Public-sector intranets: a small sampling

DECEMBER 2002

Public-sector intranets: a small sampling

Written by James Robertson, published December 2nd, 2002

This article presents some results from our inaugural Intranet Peers in Government forum, held in Sydney on 14 November 2002.

In all, there were 27 participants drawn from 20 different government organisations. This was a diverse group, both in the nature of their organisations and intranets, and the skills and experience they brought to the day.

A survey was sent out, investigating intranet strengths and weaknesses, to help us focus the day to the specific needs of those attending. It is the results of this (small) survey that are presented in this article.

Demographics

There were 20 different public-sector groups represented at the forum, as follows:

Federal government	11
NSW state government	3
NSW health service	3
Federal health service	1
ACT state government	1
VIC state government	1

Survey questions

The survey captured a snapshot of the various intranets, allowing the participants to do simple benchmarking. The questions focused on a range of areas, such as:

age, size and usage of the intranet
tools used to maintain the intranet
strengths, weaknesses & future directions

Authoring tools used

Some observations:

Only a relatively small percentage of the organisations were using a CMS, and no two had implemented the same system.
Many were using more than one authoring tool. Discussions during the seminar attributed this to a range of legacy and historical reasons.
Some organisations were using all three of Frontpage, Dreamweaver and hand-editing of HTML.
With the labour-intensive nature of these tools, it was not surprising to see intranet quality, accuracy and ease of maintenance being highlighted as issues by most participants.

Authoring models

It is worth noting that most participants are planning to move to a decentralised model.

Intranet age

In development	1
< 1 year	1
> 2 years	3
> 3 years	5
> 4 years	3
> 5 years	4
> 6 years	1

Observations:

The majority of intranets are between two and five years old.
During the seminar, most participants outlined the growth of their intranets as ad-hoc and unmanaged (one comment: ‘grown like coral’).
The most common reason for attending the forum was to bring order to an unmanageable intranet.

Intranet size (pages)

Notes:

These figures are only indicative: while most count only web pages, others include files (PDFs, Word documents, or images) as well.

Intranet staff (full-time)

Notes:

This question specifically asked for numbers of full time staff (or equivalent).
In a decentralised environment, this sometimes amounted to no staff solely dedicated to intranet development. This is not to say, however, that time is not spent on building or improving the intranet.
There is little correlation between the size of the organisation, the number of staff allocated to maintaining the intranet. The ratio ranges from 0.1 intranet staff for every 1000 users up to 4.4 staff for every 1000 users. Most organisations are at the low end of the range.
Similarly, there is little correlation between the size of the intranet, and the number of intranet staff. Figures range from 0.1 intranet staff for every 1000 pages, up to 15 staff for every 1000 pages. Most have a ratio of less than 1 staff for every 1000 pages.

Note: The intranet size, staff and usage graphs have been alphabetically labelled to allow comparison between organisations.

Intranet usage (hits)

Notes:

This graph shows the average number of hits per day at the time of the survey.
30% of surveyed organisations did not track intranet usage, or were unable to provide current statistics.
Again, there is no correlation between these figures, and the size of either the organisation or the intranet.

Questionnaire results

In addition to the collection of numerical data, the survey posed a number of questions relating to the current state of the intranet and future directions.

These results were collated, and ‘content analysis’ used to group the individual responses into high-level categories. These are presented in the following sections:

Intranet strengths

The most common responses to the question “What would you describe as the main strengths of the intranet?”:

A central resource for information (single source) [11 responses]
Wide availability and accessibility [5]
Current and up-to-date [4]
Clear structure and navigation [3]
Usability and quality [3]
Effective way to disseminate information [3]
Distributed authoring [3]

Observations:

It is interesting to note that many of the strengths listed here also appear as weaknesses in the following section.
For example, the four “Current and up-to-date” responses are overtaken by nine “out-of-date” comments.
One organisation specifically indicated “these [strengths] are all weaknesses as well”.

Intranet weaknesses

Most common responses to “What would you describe as the main weaknesses of the intranet?”:

Intranet structure (information architecture) [9 responses]
Out-of-date or poor quality content [9]
Problems with authoring or publishing process [5]
Too much information [4]
Lack of information [3]
Authors have insufficient skills or experience [3]
Usability problems [3]
Lack of guidelines for intranet publishing [2]
Poor search tool [2]

Observations:

Issues with inconsistent structure, difficult navigation, and poor quality content were an ever-present theme throughout the day.
Technology problems did not rate a mention.
It is encouraging to see that all the participants saw the importance of usability and information architecture in meeting business needs.

Planned intranet improvements

Most common responses to “What are the main intranet improvements planned for the next six months?”:

Purchase or improve content management system [8 responses]
Restructure navigation (information architecture) [5]
Collaboration, forums, discussion groups [4]
Improve search [4]
Content review, audit [4]
Redesign homepage [3]
Complete intranet redesign [3]
Review of content management processes [2]
Marketing, awareness raising [2]
Improve forms [2]

Problems preventing greater use

Most common responses to “What issues or problems are preventing greater use of the intranet?”:

Staff cultural issues, resistance to change [7 responses]
Lack of awareness, poor marketing [6]
Navigation and usability problems [5]
Lack of staff access [4]
Lack of staff skills, training [4]
Problems with authoring process [4]
Not enough resources [3]
Lack of management support, sponsorship [3]
Lack of strategic vision, direction [3]
Network problems [2]

Conclusion

The Intranet Peers in Government forum proved to be an interesting and enjoyable day. As can be seen from these survey results, many intranets still have a long way to go, and I look forward to seeing how these challenges will be tackled in the public sector.

We also taped the day, and have transcribed many of the very interesting anecdotes and experiences that surfaced. These are likely to be incorporated (anonymously) into future whitepapers.

Tags: governance, intranet teams, intranets, management, survey

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