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News
posted 20 Jul 2004
Underground and DoT praised for intranets
UK has two of top ten government and public sector intranets
It may not provide solace while in the middle of a tube strike, but Britain’s Department for Transport and the London Underground have been announced as having two of the best public-sector intranets in the world.
In its report, US-based user experience research firm Nielsen Norman Group said the Department for Transport should be commended for saving £130,000 by relocating its employee newsletter to its intranet, Transnet.
The Underground was praised for improving the usability of its intranet, which resulted in an increase of employee visits to 70,000 per week, up from 1,000 per week – a gain of 6,900 per cent.
Only two UK organisations made it to the list, which included intranets from the US, Canada, Australia and Sweden.
Jakob Nielsen, founder of Nielsen Norman Group, said one of the main themes to emerge from the report was something called ‘usability in the small’. The term refers to targeting specific intranet elements for quick improvements.
“Government organisations often take heat for moving slowly in the things they do,” said Nielsen. “When this group saw an area for improvement, they didn’t wait around to make the big fix. Instead, they made important incremental changes that yielded big results.”
Nielsen advised all organisations to follow a similar approach before abandoning intranets that employees seem to shun.
The report cites two of the worst problems with intranet design as being poorly constructed information architecture and confusing menus.
“On these winning intranets, however, users are enabled to actually find what they’re looking for,” said Kara Pernice Coyne, director of research for Nielsen Norman Group. “That’s no small feat.”
Top 10 intranets for government and public sector (in alphabetical order)
- Defense Finance and Accounting Services, United States;
- Department for Transport, United Kingdom;
- Department of Veterans Affairs mid-Atlantic Health Care Network, United States;
- Department for Victorian Communities, Australia;
- Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, United States;
- Government Offices of Sweden (Regeringskansliet), Sweden;
- London Underground, United Kingdom;
- National Research Council Canada, Industrial Research Assistance Program, Canada;
- Senate Republican Conference, United States;
- Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario, Canada.
www.nngroup.com
AOL launches messaging to corporations
America Online is now providing premium services such as audio conference calls and online presentations over its instant messaging service.
The company hopes its AIM business service will showcase how instant messaging can be a communications hub.
The audio conferencing service costs 15 cents (8.2p) a minute per user. Presentations will cost an additional 33 cents per minute per day.
The service will be available to 36m users, who send about two million messages a day.
www.aol.com
Intranet use exceeds BA hopes
More than 80 per cent of British Airways (BA) employees are using the airline’s intranet to carry out administrative tasks online, exceeding the company’s own targets.
BA says more than 40,000 of its staff use the site, which holds personalised information for each employee, allowing them to check their pension contributions or schedule training courses.
By March 2005, the airline hopes to have saved £50m by performing administration tasks online. The intranet development is part of a two-year plan aimed at reducing paper-based processes and eliminating duplication.
www.british-airways.com
WorldWide Retail Exchange announces partners
Auchan, Casino, Delhaize Group, El Corte Ingles, Royal Ahold and Tesco have announced their plans to work with the WorldWide Retail Exchange's (WWRE) Worldwide Item Management solution. WWRE, an internet-based business-to-business exchange for retailers and suppliers, claims collaboration will advance data-synchronisation projects by using a global data pool for information.
www.wwre.org
County goes live with e-invoices
The North Yorkshire County Council has received its first electronic business bill, marking the successful debut of the council’s new e-invoice system.
The new system is designed to improve the percentage of invoices paid within 30 days, making administrative functions more efficient.
Major suppliers to the council are said to be responding to the campaign and enrolling quickly.
www.northyorks.gov.uk
IT directors feeling the heat
Nearly 65 per cent of IT directors in the financial-services sector say they feel personally under pressure to track down and supply corporate information to employees, according to research released in June.
“The requirement to meet more stringent government and industry regulations has contributed to companies storing more information than ever before,” said Graham Opie, director of research company Vanson Bourne. “At the same time, companies must ensure that the data is also accessible. The effect is increased pressure on the corporate IT function and unfortunately IT directors are feeling the brunt.”
IT directors from 70 UK financial-services firms were questioned and said they increasingly felt personally responsible for users being unable to locate the information they need when they need it.
