"Leverage intelligence loaded into your meta data"

Using controlled lists to:• Create Nice URIs to the heart of your

services• Improve your website usability• Promote “Good Joined up Government”• Drive “layered searches”• Gather better intelligence

Bring your meta data to life!

About me : Paul Geraghty

• 10 years working in local government

• Web Administrator – PHP nerd• Create tagging and CMS tools• Early adopter of controlled lists• Website: www.councilsites.co.uk

A way of managing controlled lists to …

1) Create Nice URIs and• Automatically create navigation

pages2) Improve search results • “Did you mean?”• Layered search• Tag clouds

CaveatsTo act upon this advice may need

help from:• Members of your IT department• Software vendor• Someone like me

“The council does that…”

Controlled lists and local government

1. Service List (LGSL) clearly defined key services a council/agency provides

2. Navigation List Links 1:1 with Service list

3. IPSV 12,000 terms used in government

Examples …

Service list upcloseService 130

Term Housing - improvements - adaptations of council property

Scope Notes

The Council provides adaptations to Council properties to suit the needs of disabled people or people with mobility problems. These can include providing a rail, lever taps, ramp, shower or stairlift. If the adaptations are non-essential a tenant has the right to…. (contd.)

Navigation List upclose

Nav-list

130

Title Council housing - home adaptations

>> Housing

Adapting homes

Council housing

Improvements and repairs

Supported and sheltered housing

>> Council and democracy

Supported and sheltered housing

>> Health and social care

Adapting homes

IPSV upcloseId 8298 (Preferred)

useID 0

Name Adapting homes

Id 3299 (related items)

Name Home adaptions

Id 3534 (related items)

Name Stairlifts

Id 3477 (related items)

Name Equipment for the disabled

Id 8125 (related items)

Name Care for disabled people

Id 2263 (related items)

Name Building alterations

Services / IPSV Mapping

IPSV 3298

Service

130

Id 3298 (Preferred + 5 non preferred terms)

Name Adapting homesService 130

Term Housing - improvements - adaptations of council property

Scope Notes

The Council provides adaptations to Council properties to suit the needs of disabled people or people with mobility problems. These can include providing … etc

3 controlled lists

Service

130

Id 3298 (Preferred + 5 non preferred terms)

Nav-list 130

Important page

How to manage all this information?

• Meta data management system (MMS)• Layer linking controlled lists and your

content• MMS outputs meta data + is searchable

Worlds Simplest MMS

Service 130

Housing - improvements - adaptations of council property

URL My.gov.uk/housing/adapt.html

Your MMS could be just:

... and could contain “other partners” URLs:Service 209

Social services - needs assessment

URL Your.gov.uk/live/wepages/seekpage.do?section=27&id=needs_assessment/htm=y

A more complex MMS

URL ..gov.uk/housing/adapt.html

Interaction

0, Application for service

Service 130 Council housing - home adaptations

Service 129 Council housing - home modernisation

Service 145 Council housing – improvem’t strategy

IPSV 3534 Stairlifts

IPSV 8125 Care for disabled people

IPSV 8298 Adapting homes

URL ..gov.uk/housing/adapt.htm

Descrip All about home adapt…

Section Council housing

Updated 25-11-2007 14.00.00

Owner John Smith

If you had an MMS…

• Your “important services” are identified

• You can activate links directly to them using the Navigation List

… from a single webpage …

In our case in a directory named /tag/

My.gov.uk/tag/130

Taxonomy terms as ‘slugs’• My.gov.uk/tag/130

My.gov.uk/tag/CouncilHousing-HomeAdaptionsNav-list 130

Title Council housing – home adaptions

Defn: From Wordpress – a slug is a term for a unique text link that can be pseudonym for a more complicated URI or used as a database key

My.gov.uk/tag/Housing

My.gov.uk/tag/AdaptingHomes

Dynamic page, description and link creation – no humans are involved except

to tag

What is happening …

Both service numbers: • .gov.uk/tag/130• .gov.uk/tag/100001

And service Terms (or titles):• .gov.uk/tag/CouncilHousing-

HomeAdaptions• .gov.uk/tag/Housing

Make your website handle requests to a virtual page that handles…

Interface to your main services

• Predictable set of URIs to each local service • Activates the LG Navigation List • API you can link to yourself, e.g. from search• With a copy of the Service list “other

partners” can link to your main services• Help more citizens to get through to the right

service provider (joined up government)• Creates Nice URIs

Why Nice URIs are good• Search engine friendly• Read them out on the phone• Reproduce in print easily• Guessable / predictable• Permanent • Counter CMS derived ‘unfriendly

URLs’ LIKE THIS:

My.gov.uk/live/website/pages/checkPage.do?item=496&section=car%20parking?openDocument

Slugs make good sense

• You keep a list of (LGSL) services anyway !

• The computer does the work !• Around 2400 virtual “pages”

– Slugs (/ tag / Schools-HomeSchooling)– Service PIDs (/ tag / 1 )

• Once compiled, low maintenance– 6 monthly update from esd-toolkit

Why slugs are bad (are they?)

• Your meta data is no longer hidden• Loss of absolute control• Inconsistencies caused by bad

tagging – LGSL tagging– IPSV tagging

… can result in missed or unexpected page content …

• Lots of feedback (more work!)

Controlled vocabularies in a “Layered search”

strategy• Log public search terms• Analyse these results• Intercept recognised patterns• Provide intuitive links first• Then go on and do a ‘Google-type’

text matching search

Search patterns

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

4+words

1 word

2/3 words

locations

Plann-apps

%

Number of words used in searches on 18 Feb 2008

Intercept planning applications e.g. WA/2007/0123

Intercept locations

Search term : 12 The Gardens, Busbridge

Lookup using:• GIS Gazetteer• Planning Applications• CRM

Then show other google-type text search results

Intercept a single word• Disambiguate that term : Wikipedia idea

link• User searches for a single word• Search through Service list • Show scope notes• Ask: Did you mean?• Optionally halt expensive all-site searches• Gather valuable information … example …

Single word search : offer to disambiguate

“Service hits” not “page hits”

• Clicks on a Service description provide more granular information than “webpage hits”

• Important webpages can contain more than one LGSL service

• Compare “search term” with “service picked”

• Possibly adapt Service and Navigation titles– Locally for your own taxonomy– Nationally esd.org.uk/forums

What you are gathering

From Search you can collect:• Citizen selected services• The time of day• Day of week• Week of year• MonthMixing temporal and behavioural patterns

…

Tag clouds

• A visual map of terms that users attach to a page or document a “Folksonomy”

• Tag cloud terms are generally one word

• The more popular a word is – the bigger it is

3 tag cloud styles

Tag clouds using a controlled vocabulary- lets use Service Terms instead of words

…

Controlled list tag clouds • Gather intelligence about the services

citizens request from:– Your LGNL navigation /tag/StreetParking-Fines– Search intercepts and service clicks

• What people want (not simply what pages citizens are visiting)

• Activity in the last hour • Predict activity each month (year on year)

For the publiccontrolled lists can provide

…• Better “Joined up Government” • Easy to remember URIs• Information about where they are

going• Increasing the likelihood they find

key services via search • Show what is popular today/this

week

For youcontrolled lists provide …

• Value added searchable text store • Reduced maintenance costs• Feedback and for your own meta data• A way to predict “what citizens want” • Proof of what users really want

They are not just <meta tag /> fillers

Last slide …

• Contact me : Paul Geraghty• www.councilsites.co.uk• Thank you

“Bring your meta data to life, and profit from your investment.”