides examples of good and bad government websites. Looks at what is best practice including researching your target audience, developing relevant content, the requirements of accessibility, the issues surrounding pdfs on the web, how to make your sites discoverable by following best practices in SEO and some resources for further reading.
Added: 16 September 2010
Page views: 2,888
Rating: 0
Votes: 0
- Discoverability for Government Websites
- Resources to support the Victorian Government Discoverability Standard.
Added: 1 June 2011
Page views: 3,399
Rating: 0
Votes: 0
- Government Website Minimum Requirements and Best Practice - Department of Business and Innovation
- Describes the standards required for the basic operation of its websites and other online services in a standards-compliant manner. They are aimed at business users, content owners and web managers. The emphasis is on processes and standards rather than implementation advice or technical guidance. Each topic clearly describes DBI's minimum requirements – what must be done to achieve compliance – as well as best practice – what can optionally be done to improve the quality of an implementation. Links to additional information are also provided.
Added: 12 October 2011
Page views: 2,420
Rating: 0
Votes: 0
- How To Create Government Websites That Dont Suck
- The presentation is focussed on New Zealand goverment websites and suggests how to create government websites that rock by: Creating a citizen-centred culture; Creating an a site which is actionable and citizen-centric; Improving findability / discoverability; and lastely Following a user-centred design process for your online strategy.
Added: 12 July 2010
Page views: 1,455
Rating: 0
Votes: 0
- Managing Legal Risks Online: A Guide for Victorian Government Web sites
- This Whole of Victorian Government (WoVG) guideline is designed to assist those who have responsibility for designing, developing and operating Victorian Government websites to manage the relevant legal and regulatory issues. The focus is on the delivery of websites by the public sector. It is intended to deal with practical issues, to describe and explain the legal and regulatory terrain and frameworks, and to set out the techniques that should be used to address and manage concerns.
Added: 17 February 2006
Page views: 12,267
Rating: 0.0
Votes: 0
256
External Links
- Why Government Websites Need SEO
- by Lisa Nelson. HowTo.Gov Blog, May 2, 2013. "... Search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo regularly favor government websites over others based on the natural trust factor which their algorithms may take into consideration. If the website is optimized correctly, Google and other search engines will spider and index the pages and their respective keywords, allowing the government website to show up high on search engines when a user is searching for related information. However, not all government websites are optimized for SEO, as webmasters assume the site will naturally be ranked due to the weight of the trust factor for the .gov domain. While in some cases this may be true, without telling the search engines what keywords the page should be ranked for, the website may not rank for the specific keywords which users are typing into Google, Bing or other search engines..."
Added: 16 May 2013;
Page views: 212
Rating: 0
Votes: 0
- Preview: The govt.nz Beta User Experience
- By Nathan Wall, New Zealand Web Toolkit, 16 May 2013. "Get Involved, We Need Your Input Here’s your chance to get a sneak peek at the designs for the govt.nz beta site. If you’ve got 5 to 10 minutes to spare, take a look at the preview and tell us what you think. Your feedback will help us improve the beta site. When the beta goes live, it won’t be a finished site, the feedback we get will help us prioritise design fixes and new features. We will progressively add new features and content to the beta, and once everything is ready, the govt.nz beta will replace newzealand.govt.nz..."
Added: 16 May 2013;
Page views: 167
Rating: 0
Votes: 0
- The BOM website now includes ads - should other government sites?
- eGov AU - Craig Thomler's professional blog - eGovernment and Gov 2.0 thoughts and speculations from an Australian perspective, Wednesday, April 24, 2013. "Back in July 2008 I wrote a blog post asking whether government websites should feature paid advertising. Now, four and a half years later, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has taken the step of adding paid advertisements to its highly popular website (one of the top 20 sites in Australia) in a trial detailed in this page of their site. Depending on how the trial goes, advertising may become a permanent feature of the BOM's main site, and it is even conceivable that other government agencies might start considering a similar approach in their high sites..."
