newspeak

This is perhaps the most important lesson for governments. Listen to your users.

It’s not rocket science, but it bears repeating, since so few governments seem to look at how their citizens actually use their websites when redesigning them. The Code for America team in Honolulu did wonderful work prioritizing links on Honolulu’s site by connecting it to Google Analytics to help discover what citizens were actually looking for. It’s clear that using data to design and prioritize decisions sits at the core of gov.uk. This is a conversation that may make many senior public servants and politicians unhappy as their pet projects, photos and press releases get reshuffled, but it will likely lead to happier citizens that spend less time looking for online government services and more time enjoying life.

via Getting it Right: Gov.uk | TechPresident.

I know I just posted on this, but the point that Dave makes is important and bears repeating: listen to your users. This is not the same as staging focus groups and presenting sets of selected users with options, with establishing formatted personae that they must perforce identify with to exit the process. No: this is about seeing what actual users do, want; and then providing that.