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Office of the Chief Information Officer - Victorian Government Agency Case Studies: Victoria Online

Department of Infrastructure

‘Navigating through government websites was never an easy task.’ The Victoria Online (VO) project is the solution developed to change this common perception of government websites. The government is like a huge information repository with layers of information and services from all three levels of government. The complex information environment and the ever-changing government structure made web navigation a difficult task. VO is like the catalogue for this information library, to ensure accurate and efficient search results to the information that is most needed.

The Victoria Online website was designed to provide the online interface for the Victorian government to deliver information and services to the needs of the citizens and businesses. The project aimed to build the first whole of Victoria government website that aggregates information and services from all three levels of government. The site was built with a strong user centric emphasis, which enables superior usability and information delivery. The information and services were organised by topics categories, which made the site easier to use.

The VO project delivers benefits in:

• improving service quality by focusing on responsiveness, convenience and equity
• reducing time cost for users via tighter information integration and better search engine technology
• increasing government productivity through better information sharing
• providing accurate information to the community and improves confidence in key institutions
• demonstrating the government’s commitment to achieve the vision of ‘Growing Victoria Together’ through the use of new technologies and the Internet.

By improving the ‘discoverability’ of department and agency websites, it is motivating these agencies to improve their own web presence and to place a broader range of services online.

Since the launch of Victoria Online in September 2003, the portal has received growing support from Victorians. Each working day the portal serves almost 25,000 pages to over 5,000 Victorians.

Victoria Online is an example of a successful ICT implementation that is clearly being valued by the Victorian public. However, the work of the Victoria Online project team continues. There is an ongoing innovation program for the portal, taking into account the feedback of online users, analysis of site statistics, and formalised user testing. Innovations on the horizon include aggregation (single sign-on to transact with multiple agencies) and personalisation (“My Victoria Online”).

"Key issues need to be addressed"

Two independent studies were performed on the previous vic.gov.au site in 2000. The objective was to understand the user experience of the site and identify possible issues. In addition, a study was undertaken on Victorian government websites in general. The results of these studies indicated several key issues that need to be addressed:

• users tend not to understand the functional structure of government and would prefer to look for information using subject categories rather than functional categories
• users were frustrated by moving from one site to another without a clear indication of what they should expect, or where they were going
• the users’ ability to find information and services was severely compromised by their poor understanding of government structure which was the primary means of organising website information;
• users sometimes did not know when they had left government sites, and the methods used to indicate that users were on government sites were inconsistent
• users expected cross linking of Information across different departments and tiers of government — Information related to the same topic should be presented together from all levels of government.

"Easy to use, fast and reliable"

The proposed VO project involved specification, redevelopment and marketing of the vic.gov.au site. The main objectives of the project included:

• delivering a greatly improved, integrated online entry point into the State of Victoria for citizens, business and government. The site to be designed around the need of citizens and reflect best practice
• creating a trusted brand for citizens of Victoria to locate government information and services
• delivering a high level communication strategy to raise awareness of the portal and its benefits

After extensive research and requirements identification, it was identified that the newly proposed portal must fulfil the following requirements:

• improve discoverability for government related information and services
• provide integration from three levels of government to allow transparency
• be easy to use, fast, reliable, relevant, accessible and trustworthy
• to be designed on subject based categorization, and include the use of natural language
• to include directories and contact information
• should be citizen-centric, not government-centric

To meet the objectives set by the project team, the new site would include the following functionality:

• adoption of Commonwealth standards for metadata
• use of action-oriented terminology
• inclusion of a natural language topics categorisation
• smart search engine – integration of search and browse function
• provide the latest government news and events and the option to include media releases and policy announcements
• integration of three tiers of government, with browse results based on the relevance to category description, not weighted according to government tiers.

Investment Returns

Benefits from the Investment

Service Enhancement

• New Services and quality - User feedback: "With more information from the Federal and local government levels, Victoria Online is definitely becoming a true portal for Victorians!"
• Responsiveness - User feedback: "Just a quick note to say well done on the new website. Clearly a lot of consultation has been carried out to improve the navigation and useability of the site..."
• Convenience - User feedback: "Site looks great – I am finding it easy to use and find the information. Thanks for all your hard work."
• Equity - The re-developed vic.gov.au site is more accessible to disadvantaged and disabled Victorians, with an accessibility rating of “AA”.

Financial

• Reduced time cost for users - The improved search engine, use of metadata enhances the discoverability of the site. The financial savings can be achieved with efficient, timely information delivery.
• Reduced cost / increased productivity of government - Providing a consistent cataloguing infrastructure to save other government departments, agencies, channels and programs time and money when developing their online applications

Social Capital

• Participate in community life - User feedback: "Thanks! You helped me with a school assignment!"

System Improvement

• Increased functionality - New functionalities such as:
  • natural language topic browse taxonomy
  • integrated three levels of government
  • integrated search and browse
  • relevance based search result
  • online service discovery
  • provide latest government news and events.

Organisational Development

• Improved technology skills - Victoria Online was the first of its kind web based portal in the Victorian government. The project allowed greater understanding of emerging technologies
• Commitment to government strategy - The VO project demonstrates support to the ‘Growing Victoria Together’ vision, in the area of growing and linking all of Victoria through the use of new technology and the Internet.

Major Challenges

• The complex system and technical requirements were major challenges for the project team. Victoria Online was the first-of-its kind web based portal in the Victorian government. The users’ experience of the search engine would be of similar to a hybrid of the Yahoo and Google search engines. At the time of specification, the software required was not available as an off-the-shelf application. In addition, the need to aggregate three tiers of government increased the scope and size of this government portal.
• The original project brief outlined the possibility of creating a new brand for government websites. However, this proposal was determined to be too ambitious by the project board and hence the scope was reduced to that of the branding of Victoria Online only.
• The Whole of Victoria government concept was not developed in 2002. The idea of using Victoria Online as the single entry point to provide a discovery environment to all government related sites was revolutionary. There were no policies or authoritative backing for this kind of initiative. The policy ‘Putting People at the Centre’ wasn’t developed prior to VO. However, despite the lack of policy support, the VO project was highly endorsed by the key stakeholders within the state government.
• The cataloguing process to aggregate three tiers of the government information into one site was a major challenge for the project team. There were more than 4,000 information and service pages to be catalogued, and 50,000 pages of indexes that needed to be maintained

What the future holds

The Victoria Online Project team has developed a 3-Year strategic Plan for the future:

• Yr 1- To further improve the Victoria Online website, and finalise back-office functionality
• Provide new innovations to improve the web site, in accordance with the feedback from online users, analysis of site statistics, and through stakeholder forums. Assist down-stream sites to improve the quality of their websites
• Yr 2- Integration, the concept of single sign-on (personal verification) for multiple government services delivered online
• Yr 3- Personalisation, the concept of “My Victoria Online” (a personalised portal) and leveraging this to, for example, has government information emailed out to you personally regarding the renewal of vehicle registration.

Victoria Online Contact Details:

Portal Business Manager
Chief Technology Office
Multimedia Victoria , Department of Infrastructure
Email: victoria.online@mmv.vic.gov.au
Victoria Online: http://www.vic.gov.au

A copy of the Victoria Online case study is also available for printing pdf format (this document requires the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader) (118kb).

Last updated: 23 July 2010 Tweet

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