The Beehive Website Case Study
From ParticipatioNZ
<Guide to Online Participation/4. Resources/4.2. Case studies
This is a case study about the Beehive website
Contents |
About the Beehive website
The Beehive website is the the official site of New Zealand's executive branch of government. Its main purpose is to communicate information related to Ministers and ministerial activities to the Government's stakeholders. As such, it is mostly a vehicle for announcements, press releases, images, speeches, and Ministers' biographical and portfolio information.
In 2006 the Beehive website had two million visitors and served up 15.5 million page views. The site itself is large -- it has more than 30,000 pages. This is mainly because of its status as a record of ministerial communication since its inception in 1995, when the site was known as http://www.executive.govt.nz.
The website's audience is diverse. It includes:
- government: including public servants, parliamentary users (such as political parties, researchers, Members of Parliament), state-owned enterprises and Crown entities, local government and international governments
- professionals: including professional associations, firms and individuals (e.g. accountants, doctors, nurses, teachers)
- internal: including Ministers and their staff, both as content administrators and users of the site
- law: including judiciary, law firms, individual lawyers, students
- media: including local, national and international news agencies, including mainstream media as well as new media (such as blogs or http://www.scoop.co.nz)
- businesses: including business advisors, representative organisations and businesses in specific sectors
- libraries: including librarians, researchers, library users
- public: including lobby groups, demographic groups such as Grey Power, social groups and clubs, consumer organisations and individuals.
Site features
The site is backed by a content management system (CMS) that allows press secretaries to publish speeches, press releases and other material as needed. The CMS also allows pictures and documents, such as policy papers, to be attached to press releases and speeches to add more context.
The site has a newsletter and email subscription feature, allowing the Beehive communications team to publish government press releases and its newsletters, including the Beehive Bulletin, a news digest, Wise Up, an education newsletter, and Participate, a disability issues newsletter.
These notifications have several thousand subscribers. New sign-ups are able to customise the information they prefer to receive. They can choose to receive notifications associated with general newsletters, particular ministers, and/or particular portfolio areas.
Speeches and press releases are stored on the site. Press secretaries may simply load text, though several are using HTML to include links within press releases and speeches. For instance, a recent address by Prime Minister Helen Clark to the Alliance Of Civilisations symposium or her 2007 speech to Parliament have links to previous government announcements or information to support particular messages. Not all speeches receive this treatment, however, since not all press secretaries are comfortable using HTML code to embed links.
How to put the Prime Minister on YouTube
A recent addition to the Beehive is video. The Beehive communications team has posted videos of the Prime Minister and Finance Minister explaining highlights of the 2007 Budget. These videos are played through Youtube, a website that allows people to upload and share videos across the Web. The team has also created a Beehive Youtube Channel that allows it to group all of its videos together, and allows other YouTube members to subscribe to the channel so they are automatically updated when new content is uploaded.
The basic equipment for producing short videos is straightforward:
- a basic video camera
- a tripod
- wireless lapel microphones
- video editing software
- graphic editing software.
The Beehive team uses a professional grade software package called Adobe Creative Suite. It acknowledges that consumer software like Apple's iMovie or Windows Movie Maker may be sufficient. But having more powerful software ensures video can be edited for sound and appearance to the team's standard. For example, its software allows for filtering sound input, so that background noise or distortion does not interfere with the presenter's voice. According to the team, consumer level products do not have this functionality.
The Beehive team also makes use of Adobe Photoshop to create graphics introducing videos and to emphasise messages throughout the presenter's talk -- similar to how one would give a PowerPoint presentation.
The content of each video is structured with a common video production practice called storyboarding. Storyboards help the team pre-visualise what they want to present to viewers. Combined with a written speech or script, the result is the basic elements of communicating using video.
As of early June 2007, three styles of video have been released. The first is a short talk by Prime Minister Helen Clark explaining key elements of the Budget 2007. She is seated, and her words are occasionally interspersed with graphics. The second is a 'highlights' reel of Dr Michael Cullen, Minister of Finance, speaking to a school about the Budget. Alongside his speech is an occasional voiceover of him reflecting on the session afterwards, adding 'colour commentary' to what he was working to convey in his main talk. Dr Cullen wore a wireless lapel microphone plugged into the camera during his speech. His 'reflective voiceover' was created by interviewing him after he had finished his speech. The third sort of video is a narrated slideshow, where Dr Cullen explains specific elements of the Budget.