The findings include:
- Seventeen per cent rate their information-retrieval systems as ‘effective’ or ‘very effective’;
- Forty per cent of IT directors working for companies without a knowledge-management strategy feel more personal pressure;
- Eight out of ten IT directors cited front-line employees as the main source of pressure;
- Twenty-eight per cent say it’s easy to retrieve and share information;
- Forty-nine per cent say problems are caused by the sheer abundance of information, while 46 per cent say the diversity of that information leads to problems;
- Sixty-six per cent of IT directors admitted staff waste valuable time re-inventing information because they don’t know how to find it.
www.vansonbourne.com
Orange launches 3G network
Orange has launched a 'business friendly' 3G network and services package designed to provide broader coverage for mobile workers. The software offers user-transparent hand-off between UMTS and GPRS networks where 3G coverage holes exist. Orange believes that the package's range and ease of use will trounce rival Vodafone's 3G business services.
www.orange.com
US army selects Autonomy
The US Army has selected Autonomy's IDOL (Intelligent Data Operating Layer) Server to enable intelligent information retrieval, categorisation and personalisation through the Army Knowledge Online portal. The system will support an estimated 1.5 million US soldiers and staff.
www.autonomy.com
Price tag forces politicians to open source CMS
A political party in South Australia has rejected a A$50,000 (£19,000) content-management system for its new website and chosen a free, open-source solution instead.
Ian Gilfillan, a legislative council member for the South Australian Democrats’ party, told Computerworld magazine he was shocked when told of the initial price tag.
“I immediately said we don’t go down that path,” Gilfillan said. “The selection process then seemed to happen quickly and we are very happy with the quality of the package.”
The party chose the PostNuke system, which they said best suited the primary task of getting news releases online. They did not reveal the name of the vendor who they turned down.
Gilfillan said the commercial package would have required integration work – something the party couldn’t afford with its small budget.
Western Australia Democrats and the Democrats Carter Network, an online news and community portal for the Democrats, have also deployed the PostNuke system.
www.postnuke.com
www.democrats.org.au
Scotland primed for efficiency
The Scottish Executive is set to chop £1bn off government spending by 2010 by promising an attack on bureaucracy, duplication and waste within the public sector.
Scottish ministers plan to announce the Efficient Government initiative in September and have set their sights on achieving £500m in efficiency gains by 2007-2008.
“Our record in Scotland is already a strong one,” said Finance and Public Services Minister Andy Kerr. “Our e-procurement system is one of the most comprehensive and successful e-government initiatives in the world. We are joining-up back office functions between our health boards, to save £29m a year.”
A new £60m Efficient Government Fund will also be created to finance a two-year programme of new invest-to-save projects. Executive departments, councils, health boards and other public bodies will be subject to the programme.
www.scotland.gov.uk
Vatican uses microchips to keep track of books
In an attempt to keep track of what can be an unholy mess, Vatican librarians are tagging thousands of valuable books and manuscripts with microchips.
The library told Italian news agency Ansa they spend one month per year putting misplaced items from their 1.6m-strong collection back where they belong.
But by using a radio identification technology, library staff will no longer be praying they can find what they’re looking for.
“You just walk in front of a shelf and you can immediately see on the screen a list of all the books and their contents,” said Ambrogio Piazzoni, deputy prefect of the library. “If a book is missing, or in the wrong place, the computer signals the fact with an alarm sound.”
The microchip contains a transponder with a digital memory chip that is given a unique electronic code. In turn, the code is activated by a hand-held device that can read data from the chip.
The technology is widely used in warehouse and retail capacities, but hasn’t been used on a similar scale in a library.
Battle of the (mailbox) bulge
Both Yahoo! and Microsoft announced they are expanding the size of their free e-mail accounts in response to a similar offer from search engine giant Google.
Yahoo! has expanded its free e-mail accounts to 100 megabytes of storage, up from four. Starting in early July, Microsoft Hotmail users will see their storage space increase to 250mb, up from two. Meanwhile, Ask Jeeves said it will offer users of its MyWay, Excite and iWon e-mail services 125mb of storage on free accounts and 2gb of storage on paid-for Excite Gold accounts. The company picked up all three of these services when it bought Interactive Search Holdings recently.
The increase is a reaction to Google’s plan to offer one gigabyte of free storage with its new Gmail service, which is still in trial form with limited users.
Yahoo! has also combined its paid mail services into one $20-per-year plan, with no graphical ads and two gigabytes of storage – twice what Google has planned. Yahoo! said the paid version will contain more features than Gmail, including improved spam filtering and the ability to download standard e-mail programs.
www.yahoo.com
www.hotmail.com
www.askjeeves.com
Content management from Mars
They may not have captured any images of little green men yet, but NASA personnel are sharing data from two Mars rovers using a web-based content-management system.
Members of the US space organisation’s Mars exploration team are analysing thousands of files from 149,598,000 kilometres away – including photos and data about the planet’s surface and temperature, sensor readings, and the angles of the two rover’s robotic arms. Once received, the data is uploaded into the system and available for sharing from across the globe.
