NPSC Blog

The volume of content on government websites is rapidly, and in some cases has already, outstripping the ability of conventional navigation and information architecture to make that content easily discoverable. When you pause to think that most government sites are only a decade old and, if you also consider the rate of content growth, you will begin to appreciate that the current model is not just unworkable, but that it is not without significant risk.

Of course, this is not limited to the public sector but, given our obligation to make information available and to keep it available as outlined in the Policy for Government Held Information, we are in a particularly invidious position.

One of the obvious ways to address this content crush is tagging. However, I can’t help feel that this is only part of the answer to the problem or, less optimistically, at best a short term solution.

With only 600 odd items in my delicious account, I already feel a sense of dread at the cognitive overload when I look through my list of tags trying to locate a page saved a couple of months ago. Looking at Hamish’s bookmarks renders me dumb with equal parts awe and despair.

The Answer

As I suggested in 5 Principles for Govt 2.0, the answer is Search. Or, in Jon Udell’s far more elegant phrase,

we’re in the midst of a long transition from container-based to query-based storage and retrieval
Tagging and Foldering.

An important point to qualify here is that the term long transition shouldn’t be taken to imply a process that is either leisurely or painless; in government, we can rest assured it will be neither.

I should also point out that, for the government namespace, the demand side search issue has already been solved. The new search on newzealand.govt.nz is frighteningly good (if you are a content owner in this namespace, just search your domain and you will see why it is frightening — everything you have posted in now surfacable).

As an example, when I wanted to pull up the Government Held Information Policy, I searched the SSC site using the, what I thought, obvious terms: “government held information” “policy framework” and finally (I am a lazy typist) I went for the whole phrase. Result? Nothing on the first page of the three searches. An advanced search on newzealand.govt.nz, using the phrase “government held information” restricted to “ssc.govt.nz” and, bingo! straight there.

Supply Side Search

The real issue for government is not the search tool. It is preparing the content for search — making it discoverable. This is where we will have to reinvent business processes and essentially apply a new model to the creation and publication of government held information.

However, until we have XML editors installed across government, and we continue to rely on the thoroughly broken model of trying to convert Word documents to valid HTML, then we will need to pay far more attention to these supply side techniques.

So, in the meantime, we need to focus on:

• semantic markup
• seo
• folksonomies, and last but most importantly
• validate your pages.

All these techniques will address the symptoms, but to get to the heart of the issue will require a more fundamental and profound change.

Conclusion

The exponential growth in the amount of content on government websites should be viewed as an opportunity to transform the namespace by creating social and economic value. There isn’t much point talking about the long tail if it is squashed under a fat rump of poorly marked up, irrelevant and dated or superseded content…

Photo: singleframe.