ONS Digital

Good afternoon/Prynhawn da and welcome to this week’s update.

I returned to the office today after having a few days off (very enjoyable) so after going through the many emails, I have managed to cobble together a brief overview of last week’s digital publishing activities.

At the start of the week, we were joined by a ‘Search Analyst’ to conduct an audit on where ONS currently stands. His role is to produce a roadmap for us to implement Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) improvements across our digital content and to help embed seo best practice skills within the digital publishing team. Search has been a big problem for our users, both in terms of getting to our site and then finding what they are looking for when they arrive, so is something that we are keen to address.

We have also started preparing for the annual website user satisfaction (or lack of it) survey – which this time is feeding in to a wider and interesting piece of work around personas and user journeys. More on this to follow.

Other news
We kicked off social media week  last Friday with a very well attended presentation on how ONS uses social media channels to communicate and engage with its users. These presentations are continuing this week, along with a range of internal articles and drop-in sessions to upskill staff.  We always have a lot of interest in how social media is being used by the organisation, but with enthusiasm comes frustration due to not being able to access these channels more freely.

There were a number of meetings about the ways that ONS is becoming involved in the open data agenda and how we can ensure a more coordinated apporoach to these multiple projects.

We published a suite of materials to support the release of data on Healthy life expectancy including a short story and infographics. We also worked with experts in our data visualisation centre who produced an animated map showing how life expectancy varies across the country.

and finally..
After overcoming some issues with paperwork, we welcomed Sam Smith-Higgins to the editorial team as Audio-Visual producer. Sam’s role will be to help make the subject of statistics  more engaging and accessible for a range of audiences through the creative use of the audio-visual medium. Keep a look out for her work.