For the third year running, and building on the fantastic success of our first two annual events, the Socitm Insight programme is partnering with E-Government Bulletin to bring you the event of the year for all local authority webmasters, and anyone involved in creating content and managing or delivering services for councils via the web: Building the Perfect Council Website. The conference will cover all aspects of creating a successful site, from high-level strategic issues such as ensuring a focus on the citizen to detailed hands-on advice such as how to measure and interpret meaningful website traffic statistics.

Once again, the event will draw on the unrivalled collected wisdom and experience of Socitm’s team of analysts, consultants and council website practitioners who form the review team for Better connected 2008, the latest Socitm Insight annual snapshot of the state of development of every single UK council website.

What lessons have the reviewers learned from this year’s research? Which sites have emerged as the most impressive, with the elusive ‘wow’ factor that makes their content innovative, creative and compelling? Come along and learn from the best.

Event highlights

Considered by many to be the world's leading authority on effective web content, keynote speaker Gerry McGovern was described by the Irish Times as one of the world's five leading web visionaries alongside Tim Berners-Lee, Tim O'Reilly, Nicholas Negroponte and Vint Cerf. His session Citizen focus: The best thing local government can do on the web is get out of the way is certain to stimulate debate.

Other sessions include:

Better connected 2008: this year’s lessons, next year’s plans and BC Live: An interactive debate with members of the Better connected review team, and The WOW Factor – other members of the Better connected team set out their thoughts on the future of websites

The use of ‘Web 2.0 techniques’ on council websites - covering peer review, user generation of content, social networking and site personalisation. A contribution from Redbridge Council, which has developed an award-winning modular, customisable and interactive website, will feature in this session.

Procurement of accessible software: much web software, including content management systems, makes it difficult to comply with the now mandatory level AA accessibility standard for government websites. How can accessibility be built into the procurement of software?

'Lies, Damned Lies and Website Statistics’: how can we measure web traffic accurately, when caches or proxy servers may be factors? What type of 'hits' should be measured, and what constitutes a single 'unique visit'? Do we want our sites to be ‘sticky’ or are short visits more desirable, being indicative of services that are easy to find and use? - a lively debate is anticipated.

Take-up: why does it matter and who's responsible?: High take-up should increase efficiency and customer satisfaction and reduce 'avoidable contact'.  But council performance in this area varies widely.  And who’s responsible anyway - communications? web team? customer services? or service managers? And what (if anything) is the role of Directgov and centrally run take-up campaigns?

Designing for diversity: local authorities have a duty to reach all parts of society with their services, particularly the most vulnerable, and with our ageing population, usability and accessibility are vital. But this means much more than compliance with technical standards. A coherent and strategic approach to these key issues will be presented

The benefits

All delegates will be able to:

● learn from the experts in our comprehensive speaker programme

● learn from each other in structured interactive workshop sessions and through networking in the three conference breaks

● assess the best of the current crop of suppliers to the council website market in our accompanying exhibition and through specialist demonstrations

● discover how to remain engaged with Socitm’s ongoing Better connected website review and advice programme.

Agenda