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March 10 2010
More ways to make your intranet legal
When I asked a few weeks ago is your intranet breaking the law Janus Boye wanted me to cover other legal responsibilities we have. After a quick panic attack I recovered what poise I have and realised there are other areas where intranet managers, publishers and designers need to make sure their intranet is legal.
So here are key points you need to consider. I suggest you go to the Outlaw site for more details on legal information.
1. Information retention
We need to make sure we only retain the information needed by law and for the sound running of our organisation. But you need to consider whether you retain old copies of content. I know of someone who needed to show a copy of a web page as it was at the time of the incident to prove what guidance was actually being given to people.
2. Legal and regulatory frameworks
Like BT’s undertakings with Ofcom, you may need to meet regulatory requirements. This means there is often a need for some ‘knowledge firewalls’ to safeguard insider information in all sorts of industries such as the pharmaceutical, legal and banking industries. Incidentally the term ‘chinese wall’ is to be avoided according to Wikipedia.
3. Confidentiality
This isn’t just personal. It could be commercial confidentiality too. If someone creates a page about issues with a piece of software how would they be affected?
4. Freedom of information (FoI)
This can be a big concern with intranet content. Anything published on your intranet may be subject to a FoI challenge. It could makes you less likely to share some details. This is probably likely to affect public service intranets most.
5. Data protection
Data Protection, particularly Personal Data and European Union rules for its use and storage, may affect your intranet systems, particularly HR systems.
6. Copyright
Copying any content, especially an image, photo or multi-media file, from another website to insert on an intranet site is an infringement of copyright, unless you have permission from the copyright owner. To avoid any copyright problems restrict your uploading to content which you have created; colleagues, friends or relatives have created and given you permission to use; is provided by an official agency.
Tagged: accessibility, applications, governance, publishing, standards, users
March 05 2010
A great IntraTeam event!
I’ve just got my breath back from speaking and attending one of the best intranet conferences I have been to for some time. I was spoilt by the hospitality of the organisers; the quality of the speakers; the quantity of new ideas and themes and the enthusiasm of everyone interested in intranets.
So what did I take away from IntraTeam 2010?
There was so much good stuff especially from Jane McConnell, Martin White, Eric Reiss, James Robertson and Michael Sampson that I have linked to their blogs if you want to find out more. But there are 2 main areas I will be working on straight away.
1. Stakeholder governance
Develop our governance model more towards even closer, more formal (steering group?), involvement in 2010. These points (thanks to Jane McConnell) will help me:
- Intranets need to implement cross-organisational ownership
- Identify the big intranet decisions and who should make them
- Work with business and functional intranet stakeholders and involve users balancing needs
- Governance is a form of negotiation: you need control, politics, flexibility and common sense (and a sense of humour I say!)
- Involve the “next to the top” and “operational” level of people
- Don’t treat “social media” like something different from the real intranet
2. People come first with intranets
BT’s intranet has always been based on this principle. It must meet business and user needs. These points (thanks to James Robertson) will help me with some key intranet decisions about to be taken:
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Put people at the centre of intranets
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Provide universal access to your intranet
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Intranets need to act proactively, not just reactively to users needs
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Intranets should drive the engine for change
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Create a seamless enterprise experience
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Deliver end-to-end solutions
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Cross boundaries so intranets, internets, integrate with different content and applications
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Intranets must make the organisation work better
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Intranets must help people do their jobs (better)
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Intranet managers need to create their own designs and future scenarios
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Design great (but small) solutions
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Simplify – join the dots and blur the lines
I hope the tweets helped although Twitter can’t properly capture Kurt’s 5 minute warning signal! 
Tagged: benchmark, benefit, best practice, blog, bt intranet, content, governance, research, usability, users, value
January 13 2010
Meeting mobile intranet users’ needs
Last Friday I was interviewed by the Intranet Benchmarking Forum about how BT was meeting our intranet users’ needs who use a mobile device. I also came across a great blog post and an internet report on mobility (over 40mb!).
So, I thought I would share what BT has done and what I would like to do in this post as it is becoming a hotter topic.
