The final speaker before lunch was Kylie Gibbon from the Auckland Regional Council, presenting a case study of what’s happening with the Intranet at the Auckland Regional Council.

Current Situation
The current Intranet is called “Our Backyard” … it has evolved over the past 5 years, bits have been tacked on, the information is out of date, content owners have left, people don’t necessarily trust that the information is accurate or up-to-date, an organizational restructure and re-focus has impacted on values and ways of working, and the most common compliant is that staff don’t know who’s who.

So … ARCHIE is coming along. Key ideas:

• User-centred approach … which grounds the process in information about the people who will use the product. This is the definition from the Usability Professionals’ Association (which has Auckland and Wellington chapters). Capturing this: lots of research, staff surveys, workshops, and card sorting (using CardZort). Key findings: a staff directory is very important (make it accurate, useful and fun), make the information trustable, and give topical news on the organization.
• On cardsorting, they had about 50 cards in total. They took two laptops around to staff, and asked them for 20-30 minutes of their time to work through the cards. If they did, they got a chocolate fish. It provided helpful evidence for deciding what items are top level vs. lower down in the Intranet hierachy.
• Common language was also important. They walked around with a list of common terms and asked people what they’d call them.
• There have been some pitfalls and challenges, in particular the idea that user-centered design is more important than the information that management want to push down. The Intranet team has believed this, but management haven’t been too happy with the idea. A second challenge has been scope increase and limited resources (“phase two” has become a key phrase). A third challenge is that IT wants to dictate technology requirements separately from the user requirements. A fourth issue is color preferences (“I hate orange” … which is a key color at ARC) and preferences for not putting your photo in the staff directory but wanting to see everyone else’s photo.
• Highlights … we’ve got a great CEO who recognizes that the ARC has a largely Gen X and Y workforce, and so wanted those tools within the Council. Were able to go from 5 inaccurate staff directories down to 1 accurate staff directory. Improving communication throughout the organization by making staff more engaged with all things “online”.
• They’ve taken an iterative approach … let’s just got on with it. We need to make immediate improvements. Things added quickly: front page stores (“every story has to have an active title” to encourage reading), events calendar (still in beta; everyone in the organization have access to it; the secretary and PA network have been great champions of this; RSS for notification will be added in the future), and a staff directory.
• The ARC’s interpretation of Web 2.0: letting people get information in a way that suits them. It also helps recognize that people have diverse learning styles. Podcasting and videocasting has been used for making corporate messages less “wordy” and boring. Videocasting enables staff to see the CEO (whereas previously many of the distributed staff would say, “we never get to see the CEO”). They’ve also had staff going to interview the CEO about certain topics. Another example is the use of podcasting to capture ideas from visiting experts, eg, the recent visit of the sustainability expert from Sweden.
• Stafflink … the staff directory. The Intranet team literally took the CEO’s word to give workers the same tools at work that they have at home. The aim is to merge FaceBook, MySpace and LinkedIn. They want to create a social network within the ARC, and use it to break down silos across the Council. Phases: (1) get people’s profiles up-to-date (everyone has a photo, reporting hierarchy, job role, what they do away from work, etc.), (2) more of a FaceBook style user interface (photo links of the people that the person works with, current projects, events, some informality via holiday pictures and “writing on the wall”, tagging with work-related and non-work-related items, and personalization options).
• With staff forums, they established topics for staff forums where there were a lot of staff interested in an area. It’s gone very well, and plan to shift from forums to wikis and collaboration rooms.
• The Intranet is being used to communicate internal change; it’s not just a telephone book and a business tool, it’s integral to the culture of the organization. The tone has to be right — a mix of business and informality to get users engaged and participating. Every story has a little icon at the bottom to call out the values of the organization that the story highlights.
• It seems to be working! People are writing in … “we like the story style”, “the pictures catch your eye”, “I like the clean look”, “it’s got better navigation” (however, they haven’t even touched the navigation yet).

Questions
1. What did top management think about opening up the debate about what the ARC represents?
(Kylie) They are struggling with it, but it is going on anyway by email, in the lunch room, etc. We should make it public and visible. However, we have a great CEO that recognizes who the workforce is, and wants to keep them involved.

2. Are you doing user training?
(Kylie) Yes, we are offering online courses about the Web, that includes the history of the Web, how to write content for the Intranet, and more. We’re trying to help them understand it more, so that they can be engaged and involved.

3. How many people are at the ARC?
(Kylie) About 450 full-time employees, plus another 100 contractors. The latter group doesn’t get an induction to the organization, so the Intranet is very helpful for getting them up-to-speed.

4. Do you have someone monitoring the forums?
(Kylie) No, it is self-governing, because everyone’s name is on their postings. It is not an anonymous forum. We haven’t had any issues yet.

5. How have you chosen your technology?
(Kylie) We maintain that it is all about the user, and will not be dictated by the technology people (eg, go for SAP Portal). So we’ll probably stick with our existing content management system (ShadowCMS), because SAP Portal can’t do what we need.

6. How many people in the Web team?
(Kylie) Until recently, it was me and one developer, with a couple of contractors helping out. We are doubling the group shortly.

7. How are you tackling people issues around content updates and maintenance?
(Kylie) Via content ownership and through training. We have focused on the people who have attended the training sessions, and have asked them if they want to be involved in keeping the Intranet up-to-date (either directly or by approaching the people who can). It’s very informal — no one has it written into their job descriptions.
(Dorje) Would the CEO be willing to change job descriptions to make this more formal?
(Kylie) Yes, will happen in the future. We also find the secretaries and PAs very engaged — they know everything that’s going on.

8. (Ken) What goes in FaceBook and what belongs in the staff directory?
(Kylie) Very interesting question. This needs to be a judgment call, and keeping it focused on the business side. Common sense and political nous is important.