Scientists and engineers used the same system, designed by Xerox, for storing and exchanging information during the build up to the Mars mission. The two rovers, named ‘Spirit’ and ‘Opportunity’, have been trundling the surface of Mars since January 2004.
The system is made up of an extensive online library available for exchange 24 hours a day. More than 1,000 scientists, engineers and university team members worldwide have access to about 100 gigabytes of mission data.
www.nasa.gov
www.xerox.com
Cynefin leaves IBM
The Cynefin Centre is leaving IBM to establish itself as an independent research group. The centre will maintain a formal relationship with IBM and support the company in application areas. Dave Snowden, director of the centre, believes that the move will allow the centre the freedom to develop Cynefin activities, in particular the idea of open-source consulting.
www.cynefin.net
Yahoo! dumps business instant messenger
Portal giant Yahoo! last month said it has abandoned its instant messenger (IM) service for businesses and will instead concentrate on augmenting the number of people who use its free IM service.
At $30 per yearly subscription, the business service included features not available on the free service, such as message encryption, message archiving, and 24-hour customer support.
Research firm IDC estimates as many as 255 million people will use IM at work in 2005. The vast majority of workers use free systems available from Yahoo! or rivals such as America Online and Microsoft.
www.yahoo.com
www.microsoft.com
www.aol.com
Oxford digitises sacred Hindu document
Oxford’s Bodleian library has made available online a digitised version of a document written by a founder of a branch of Hinduism.
Venerated by its followers as a holy relic, the Shikshapatri manuscript outlines moral and spiritual codes for everyday life for followers of Swaminarayan Hinduism.
Its delicate condition prevents it from being handled except under tightly controlled conditions. That presented a problem for the library, which had about 900 visitors every year wanting access to the document.
The library used Oxford Archdigital’s Toad heritage-management system to get digitized text online. The system uses an image annotation feature to allow translations and notes to be tied directly to a specific part of the manuscript image.
www.shikshapatri.org.uk
US police department conduct web-based investigations
Police in Tucson, Arizona will soon be using technology that will allow it to conduct web-based investigations.
Under an agreement with ImageWare Systems, police will use Crime Capture Systems (CCS), a browser-based application that will allow officers to search and retrieve booking information, create photo line-ups, digital mug shot books and generate wanted posters via the department’s intranet.
“Law enforcement organisations across the entire state of Arizona are currently leveraging CCS for investigative purposes,” said Jim Miller, ImageWare’s chairman and CEO. “Not only are they speeding investigations, they are able to share that critical data with other agencies such as the FBI, INS and the US Customs.”
www.iwsinc.com
KMUK 2004: Constructing a KM narrative
Ark Group’s KMUK 2004 event, which promised to be the first event to draw together the UK’s knowledge-management community, took place in London from 14 to 16 June 2004. Judging from the reaction of the 250 knowledge managers that took part, the inaugural event was a huge success. The number of new projects and knowledge professionals in attendance showed that despite recent budgetary pressure on KM, the discipline is still viewed as strategically imperative by UK organisations.
Keynote speaker Larry Prusak spoke of the demise of the 19th century organisational model of “command, control and fear” and urged companies to re-invent their KM ethos to embrace, respect and share knowledge in order to retain staff.
Victor Newman of Pfizer led his keynote with advice on the language used in an organisational setting. He warned of alienating workers through the use of ‘consultant-speak’, suggesting that the language of the solution provider is not necessarily the language preferred by the knowledge worker.
Continuing this theme, Steve Denning, formerly of the World Bank, discussed the value of communicating company ideas through storytelling. This technique, he said, is a powerful means of creating effective communities within the organisational structure.
Deadline to IM Awards 2004 approaching
The IM Awards 2004, now in their ninth year, recognises excellence and innovation in the management of business information. The award ceremony is a showcase for organisations that have implemented technology to reap operational and customer benefits.
There are sixteen awards, ten for project categories (end-user implementations), four for product categories, and one each for the best overall project and best overall product. Categories include content management, intranet development, knowledge management, document management and CRM. Enterprise Information magazine is the media partner for both the content management and intranet categories.
The closing date for entries is 10 September 2004 and finalists will be announced on 15 October. The winners will be presented with their awards at the IM2004 Awards gala dinner at the Grosvenor House Hotel on 2 December 2004.
Full details and entry forms are available at www.im2004.elanconf.co.uk or by contacting Elan Conferences on +44(0)1707 373701.