Once the video is converted to an appropriate file format, it is uploaded to YouTube. The Beehive team then works to promote the video, primarily by giving it prominence on the Beehive website. The video is easily embedded on the Beehive site with a simple code copied and pasted from YouTube. The team has the YouTube user name "nzgovt". It expects that with any future change of government, it will supply the username and password to the next communications team working in the Beehive.
On 6 June 2007, YouTube added a new feature to its video player that reveals still frames of 'related videos' within a video, embedded in a website outside of YouTube. Some of this related content has been objectionable, and so the Beehive team has pulled down its embedded videos from the Beehive website so it does not give prominence to content with which it is not associated.
Future Beehive
The clearest opportunities for the Beehive, in terms of engaging the public, lie in multimedia and increased, but limited interactivity.
- More audio/video Using video will help the Beehive more effectively reach its stakeholders. For some communities, particularly Māori and Pasifika, video is preferable to text, particularly on a website. However, YouTube limits videos to a maximum of 10 minutes. Getting longer speeches up on the Beehive website will mean using a different video hosting tool.
- Moving towards more audiovisual content presents a challenge -- it will require a different skill set for the Beehive communications team. It will need someone capable of storyboarding, scripting, filming and editing video. Moreover, producing multimedia will add a layer of work for press secretaries. They will need to be equipped with the tools to capture audio and video of ministers as it happens. Regular travel limits how much equipment can be carried -- a video camera, tripod and microphones are bulky and fragile.
- Blogging and vlogging There has been interest in blogging and video blogging. However, concerns about the risk of opening up a blog to comments from the public have given the Beehive team reason to pause and consider the pros and cons of pursuing this course.
- There are two elements to its concern. The first is concern around providing a forum for potentially venemous public ill will on a government website. The second is that if the Beehive team did decide to allow comments to be posted to the site, the comments would have to be moderated. For now, moderation requires too much resource to be practical.
- A possible mitigation against these concerns may be to allow people to email comments in, but not display them publicly. This would eliminate the need for moderation, and allow responses to selected messages as in a 'mailbag' feature used on TV and radio talkshows.
- Better content management Publishing content to the Beehive site is a collaborative effort. Making it is as easy as possible for non-technical staff to upload content (such as press releases and pictures), and deepen content (through links, etc) is a priority. Using a content editor designed to look like the word proccessors most staff are comfortable with will help lower the barriers to improving content on the site.
Feedback design learning
- Social media websites offer ready made communities of interest for your content. However, changes to how these sites work can be sudden. You do not have control over the functionality of the media. Be ready to adjust if changes do not suit your objectives or your organisation.
- Business processes and skill sets are changing by taking a broader approach to providing more engaging information to the public. The skills and tools of a speech writer are not the skills and tools of a videographer. New equipment, logistics and ways of working are needed to take advantage of the full range of Web tools now available.
- The use of hyperlinks by the Beehive site is instructive. A sure way of building confidence and trust in your content is by referencing any facts or figures you are using to support a point. Footnotes and endnotes are obvious good practice in this area. But hyperlinking to content directly allows people to view original sources of data themselves. Providing this level of transparency invites public scrutiny, suggests that the agency is confident in what it says and ultimately builds trust because agencies can show they are prepared to back up their words with facts.
- Support from senior leadership has been critical to advances in using the technology by the Beehive site. This includes senior leadership participation in generating content.
- Integrating the tools means building on existing practices of ministers and staff -- speeches, media appearances and other opportunities for content creation need to be captured. Ministers may also be interactive insofar as they respond to letters and emails using social media channels.
Feedback design opportunities
- Now that the Beehive has a 'beachhead' , can it be used to engage New Zealand users of YouTube? How could the 'comments', 'favourites', 'subscription' and 'friends' features of the YouTube channel be used, if at all? And what ends would they serve?
- What makes us recognise that the Beehive YouTube channel is 'official'? Is an official YouTube theme necessary? A link from the Beehive website? Branding seems important.
