"Leverage intelligence loaded into your meta data"

1. "Leverage intelligence loaded into your meta data" Bring your meta data to life! Using controlled lists to: • Create Nice URIs to the heart of your services • Improve your website usability • Promote “Good Joined up Government” • Drive “layered searches” • Gather better intelligence

2. About me : Paul Geraghty • 10 years working in local government • Web Administrator – PHP nerd • Create tagging and CMS tools • Early adopter of controlled lists • Website: www.councilsites.co.uk

3. A way of managing controlled lists to … 1) Create Nice URIs and • Automatically create navigation pages 2) Improve search results • “Did you mean?” • Layered search • Tag clouds

4. Caveats To act upon this advice may need help from: • Members of your IT department • Software vendor • Someone like me

5. “The council does that…”

6. Controlled lists and local government • Service List (LGSL) clearly defined key services a council/agency provides • Navigation List Links 1:1 with Service list • IPSV 12,000 terms used in government Examples …

7. Service list upclose

8. Navigation List upclose >> Housing Adapting homes Council housing Improvements and repairs Supported and sheltered housing >> Council and democracy Supported and sheltered housing >> Health and social care Adapting homes

9. IPSV upclose

10. Services / IPSV Mapping

11. 3 controlled lists Important page

12. How to manage all this information? • Meta data management system (MMS) • Layer linking controlled lists and your content • MMS outputs meta data + is searchable

13. Worlds Simplest MMS Your MMS could be just: ... and could contain “other partners” URLs:

14. A more complex MMS

15. If you had an MMS… • Your “important services” are identified • You can activate links directly to them using the Navigation List … from a single webpage … In our case in a directory named /tag/

16. My.gov.uk/tag/130

17. Taxonomy terms as ‘slugs’ • My.gov.uk/tag/130 My.gov.uk/tag/CouncilHousing-HomeAdaptions Defn: From Wordpress – a slug is a term for a unique text link that can be pseudonym for a more complicated URI or used as a database key

18. My.gov.uk/tag/Housing

19. My.gov.uk/tag/AdaptingHomes

20. Dynamic page, description and link creation – no humans are involved except to tag

21. What is happening … Make your website handle requests to a virtual page that handles… Both service numbers: • .gov.uk/tag/130 • .gov.uk/tag/100001 And service Terms (or titles): • .gov.uk/tag/CouncilHousing-HomeAdaptions • .gov.uk/tag/Housing

22. Interface to your main services • Predictable set of URIs to each local service • Activates the LG Navigation List • API you can link to yourself, e.g. from search • With a copy of the Service list “other partners” can link to your main services • Help more citizens to get through to the right service provider (joined up government) • Creates Nice URIs

23. Why Nice URIs are good • Search engine friendly • Read them out on the phone • Reproduce in print easily • Guessable / predictable • Permanent • Counter CMS derived ‘unfriendly URLs’ LIKE THIS: My.gov.uk/live/website/pages/checkPage.do?item=496&section=car%20parking?openDocument

24. Slugs make good sense • You keep a list of (LGSL) services anyway ! • The computer does the work ! • Around 2400 virtual “pages” • Slugs (/ tag / Schools-HomeSchooling) • Service PIDs (/ tag / 1 ) • Once compiled, low maintenance • 6 monthly update from esd-toolkit

25. Why slugs are bad (are they?) • Your meta data is no longer hidden • Loss of absolute control • Inconsistencies caused by bad tagging • LGSL tagging • IPSV tagging … can result in missed or unexpected page content … • Lots of feedback (more work!)

26. Controlled vocabularies in a “Layered search” strategy • Log public search terms • Analyse these results • Intercept recognised patterns • Provide intuitive links first • Then go on and do a ‘Google-type’ text matching search

27. Search patterns Number of words used in searches on 18 Feb 2008

28. Intercept planning applications e.g. WA/2007/0123

29. Intercept locations • Search term : 12 The Gardens, Busbridge • Lookup using: • GIS Gazetteer • Planning Applications • CRM • Then show other google-type text search results

30. Intercept a single word • Disambiguate that term : Wikipedia idea link • User searches for a single word • Search through Service list • Show scope notes • Ask: Did you mean? • Optionally halt expensive all-site searches • Gather valuable information … example …

31. Single word search : offer to disambiguate

32. “Service hits” not “page hits” • Clicks on a Service description provide more granular information than “webpage hits” • Important webpages can contain more than one LGSL service • Compare “search term” with “service picked” • Possibly adapt Service and Navigation titles • Locally for your own taxonomy • Nationally esd.org.uk/forums

33. What you are gathering From Search you can collect: • Citizen selected services • The time of day • Day of week • Week of year • Month Mixing temporal and behavioural patterns …

34. Tag clouds • A visual map of terms that users attach to a page or document a “Folksonomy” • Tag cloud terms are generally one word • The more popular a word is – the bigger it is

35. 3 tag cloud styles

36. Tag clouds using a controlled vocabulary- lets use Service Terms instead of words …

37. Controlled list tag clouds • Gather intelligence about the services citizens request from: • Your LGNL navigation /tag/StreetParking-Fines • Search intercepts and service clicks • What people want (not simply what pages citizens are visiting) • Activity in the last hour • Predict activity each month (year on year)

38. For the publiccontrolled lists can provide … • Better “Joined up Government” • Easy to remember URIs • Information about where they are going • Increasing the likelihood they find key services via search • Show what is popular today/this week

39. For youcontrolled lists provide … • Value added searchable text store • Reduced maintenance costs • Feedback and for your own meta data • A way to predict “what citizens want” • Proof of what users really want They are not just <meta tag /> fillers

40. Last slide … • Contact me : Paul Geraghty • www.councilsites.co.uk • Thank you “Bring your meta data to life, and profit from your investment.”