Office of the Deputy Prime Minister

Background

The role of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) is to help create sustainable communities, working with other government departments, local councils, businesses, the voluntary sector and communities themselves.

The ODPM’s aim is to create prosperous, inclusive and sustainable communities for the 21st century, places where people want to live, that promote opportunity and a better quality of life for all.

The Challenge

As part of a national strategy for moving the Government towards providing an effective set of online services, the ODPM wanted to examine the 38 sites under their guidance and funding for compliancy, effectiveness of communication, underlying technology and contractual commitment.

They wanted an agency to audit the accessibility, usability and operability of the ODPM web presence against Government standards and business unit needs in order to establish a common framework of standards and an action plan to achieve it.

Our Solution

In order to review and appraise the procedures and controls in place regarding the management of the ODPM web presence, Red Snapper reviewed:

• Accessibility and usability, including:

  • Structure, content and design
• Type and appropriateness of the underlying technology
• Operability
• Hosting
• Level of compliance with the e-GIF and e-GMS
• Website security
• Number and coherence of ODPM websites and Intranets, including:

  • Stakeholder engagement analysis
  • Business manager views
  • Evaluation techniques

A 10 minute, 25 question online survey was developed to gather feedback from site visitors across a range of websites including Local e-government, the ODPM website, Firelink and Cleaner Safer Greener. The online survey ran for a few months after which a report was produced for each site with findings presented to the e-Communications project board for analysis.

The ODPM now have a handbook for agencies and web developers highlighting the common standards in accessibility, structure, content and design for ODPM websites, ensuring all under their guidance and funding meet government standards now and in the future.