Bringing Parliament to the People: building engagement in the democratic process

Bringing Parliament To The People: Building Engagement In The

Democratic Process

Tracy GreenUK Parliament

Who am I?

Tracy GreenHead of Online Services UK Parliament

My name is: Tracy Green

I am from: London, UK

I work for: UK Parliament

My role is: Head of Online Services

My passion is: eDemocracy

I used to: manage websites for other large organisations

Hansard Society – Audit of Political Engagement 10

Where have all the voters gone? Only 41% likely to vote in the next election

Interest in politics low (42%) but interest in news and current affairs high (71%)

People do care about issues, especially locally – 78% prepared to act

What difference can we make?

Who are our customers?

Members The public

And what do we know about them?60% of traffic comes from Google

Top tasks are member information, Hansard and legislation

Top search tasks are MPs, Hansard, Committees

20% coming from mobile devices

Routes into Member information

Search65%

Referral21%

Direct14%

Members of the House of Lords How visitors arrive

Members of the House of Lordshttp://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/lords

And what do they say?

Perception of search on the website“With respect, the search engine is useless and needs to be built again scratch. One cannot limit the search parameters in

any meaningful way”

“search function was not helpful. no index, and word search did not produce anything useful”

“the general search facility did not seem to return results listed according to any format - alphabetical, chronological, logical...just a

shapeless bundle of information units”

Implications for overall perception of the site“I could not fine [sic] the specch [sic] i was looking. The advanced search was no help at all. The website is totally

useless.”

What does this mean for Parliament’s digital strategy?

Findability

Mapping users key tasksKey tasks (aggregated) mapped on to home page

Mapping users key tasksKey tasks (aggregated) mapped on to home page

Proposed new home pageDesigned around users key tasks

more space and flexibility to drive the communications agenda

Users have the ability to personalise the business content they see under ‘Today in Parliament’A more modular dynamic approach to content

Drop-down navigation (not shown) promotes content otherwise hidden down the site

Topics

Member pages

NewsOver 2 million unique page views of news content in past yearPeaks relate to phone hacking news stories

Traffic peaks every Wednesday around PMQs

Average time spent on a news story is 1 minute 43

News

News

Where people are

Social media

Partnerships

Mobile

Opportunities for engagement

Scrutiny

Scrutiny

Legislation

Debate

greentr@parliament.uk

@greentrac

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/tracy-green/2/175/753

Thanks for listening