Re:designing the public sector

Paul Canning's Idea

My current experience...

Instead of being sent down 'channels', those channels found you — online.

Wouldn't it be better if...

What do I mean? Things like widgetising existing services, most of which are easily widgetisable. So, to pick somewhere at random (cough! injoke), Netmums would actually have government widgets on it where you could sign up there (rather than following a link) and be informed by auto-email or txt when you could register your kid online for school. Or another example might be something like bin collection times or bus routes or Google mapped services - offer them to other websites like your local newspapers or some of the newer, very local, sites or community group websites. Some sites like Transport Direct already do offer a widget but that's about it. Something simple like this gets around the issue of 'findability' for services. For most, unless you know the exact title, they aren't bang at the top of Google search, which is the starting point for most. And internal search for government sites is usually not brilliant (because it's hard to get right). All along these existing 'journeys' you are losing people — so go to where they already are, the audiences for specific services, online. Plus offline marketing and banner advertising is expensive and hit and miss. Proper, broad terms, search marketing can be expensive, especially where there is competition. Plus you could imagine other websites all wanting to be able to do this ('win-win'). Plus you're not as reliant on whatever others choose to 'mash-up'. These suggestions are along the lines of how online marketeers get more clicks and more eyes for their products: go where the audience is and not just hope they'll find you. For the potential payback in take up, strikes me as an 'easy win' which wouldn't cost very much at all.

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