Leverage intelligence loaded into your meta data

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"Leverage intelligence loaded into your meta data"
Bring your meta data to life!

• 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

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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

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A way of managing controlled lists to

• 1) Create Nice URIs and
• Automatically create navigation pages
• 2) Improve search results
• Did you mean?
• Layered search
• Tag clouds

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Caveats

• To act upon this advice may need help from
• Members of your IT department
• Software vendor
• Someone like me

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The council does that
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Controlled lists and local government

• Service List (LGSL) clearly defined key services
  a council/agency provides
• Navigation List Links 11 with Service list
• IPSV 12,000 terms used in government
• Examples

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Service list upclose
Service 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.)
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Navigation List upclose
gtgt Housing Adapting homes Council housing
Improvements and repairs Supported and
sheltered housing
gtgt Council and democracy Supported and
sheltered housing
gtgt Health and social care Adapting homes
Nav-list 130
Title Council housing - home adaptations
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IPSV upclose
Id 8298 (Preferred)
useID 0
Name Adapting homes
Id 8125 (related items)
Name Care for disabled people
Id 3477 (related items)
Name Equipment for the disabled
Id 3534 (related items)
Name Stairlifts
Id 2263 (related items)
Name Building alterations
Id 3299 (related items)
Name Home adaptions
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Services / IPSV Mapping
Id 3298 (Preferred 5 non preferred terms)
Name Adapting homes
IPSV 3298
Service 130
Service 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
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3 controlled lists
Id 3298 (Preferred 5 non preferred terms)
Nav-list 130
Service 130
Important page
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How to manage all this information?

• Meta data management system (MMS)
• Layer linking controlled lists and your content
• MMS outputs meta data is searchable

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Worlds Simplest MMS
Your MMS could be just
Service 130 Housing - improvements - adaptations of council property
URL My.gov.uk/housing/adapt.html
... and could contain other partners URLs
Service 209 Social services - needs assessment
URL Your.gov.uk/live/wepages/seekpage.do?section27idneeds_assessment/htmy
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A more complex MMS
URL ..gov.uk/housing/adapt.htm
Descrip All about home adapt
Section Council housing
Updated 25-11-2007 14.00.00
Owner John Smith
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 improvemt strategy
IPSV 3534 Stairlifts
IPSV 8125 Care for disabled people
IPSV 8298 Adapting homes
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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/

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My.gov.uk/tag/130
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Taxonomy terms as slugs

• My.gov.uk/tag/130 My.gov.uk/tag/CouncilHousing-Hom
  eAdaptions

Nav-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
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My.gov.uk/tag/Housing
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My.gov.uk/tag/AdaptingHomes
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Dynamic page, description and link creation no
humans are involved except to tag
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What is happening
Make your website handle requests to a virtual
page that handles

• 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

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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

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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/check
Page.do?item496sectioncar20parking?openDocumen
t
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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

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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!)

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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

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Search patterns
Number of words used in searches on 18 Feb 2008
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Intercept planning applications e.g. WA/2007/0123
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Intercept locations

• Search term 12 The Gardens, Busbridge
• Lookup using
• GIS Gazetteer
• Planning Applications
• CRM
• Then show other google-type text search results

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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

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Single word search offer to disambiguate
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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

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What you are gathering

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

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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

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3 tag cloud styles
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Tag clouds using a controlled vocabulary- lets
use Service Terms instead of words
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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)

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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

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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 ltmeta tag /gt fillers

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Last slide
Bring your meta data to life, and profit from
your investment.

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