Search the Archive

The Australian Government Information Management Office Archive

Customer focussed portals framework

Making it easier for people to find Government information online and building a platform for integrated service delivery.

Overview

It is a longstanding Government objective to enable people to interact online with the Government without needing to understand how government is structured. The 1997 Investing for Growth statement had improvements in the quality, user friendliness and consistency of government services as an objective. Released in April 2000, the Government Online strategy outlined a framework to accelerate progress towards this objective.

The growing use of the Internet by government departments and agencies to present their information and service resources to the Australian people has created a plethora of websites and resources available on the Internet. These websites vary from simple menu driven processes to quite complex sites that provide sophisticated discovery mechanisms of resources residing in many other locations. Although there is a great deal of linking between these websites and various search resources exist, people generally need to understand how government is structured in order to interact with it online.

Portals framework

To greatly improve ease of access, the Government has endorsed a whole of government online portals framework to provide a customer focussed, coordinated approach to the Australian Government's online presence. The framework consists of:

• a set of portals based on customer groups;
• a set of portals based on topics or subjects;
• the key point of access at the Australian Government Entry Point;
• a staged development approach where applicable;
• agency consortia to develop and manage the portals that will facilitate close co-ordination and co-operation among resource providers across agencies to provide customer oriented services;
• responsibility for the development and delivery of online services remaining with owning agencies;
• an agreed set of cross-portal standards, such as AGLS (Australian Government Locator Service) Metadata; and
• governance arrangements.

The portals will all be available through their own Internet address and through the Australian Government Entry Point.

The portals framework is about improving the user experience in getting to online resources. These portals will not replace the existing set of agency-based and subject-oriented websites. The portals will complement these sites and place them in a customer-oriented framework.

This approach recognises the rapid pace associated with the development of the Internet and a process of continuous improvement based around user requirements. It also leverages off existing significant initiatives, such as the Business Entry Point (BEP) and National Business Information Service (NBIS), Education Network Australia (EDNA), the Source (DETYA youth website), Healthinsite, the Environment Resources Information Network (ERIN) and Infoterra (Environment Australia).

Portal Development

It is expected that a fully mature portal would:

• Have its own unique web presence.
• Provide a single point of access to a range of resources that are developed and maintained by several government agencies, including:
• • online information information about offline resources, such as the nearest relevant office; and
  • online transactional services, and integrated services from covering several agencies and/or levels of government that are integrated.
• Provide resources from all tiers of government; provide discovery of a comprehensive array of information and services that relate to the portal theme.
• Provide customer focussed discovery processes that suit the customer group, eg a Families portal may have life events, such as birth of a baby, going to school, etc.
• Provide customisable features to enable users to personalise the portal around what is important to them, such as is available at Telstra.com.
• Be developed and managed by a consortium of agencies that have primary responsibility for the delivery of services to the portal audience.

The list of portal themes has been developed based on agencies' knowledge of their customer groups, as well as State, Territory and overseas developments in this area. These themes, to be effective, will be relatively limited in number, and may change over time in response to customer requirements. The list currently is:

Customer Groups	Subject/Topics
Business	Agriculture
Community Groups	Culture and Recreation
Families	Education
Indigenous	Employment
Regional	Environment
Seniors	Government
Women	Health
Youth	Immigration
	Industry
	Law and Justice
	Science

Initial Implementation

It is recognised that the development of portals to the level of sophistication outlined above would require significant funds. A minimalist model has been designed for initial implementation to satisfy the initial important user requirements of finding or discovering what they need to from government on the Internet. It is a basic model, but its value is the significant reduction in searching through an ever increasing multitude of resources. Each portal will initially provide:

• a single online point of access to available online information and transactional services from Australian Government agencies for the relevant customer/subject group;
• customer focussed discovery processes and mechanisms (particularly search and browse capacity based on the application of AGLS Metadata); and
• customer feedback mechanisms to ensure continual improvement.

Portal Consortia

Effective development and management of the individual portals will rely on input from the key agencies that provide services to the particular customer group. The mechanism agreed is to establish portal consortium whose role will be the:

• development and management of the Portal;
• development of appropriate resource discovery mechanisms for the portal customer group;
• application and tailoring of AGLS metadata elements (and their qualifiers and extension sets if appropriate) to improve resource identification and discovery;
• identification of impediments and areas where there is a need to develop standards; and
• examination of potential integration of services across relevant agencies to improve service delivery from a customer perspective, and
• development of business cases for further development.

Interoperability Standards

A key element of the portals framework is to achieve integration of services across agencies by leveraging technology, infrastructure and resources. To facilitate this, AGIMO will establish a process to clearly define policies and standards for interoperability. These standards will address Internet implementation and adoption issues to accelerate consistency across government and will:

• improve the identification and discovery of resources;
• enhance the integration of data; and
• improve the interconnection of applications.

Specific guidance will be developed for the whole of government adoption and enhancement of common online standards, such as AGLS Metadata and XML (eXtensible Markup Language).

Contact Us

Contact the AGIMO Service Delivery Operations Branch