I posted about BT Intranet mobile users in June 2009 which links to examples. I feel progress in 2010 will move in different ways for content than for applications.
Content
Now: BT’s intranet standards make sure a PDA heading is on the templates used by our content management system for publishing information. It means mobile users can click on this to see a text version of the same content. Changes made to the main version automatically update the PDA version so people can rely on the content being the same.
Future: With the increased capability of mobile devices used by people in BT I want to make sure the coding (CSS) used for the content is capable of sizing up or down for any device and enable images to also adjust their size. This means we only need one version that is usable and accessible to any device (mobile, laptop, desktop PC, etc) saving on costs and giving users a better experience.
Applications
Many of my regular readers will know my views about the poor usability of applications for intranet users and my concerns with Oracle’s applications on BT’s intranet.
For applications two versions are needed. The full, standard, functionality is available for people to use but for mobile devices only the cut down, key functionality is available.
For example with BT’s Directory I can check a person’s contact details, manager, organisation chart, whereabouts, team members and their whereabouts. For mobile devices only the contact details for the person found are available as that is the main reason why people use it.
The difficulty for me is persuading software vendors used by BT for intranet applications to understand why this is important and what is needed. It should keep me busy during 2010!
Tagged: accessibility, applications, bt intranet, content, directory, intranet applications, oracle, people finder, publishing, standards, usability, users
November 19 2009
New BT Homepage – what’s your view?
In the last BT Intranet user survey I carried out earlier in 2009 I asked people in BT if merging information and applications into logical groups based around activities/functions would help them. The majority answered ‘Yes’.
I am now testing the new version that tries to do this with users and asking for their views.
The last major change to the BT Homepage was at the beginning of 2009 with a recent change in some of the colours when the 2012 challenge countdown began earlier this month.
I’m sharing the proposed changes and how we are testing these with users in these slides.
What do you think of the changes and how we are testing with people to make sure they are right or be able to make further changes to get it better?
PS I’m on holiday for the next two weeks. My blog decided it wants a break too . So, my next post will be in December.
November 18 2009
An easy way to improve web accessibility
Has anyone seen the new free accessibility tool on the WAVE site? I thought you might be interested in knowing there is a simple to use and visual tool out there compared with other tools that tend to be a bit ‘techie’ in their results.
WAVE is a free web accessibility evaluation tool provided by WebAIM. It is used to aid people in the web accessibility evaluation process. Rather than providing a complex technical report, WAVE shows the original web page with embedded icons and indicators that reveal the accessibility of that page.
Even better from an intranet perspective, the WAVE Firefox toolbar allows you to evaluate web pages directly within your browser. Because no information is sent to the WAVE servers, the toolbar allows you to evaluate password protected, secure, or otherwise sensitive web content. The WAVE toolbar evaluates content as it is rendered within Firefox. This allows dynamically created, modified, or scripted content to be evaluated in real time.
Tagged: accessibility, applications, intranet applications, publishing, users
November 05 2009
BT today – BT’s great intranet news site
I’ve mentioned in previous posts BT today as BT’s main intranet news site for the latest news affecting everyone in BT. But I don’t feel I’ve given it full justice until now. The problem is where to start as it has so much to offer!
BT today was one of the first sites on BT’s intranet when it was launched in 1994. It meant people could find out the latest news, whenever they wanted to and reduced the overload (and cost) of information being sent to everyone each day.
Since it’s launch BT today has been one of the most popular sites on BT’s intranet. BT raises several tens of thousands of pounds from digital advertising on the site. It has now grown to include:
- Up to 10 news stories published each day
- PDA version available for mobile users
- Subscribing to different RSS news feeds
- Raising issues that people across BT contribute to
- Sharing important events like birthdays, anniversaries, etc.
I’ve shared some examples of BT today for you to see these.
Along with BT Homepage and Directory, the BT today news site is one of the key sites that encouraged people to start using the BT Intranet. Offering a wider range of news services has encouraged people to use it more, and more frequently.
Future plans include more use of photos for each story, larger photos where suitable for stories and people able to comment on each story.
Tagged: bt intranet, BT today, homepage, money, rss, social media, users, value
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