Web Toolkit: 2015 preview

At the beginning of a new year, it’s tempting to overdo it on the resolutions: I’ll organise my life! I’ll run 10K every single day! I’ll eat brussel sprouts!

I’ll try not to go crazy here but it is a good time to tell you about the goals that we have for the Web Toolkit over the next few months.

I can sum up these goals in 1 word: more.

More:

• guest authors for the blog
• topics that touch on the all-of-government ICT work
• blog posts
• viewpoints
• conversation
• of your opinions
• tools.

We want to give you more resources — publishing user research, sharing what we learn, asking others to do the same — so that we can all focus on building on this work not repeating it an infinite number of times.

And we want to tell you about more of our work as well. The Web Toolkit is run by the Government Information Services group at DIA. Over the last couple of years, we’ve talked a lot about Govt.nz (and the Beta before that), Web Standards, and online privacy and security issues. But we also manage a number of other all-of-government products and services including:

• Online: the Gazette, data.govt.nz and jobs.govt.nz (Govt.nz fits here too)
• Collaboration: Shared Workspace, Public Sector Intranet and Government Online Engagement Service (GOES — concept in progress)
• Foundation: Domain Name Service (DNS), Common Web Services Panel (CWSP), Common Web Platform (CWP) and Standards (including Web Standards and online security and privacy best practice)
• Leadership: Advice, leadership, strategy and emerging trends online. This varies but is basically providing expertise to other agencies; connecting people, projects and initiatives; and, keeping an eye on trends internationally so we can tap into what works for New Zealand.

We’ll also ask you to tell us more. There’s so much going on in the government online space; we sure can’t keep up with it all. Chances are that you’re feeling the same way so if you tell us your stories — or what stories you want to hear so we can track them down — then we’ll all have a better idea of what’s happening where.

Plus we’d like to showcase work going on overseas. It’s really easy to think of our challenges as unique but there are folks in Canada, the US, the UK and Australia struggling with the same issues, trying new ideas and getting some traction on improving online experiences. We regularly catch up with people in all of these countries. We've taught each other a lot but we could do more to share this across the public sector.

So that's the short version about what we're aiming to do with the Web Toolkit in 2015. Of course this will change: it needs to evolve to meet your needs. But that's how we roll around here.

The Digital Engagement Team