DRIVING CHANGE IN THE PORTAL LANE

Excerpt from an upcoming article..

DRIVING CHANGE IN THE PORTAL LANE
By
Christopher O’Kennon


I’ve been part of a team that’s been designing award winning government portals for more than eight years. We’ve won some awards along the way, and we’ve launched a stinker or two. You live and learn.

One thing I’ve noticed, through contests, studies, and review, is that most government portals fall into one of two categories. “Cloned Yesterday” and “Fairly Useless.” Several years ago, the vast majority of state government portals fell solidly into the “Fairly Useless” group. They hadn’t seen a significant facelift since pictures hit the Web, and they were really nothing more than poorly organized Word documents wrapped in random links and bad Frontpage themes. Often a valiant effort for the times, but hardly a stunning e-government presence. Designers just didn’t know how to design for the Web, or for their users. And it showed.

Luckily for all of us, portals have grown beyond that and now mostly fall into the “Cloned Yesterday” group. This is not as bad as it may sound, as the clones are at least doing a decent job and information and services are at last getting – albeit disjointedly – to the public. But there is room for improvement, if portal managers can get past a few hurdles and misconceptions. The biggest being:
State government portals have hit a plateau and have not significantly improved in the last three years.
When Virginia won the Best of the Web contest in 2002, they were seen as pretty innovative. They got that reputation by taking chances and backing up their choices with research. But that was also the first year that contests such as the Best of the Web – God Bless Them – began to take on the importance that they now have. Virginia slipped under the radar on that one, because just about every member of management and political authority was looking elsewhere. As it turned out, attention focused on the Best of the Web at about the time Virginia’s first place win was announced.

After that, every CIO or Governor decided that they wanted those first place awards.

end of excerpt.