ONS Digital

Prynhawn da / Good afternoon and welcome to today’s weekly round-up of activities from Digital Publishing

So what’s been happening?

It has been a fairly exciting few days, as we have mostly been out and about doing “show and tells” demonstrating some of the elements of our Discovery phase project.  Still in the early stages, the presentations have included the development of interactive wireframes  to help internal audiences understand how the ONS website could look and be navigated by the end user.  Initial feedback has been positive and we are looking forward to the next stage which will focus on the development of a pattern library.

We have also been demonstrating the prototype for the replacement release calendar following some extensive work with GDS. The new site, which will be home to the schedule of statistical releases across government, will require us to review our internal processes to ensure that we are able to deliver the right content on time.

In other news

The most popular release this week was about wealth and assets in Great Britain. We had a short listicle and an infographic – both were well received and contained some surprising stats, as it received a lot of coverage in the media such including the Guardian.and Daily Mail. Elsewhere, our graphics on internet use generated a fair bit of conversation on social media too.

As part of our campaign to improve the quality of editorial content, we invited Mark Morris, Head of Clear English at the Department of Health to present the evidence that reveals the desperate need to re-think the way we write. Aimed at staff at all levels with responsibility for creating, approving and publishing content on our website, Mark delved into the importance of using clear English to explain things simply, often confused with ‘dumbing down‘. His use of a quote by Einstein, who let’s face it had some difficult things to explain in his time  was particularly relevant, given the civil service nature to use ten words where one will do.

Our web analytics team have been busy delivering reports to our statisticians on their releases, giving them some useful insight into what their users want. In addition, the team are using the email subscription service (Govdelivery) to send job vacancies bulletins, with almost 900 users already signed up to received the alerts and monitoring potential impact on entry to a release from Google as part of the metadata project

We have been working closely with our experts in the National Accounts team on a new brief online overview of changes to the National Accounts methodology

Representatives from Digital Publishing attended the Driving Development for Digital Delivery conference which focussed around digital inclusion and disability. This builds on discussions we have been having with the Shawtrust and will contribute to future accessibility work on the website.

and finally.

Digital Publishing have been part of a pilot to improve the way we work here at ONS. The smart working project aims to address what we need as a division to work effectively including how much paper we produce to space for innovation. So far, staff have completed a short survey about their current working habits and monitoring has been carried out, to establish how many people actually need desks given the culture of meetings.  The findings of the study are due in the next couple of months, so watch this space for an update.

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