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Intranet goals

I'm busy (very busy) writing the final recommendations for the Area Health Service project. One of the last activities we conducted was to sit down and determine a new set of intranet goals.

The old goal was as follows:

“To improve access and delivery of information to staff and customers through the effective and efficient use of technology”.

While this was fine, as far as it went, it tended to focus the intranet on delivering static information, without addressing the broader issues.

We have now replaced this with a more detailed set of goals, and this is the first draft version:

Meet management needs

• Support management processes, planning and decision making
• Support the implementation of the Balanced Scorecard
• Improve organisational efficiency
• Reduce business costs

Improve communication and knowledge sharing

• Support the sharing of knowledge and best practice
• Improve communication to, and between, staff
• Increase community involvement (both internally & externally)
• Enhance partnerships with external organisations
• Facilitate and support learning
• Encourage innovation
• Facilitate and support teamwork

Improve internal processes and practices

• Improve consistency and quality of information and processes
• Provide easier and more efficient work practices
• Provide a common platform for internal systems
• Improve the transparency of decision making

Improve outcomes

• Improve staff safety
• Improve patient care, outcomes and safety

Support cultural change

• Improve staff morale

These are more than just "high ideals", they help to set the direction of the intranet, and how it fits in the context of the whole organisation.

Posted by jamesr on August 20, 2002 06:01 PM
Categories: Area Health Service project, Intranets, Knowledge management

Comments

Sound great, but will you be measuring where possible? Will you be able to attribute change to the Intranet?

Posted by: Mike Boyink on August 20, 2002 11:29 PM

And if you measure, what will you be measuring. What metrics did you establish to determine success of your engagement?

Posted by: Terry Frazier on August 31, 2002 02:45 PM

Measures are certainly the key. Without these, the goals will truly be just a "pipe dream".

One of my next activities is to provide a quote on defining metrics for the intranet. I expect this will take about a day of collaborative work with the intranet team.

I certainly don't expect it to be easy, and we will probably have to revisit these metrics in six months, in light of our successes (or failures) up to that point.

As to the metrics for my initial work for the Area Health Service, I don't think they had thought that far ahead when they took me on. Instead it was more a situation of "we don't know what we don't know"...

Posted by: James Robertson on August 31, 2002 04:10 PM

Sure hope you've had better success than I have in the past. Short of basic things like server traffic no one's ever wanted to take the time and dollars necessary to put a value on the use of Intranets.

Posted by: Mike Boyink on September 2, 2002 04:08 AM

What is on my side in this project is the rollout of "Balanced Scorecard" in the organisation. This is built around determining goals, and defining measures.

So the concept of metrics sits pretty comfortably with them. In fact, they would probably be disappointed if measures *weren't* defined for the intranet.

Posted by: James Robertson on September 2, 2002 10:30 AM