Added: 30 April 2013;
Page views: 206
Rating: 0
Votes: 0
- Building a government website FAST with aGov
- Posted by Chris Skene. PreviousNext, 14 February, 2013. "aGov is a Drupal distribution built to address the accessibility, security and design guidelines for Australian Government sites. In a previous blog, I talked about some of the benefits aGov has for public sector agencies trying to do more with less in the online environment. In this post, I'm going to show you are practical example of building a micro-site using aGov, to show you how easy, and quick, it is to get up and running. We're going to be building a site for a government initiative, but you could easily use the same methodology for a smaller public sector agency, a special event, an informational site, or a minister..."
Added: 15 February 2013;
Page views: 194
Rating: 0
Votes: 0
- 2012 Year in Review: First Fridays Usability Testing Program
- by Jonathan Rubin, HowTo.Gov Blog, December 28, 2012. "Looking back, it's clear that 2012 was a big year for the First Fridays Usability Testing Program. Improving the user experience is our game, and that’s what we spent the bulk of the year doing. Besides celebrating our second birthday (huzzah!), we conducted 26 tests on federal websites, mobile sites, intranets and much more. A special shout-out to the superstars – USA.gov’s search engine, FedRAMP, NASA (mobile), Regulations.gov, OMB Max and SAM.gov – for making usability improvements in 30 days or less! When immersed in usability testing, you'll begin to notice the same problems over and over again. In 2012, we saw these:.."
Added: 31 January 2013;
Page views: 131
Rating: 0
Votes: 0
- How effective is your government website?
- Posted by Mary Yang for GovDelivery. Reach the Public, December 13, 2012. "Even in this computer-driven age when information is virtually at our fingertips, many people still discover that finding the answer to a simple question can be a protracted, frustrating, complex process. Unfortunately, in many cases, government agencies are a prime offender in perpetuating this information muddle. Consider many government websites: Users go to a government site with a simple query, only to find themselves confronted by pages of dense type, dozens of confusing links that lead them deeper, and obtuse bureaucratic language that makes it impossible to decipher which section of the site might provide the sought-after answer..."
Added: 14 December 2012;
Page views: 597
Rating: 0
Votes: 0
- Developers push for input on city website redesign
- The Star Phoenix, November 29, 2012. "A group of local developers have prepared a recommendations document outlining ideas for the redesign of Saskatoon.ca The website revamp is up for debate next week at budget and caused some division this week at council... Executive Summary: This document makes recommendations to the City of Saskatoon with respect to the design and deployment of Saskatoon.ca. It does this in two sections: design and community recommendations, and technical recommendations. In particular, these sections make ten recommendations..."
Added: 5 December 2012;
Page views: 217
Rating: 0
Votes: 0
- Make WordPress.com Your City's Virtual Home
- by Christopher Finke, Wordpress.com, Posted: Wednesday, November 14, 2012. "City administrators: Don't spend thousands of dollars on a proprietary system for your city’s website. We’ve launched WordPress.com/cities as the go-to place to start a site for your city or other municipal body, and there’s no charge to get started. (“Free” is a price that will get every taxpayer on board, and since WordPress.com has been approved as a hosting site for federal government agencies, you can be sure we take security seriously.) To supplement the impressive stable of existing WordPress.com features like custom domains (e.g., YourCity.gov or CityNameHere.com), we’ve added a couple of new ones to help you build the best site you can for residents and visitors alike..."
Added: 15 November 2012;
Page views: 313
Rating: 0
Votes: 0
- What Makes the Best Government Website?
- By Steve Towns. Government Technology, October 1, 2012. "Last month, Government Technology released its 16th annual 'Best of the Web' survey of state and local government websites. A panel of analysts and current and former CIOs judged nearly 100 entrants on innovation, functionality and their impact on government efficiency. For the record, the top sites came from the state of Alabama; Orange County, Fla.; and the Louisville, Ky., Metro Government. But beyond the annual beauty contest, the survey offers a snapshot of the state of the art for public websites. So what can you learn from some of the best public-sector websites in the nation? Based on what's offered by the winners and other highly ranked sites, here are some must-have features..."
