Stephen Hale

Proving the value of digital campaigns (and why Twitter won't take off in Ukraine)

I met a delegation of Ukrainian government officials the other day to talk about digital diplomacy. It's one of the perks of my job that people outside the UK are interested in what we do. They provide a challenge that I don't necessarily get from my peers in the UK digital community. (Who else is going to tell me that Twitter won't work as a tool in Ukraine - because you only get about 3 Ukrainian words for 140 characters?)

We talked about the online campaigns that we've run recently in the Foreign Office, the way we manage and present web content, and some of the tools we've been using for digital engagement. I think I surprised them (and myself) by how excited I got when they asked how we evaluate our work in Digital Diplomacy Group. But the fact is I am very excited about proving that digital engagement works. And more than that: I think we have a responsibility to measure the actual impact of digital campaigns, rather than get carried away with the ease with which we can develop new tools.

Of course, web practitioners are notoriously lazy about evaluation because everything we do on the web produces numbers. Stats are almost always interesting, and it's easy to present them as evaluation. But they're not enough. The Foreign Office web platform had 2.5 million unique visitors  in January. But so what? I know that I could significantly drive up traffic to the Foreign Office YouTube channel by posting a film of 150 ambassadors line dancing (I'm sure they'd be up for it). But traffic doesn't deliver foreign policy objectives. It just delivers traffic.

Our approach to evaluation was developed by Liam King, who is even more excited than I am about evaluation. It's not complicated - this is what we aim to do:

1. Insist on setting objectives and identifying target audiences for everything we do on the web.

2. Pick something that we can measure that will give us an indication of how well we met our objectives and and reached our target audience.

3. Measure it.

We do use stats, and we welcome independent evaluation (the Hansard Society are evaluating our blogs and our London Summit campaign at the moment), but we concentrate on providing evidence that tells us something about what we set out to achieve. This approach means that all the evaluation we do is useful for the people we're working with (because we are very clear about expectations right at the start), and it's useful for us (because we can use it to improve what we do).

I've pasted below the objectives and performance indicators that Liam and Paul set Digital Diplomacy Group in January for our work on the London Summit website.  Our approach will develop, and we'll measure KPIs for each of our engagement exercises over the next 6 weeks. But the original performance indicators won't change - once the summit is over we'll be able to say with authority whether we delivered what we set out to.

London Summit website objectives and performance indicators:

1. The focal point for engaging and shaping global opinions

• http://www.londonsummit.gov.uk most authoritative site for "London Summit" according to major search engines.
• influential sites in every target country link back and quote from http://www.londonsummit.gov.uk
• all visitors find it quick and easy to find the info they are looking for

2. Authoritative provision of in-depth briefings on Summit

• all unclassified policy papers accessible from londonsummit.go.uk in web friendly form
• only the highest-quality content goes on the site based on the content guidelines. If it doesn't help to achieve an objective is doesn't go on
• at least four expert bloggers providing authoritative real time content for London Summit

3. Effective operational functions for 2,000 journalists

• Media centre regarded by journalists as most respected government media site ever
• live streaming of all press conferences/keynote speeches
• the site is reliable (minimal down time) and meets AA accessibility at all times

4. Respected Platform for discussion and debate

• seamless integration with all partner engagement sites
• clear evidence of link between pre-summit web debate and post-summit outcomes
• visitors return to the site, go to other areas of our London Summit web presence or subscribe to feeds/emails
• the site (and related wider web-presence) becomes a best-in-class example of digital engagement
  
  

I'll report back on how we did against these in April.

Posted at 13:29 19 February 2009 by Stephen Hale  |  Comments[5]

Making the London Summit a 2 month online event

I mentioned last week that we were considering our options for digital engagement in the lead up to the London Summit. I can tell you now where we've got to.

The Prime Minister launched the official London Summit website earlier today (video below). Here it is: www.londonsummit.gov.uk.

There's plenty more to do but we've come a long way - in about 4 weeks we have turned a vague idea into a comprehensive strategy, a functioning website, and a set of tools and partnerships for engagement.

We want the website to be a source of authoritative content, to aggregate content from the debate around the world, and to be a stimulus for - and a home for - debate around the summit issues. So what's on it?

A dynamic multimedia home page that we will refresh every day including, if necessary, at weekends. We haven’t finished with this yet.

The Summit aims section of the site sets the context, describing the background to the crisis and UK positions. This is the most comprehensive part of the website now, and it's unlikely to change that much in the next 2 months.

The Join the debate section is a really a skeleton at the moment, but it will grow organically over the next couple of months as we help direct and respond to the global debate. This will be where we encourage and present the debate, on and off the website. At the moment, we are promoting content from our partnerships with at VoxEU, Yoosk, and the World Economic Forum as well as surfacing the debate from around the world.

We'll use the Global update channel to highlight the debate from around the world. We're well placed in the Foreign Office to use our network of embassies to report on the debate as it happens locally. We need to develop this quickly.

The Media centre will provide journalists with all they need in the lead up to the summit.

We've built all of this on the existing FCO web platform, so at no extra cost to the taxpayer.

Launching a website often feels like an end in itself, but the London Summit website is clearly only the start something - our efforts to stimulate online conversations will undoubtedly increase over the next 2 months.

And of course, the website itself is only part of our digital engagement strategy. I'll post more about the specific engagement exercises as they happen, and I'd welcome your thoughts on what we've done so far, and what else we should be doing.

Posted at 17:09 30 January 2009 by Stephen Hale  |  Comments[5]

How can the web help solve global financial problems?

When the Prime Minister announced that London will host a summit of world leaders on the "major questions of economic action" he set in motion a huge exercise in coordination and communication in Whitehall.

Officials across Whitehall are well practiced at this kind of thing, so I'm confident that by the time the world leaders gather in London on 2 April everything possible will have been done to ensure that the summit delivers.

But how can the web contribute to the success of the summit?

The build up to the summit should be an ideal opportunity to harness the power of the social web. We have: a set of problems that need solutions, existing active communities who are already talking about the issues, an offline process that has real authority and decision making power, and a defined timeframe in which to deliver.

So this could be a huge opportunity for digital engagement, but also a massive challenge. Should we try to lead, or just contribute to the conversation? Should we run big, high-profile headline-grabbing engagement exercises or smaller targeted outreach with particular groups? And how can we ensure that our digital engagement actually feeds into the policy making and decision making process?

At the moment we are planning to:

1. Run set-piece forums for discussion aimed at different audiences. (Because the UK government wants to know how different communities react to our emerging ideas.)

2. Reach out into spaces where people are already discussing the "major questions of economic action". (Because however much governments would like to lead the debate, it already has a life of its own and much of the conversation will inevitably take place elsewhere.)

3. Create a web presence for the summit that sets out the issues as we see them, but also aggregates comment and opinion from elsewhere. (Because anything we produce on this has to reflect the problem-solving nature of the conversation that is taking place around the world, and a genuine openness to new ideas.)

We have some ideas on how to do all this but I'd really like to hear what others think. Can the web can help answer the major questions of economic action? How would you like to contribute to the conversation? Would you prefer to engage with government on official websites, or elsewhere? What web tools would you use to stimulate debate? Where on the web are the lively debates already taking place? Who should we collaborate with? What lessons can we learn from similar exercises?

I'll post more on the detail as we start doing things. But I'd really like to hear what you think.

Posted at 12:34 22 January 2009 by Stephen Hale  |  Comments[4]