How do you evaluate the cost-benefit of the government’s digital engagement?  As a result of the Improving government online review of measurement standards, several interesting discussions were started around extending the work on valuing and evaluating websites to all digital media.

Evaluation is a key priority for Government communicators. Matt Tee, Permanent Secretary and Head of Profession Government Communications, has prioritised evaluation as a key area of focus, along with skills and behaviour change. This is not surprising given the current economic climate. Government has to account for every pound spent and that means evaluating our communications activity to demonstrate cost-effectiveness.

Matt Tee has also requested that every government department develop a digital engagement strategy by March 2010, alongside the Public Accounts Committee recommendation that every department has a channel strategy, – a sign that digital engagement is being taken seriously.

So, how do we measure it?

As with any marketing communications activity, that depends on what the communications objectives are. However, there are commonalities across different campaigns and across different digital engagement tools and it’s those that I want to explore.

Recently, I’ve been working with colleagues in COI on this problem and we’ve come up with three common measures that appear to work across all digital engagement or social media tools:

1. Number of relationships
2. Number of user-generated content items
3. Number of referrals/recommendations

1. Number of relationships

The number of relationships or connections within a network is a measure of power or influence. For example, it could be the number of followers on Twitter, number of friends in Facebook or the number of subscribers to a blog. In social network analysis, this is the basic measure of centrality within a network, which is called degree centrality.

There are other interesting measures of power within a network. For example betweenness centrality measures the degree to which a member lies between other members of a network. In the Facebook analogy, a person may have 1000 friends but have less influence than a person with 50 friends, each of whom have 1000 friends.

Betweenness centrality from red (lowest) to blue (highest)

2. Number of user-generated content items

The number of user-generated content items measures participation within the network. For example, it could be the number of comments on a blog or the number of videos uploaded to a Youtube channel. It measures the level of engagement of an audience, suggestive of active participation not simply passive interest.

3. Number of referrals/recommendations

The number of recommendations is what many seek. This measures virality, advocacy, recommendability. For example, it could be the number of retweets, the number of  ‘share this’ actions or the number of pingbacks. It goes beyond mere participation; it means your content or message is valued enough to be recommended to others inside and outside the network.

We would be very interested to hear any thoughts on this. Many people are starting to think through return on investment in this area and it would be useful to have some level of consensus before applying to the government’s use of digital media for engagement.     Let us know what you think.

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In the current climate of open, transparent and accountable government, it is now mandatory for government websites to have stats audits. But how did this come about and why is it beneficial?

Policy background

Back in July ’06 the National Audit Office published the results of its survey of Government on the Internet. The results were pretty shocking:

Over a quarter of government organisations still do not know the costs of their websites, making it impossible to assess whether they are value for money

16% of government organisations have no data about how their websites are being used, inhibiting website improvements.

The quality of government websites has improved only slightly since 2002.

These findings were used as evidence before the UK Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) hearing in November ’07. PAC recommended the development of a single set of measures for government website costs, quality and usage which were to be reported centrally. Government’s response to the PAC Sixteenth Report was laid before the House of Commons in September ‘08.

Consistent data

The single set of measures was developed and is now in place, but how can the data be collected reliably? Measuring website usage can be done in a number of ways with sites using different methods, tools, standards, filters and terminology. To get consistency is a real challenge.

The media industry has solved this problem. Advertising revenue is based on the number of Ad Impressions – like Page Impressions but for ads – and rates vary with volume of site usage. Advertisers need a reliable way to ensure return on investment. They need to know that the websites on which they are buying space and surfacing content measure usage accurately and consistently. The solution is to insist on a site audit certificate.

Government websites don’t tend to generate revenue from advertising – although the practice is not forbidden in principle – but they are accountable to the taxpayer. Surely taxpayers have the right to expect a decent return on their investment? If I visit a government website, how much does it cost me? Is it value for money? I want to know!

The ABCe audit

In May 2009, COI appointed ABCe to be the sole auditor of government websites. ABCe is the industry owned website auditor and is the standard for the media industry, both for media owners and media buyers. COI has negotiated cost savings for the taxpayer by centralising the spend. The average cost of an audit is approximately £2,500 compared to £4,000 if departments went to ABCe independently. By the end of the financial year, all websites run by central government departments will have had one month’s usage data audited by ABCe.

The bigger picture

Why go to all this trouble and is there any benefit to the government departments themselves? Aside from increased accountability to the taxpayer, departments do stand to benefit from the increased rigour in site measurement and evaluation. Website audits are the first step towards properly managed performance improvement. It is only with consistent and reliable data that performance metrics – or KPIs – can be developed. These are things like:

• Average number of Visits per Unique User which measures how often a user returns to a website (customer loyalty)
• Average number of Page Impressions per Visit which provides a measure of user engagement (sometimes referred to as stickiness)

When usage levels are considered alongside costs, we can also begin to consider value for money metrics such as Cost per Visit.

Central reporting of quality data also enables benchmarking of government websites against each other. For example, if I get an average Visit Satisfaction of 70% for my website, how do I know if that is good or bad compared to other websites in my sector? With a standard set of core survey questions, this is now possible. It is also worth mentioning that local government are ahead of central government in this respect. Because of initiatives like the SOCITM Website Take-up Service and Gov Metric, Local Authorities have integrated satisfaction benchmarking into their site performance management.

Monitoring KPIs over time is a key business tool for demonstrating performance improvement which is so important for getting the appropriate level of investment in government digital media.

Central reporting of Visit Duration is a contentious issue. While it is probably not useful to compare websites on this metric – a long time on site may indicate a high level of engagement or a site that is difficult to navigate – it does provide interesting census-level data. Measuring Visit Duration enables Government to calculate the total amount of time spent on its websites by citizens. We can begin to get a picture of the value delivered to citizens by government online. For example, if we compare the cost of delivery to the cost for the citizen then we can begin to address the cost-benefit of online services to the citizen. Now that would be interesting!

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