Added: 9 October 2012;
Page views: 286
Rating: 0
Votes: 0
- Style guide: GOV.UK
- Government Digital Service - Content principles. Gov.UK Beta. "This style guide is for written content on the GOV.UK website. The first part of this guide is for the whole of GOV.UK. It covers the basics: how to handle legal language, capitalisation etc. This gives us a consistent feel, whether you are in the news section of Inside Government or a quick answer on child benefit rates. Then there are separate sections for the 'mainstream' content (this is content for both businesses and citizens) and Inside Government content. These go over the different formats (eg the way we present the information) and go into more detail on specifics..."
Added: 1 October 2012;
Page views: 280
Rating: 0
Votes: 0
- Answering the top questions from government webmasters
- Posted by Jason Morrison, Search Quality Team. Google Webmaster Central Blog, Friday, September 14, 2012. "Government sites, from city to state to federal agencies, are extremely important to Google Search. For one thing, governments have a lot of content — and government websites are often the canonical source of information that’s important to citizens. Around 20 percent of Google searches are for local information, and local governments are experts in their communities. That’s why I’ve spoken at the National Association of Government Webmasters (NAGW) national conference for the past few years. It’s always interesting speaking to webmasters about search, but the people running government websites have particular concerns and questions. Since some questions come up frequently I thought I’d share this FAQ for government websites..."
Added: 27 September 2012;
Page views: 325
Rating: 0
Votes: 0
- Essential Features for Government Websites (Video)
- By Sarah Rich. Government Technology, September 17, 2012. "In this day and age, government websites serve not only as a resource of information for citizens, but through interactive features, can also provide a range of services such as e-payments, license renewals and social media. So by now, there must be features that are absolutely essential for any government website -- a question we asked of winners from this year's Digital Government Education and Achievement Awards, better known as the Best of the Web..."
Added: 20 September 2012;
Page views: 175
Rating: 0
Votes: 0
- Washington State Tests New Website
- Government Technology, September 6, 2012. "The state of Washington is now testing a new website with a streamlined design and modern appearance. The website's old design featured a lot of information available in several languages, but the new design centers around the user rather than presenting the information like an index..."
Added: 10 September 2012;
Page views: 307
Rating: 0
Votes: 0
- Websites for the Real World (Opinion)
- By Steve Towns. Government Technology, August 31, 2012. "From the Louisville Metro Government home page, users can sign up for text alerts from the city, order accident reports or watch streaming video of community meetings. Alabama's home page features responsive design that renders the site viewable on any mobile device, and its social media portal offers extensive links to agency social network sites. And the Orange County, Fla., website lets residents report problems to the city 311 center via Web chat or download a mobile 311 app for their smartphone. Each of these sites topped its category in the 16th annual Best of the Web Awards, released by e.Republic's Center for Digital Government in August. The survey has rated government websites on their functionality, innovation, efficiency and economy since 1996..."
Added: 3 September 2012;
Page views: 69
Rating: 0
Votes: 0
- Best of the Web and Digital Government Achievement Awards 2012 Results
- Top Government Websites and Digital Achievements Honored by the Center for Digital Government. Center for Digital Government, Sacramento, CA, August 23, 2012. "e.Republic's Center for Digital Government has announced the 2012 winners of its annual Best of the Web and Digital Government Achievement Awards. In its 17th year, Best of the Web (BOW) recognizes outstanding government portals and websites based on innovation, functionality and efficiency. The BOW first place winners are Alabama (state), Louisville (city), and Orange County, Fla. (county)..."
Added: 30 August 2012;
Page views: 293
Rating: 0
Votes: 0
This category last updated: 16 May 2013
Translate, Search, Login and Options
Search
Translate
Mailing List
Enter your email address to subscribe or unsubscribe from the eGov What's New mailing list.
Email a Friend
Please enter email address of the person you wish to send this page to.
