OFFICE OF THE CITY AUDITOR
Roland E. Smith
City Auditor

November 20, 2000

TO: PRESIDENT DE LA FUENTE AND MEMBERS OF THE OAKLAND CITY COUNCIL

EVALUATION OF OAKLANDNET.COM

SUMMARY

Oaklandnet.com, the City of Oakland’s official web page, offers a wide range of information on various City departments, programs and services. Since the public relies on the Internet for basic information, it is important that Oakland’s web page provides quality information in the most accessible manner.

A web page consultant retained by this office concluded that flaws in the design of Oaklandnet.com hinder access to information and make it unnecessarily difficult. This report provides specific examples to demonstrate those areas of Oaklandnet.com that present barriers to effective public access to information.

OVERVIEW AND PURPOSE

The potential audience for Oaklandnet.com is large and diverse. It includes the citizens of Oakland, City Employees, other government entities, and anyone else that may be seeking information about Oakland and/or City services. To respond to such a potentially large audience, each element of Oaklandnet.com needs to be carefully presented to eliminate confusion and not appear impenetrable to the user.

Oakland needs to be very clear on a range of factors such as intended audience and web design that are the basic criteria for establishing an effective web site. This report provides a condensed version of the consultant's report to highlight his findings. The full report is attached.

Oaklandnet.com currently does provide a great deal of information to the public. It is not easy to determine what its users should or might like to know. Nor is it always easy to determine how to present such information. Constructing a web page is like redesigning how government presents itself to the community and this takes time and resources to accomplish. Given this, Oaklandnet.com offers Oakland citizens valuable information and saves them from waiting for postal mail or a trip downtown. Moreover, as a platform, Oaklandnet.com has a high degree of presence that can be built upon, expanded and continuously improved.

FINDINGS ARE GROUPED UNDER THREE HEADINGS:

• TARGET AUDIENCE
• EASE OF NAVIGATION
• INTERFACE

Target Audience is Fuzzy and Unclear

The site appears to be "cobbled" together, meaning it appears to lack homogeneity and continuity in design, the type of information it presents, as well as inconsistent means of navigation. This is to a great extent a result of there being no clear idea of who the site's audience is or what its purpose should be. Is it to provide a means of interagency and city staff communication or is it a means of communicating and/or doing business with the public? Or is it to be a means of encouraging public participation in civic affairs?

The site visitor often finds information that may only be pertinent to city staff that might be less confusingly placed on a city intranet site (a site maintained only for internal city communications). Information for the public should be on the current Internet web site.

Examples:

• The public user can access a page with retirement information for City staff under Risk and Retirement. Why would a page clearly intended for staff be included in a public document?
• Under Office of Information Technology's page, Telecom Form includes no indication as to what this form is used for. Hence a user who manages to locate it might be unsure if it is the correct form or not. Is this form for City staff, or the public's use?
• The web gives the impression that the user needs "insider knowledge" of Oakland City government to proceed through the site. For example, the menu includes such acronyms as BAAQMD, OIT, EEC or OBRA, which would not necessarily mean anything to someone outside (or sometimes inside) city government. Are we assuming that City staff are the main users, or members of the public who, unfortunately, may lack sufficient information to successfully navigate through the acronyms and so forth? Oaklandnet.com recently added a brochure entitled CPTED brochure. Nowhere on the brochure can the reader find out what CPTED stands for. Is this intended only for those who already know?
  Other examples that contribute to a lack homogeneity and continuity in design:
• Many department logos appear throughout the site. Different banners are included that do not always identify a department as part of the city.

These and other examples of fuzziness about the intended audience and purpose result in a web page that has a certain degree of inaccessibility built in. They can create the impression of poor organization and undermine credibility and the professional image of the city. It can appear to be obfuscation on the part of the city for site visitors if they become frustrated when information sought can't be easily found—especially when it's not located logically. Potential barriers are created for all users—public and city staff—when the information they seek may be poorly selected, thought out and presented.II.

Difficulty in Navigation

Similar to accessing information in a newspaper or magazine (headlines at the top of pages, summary paragraphs at the start of articles), visitors should be given some idea of a web page's contents. Too frequently in Oakland's web site, clues are needed to navigate the site or site sections are missing or placed where it requires extra effort to access them—i.e. the bottom pages that have to be scrolled down to reach the really important material or navigation buttons. Also, many buttons or links are without summary information of what would be found if they were clicked.

Examples

• The Arts Page starts with a poem, then a list of areas of interest, and a partial list of Oakland arts organizations. There is no lead-in or explanation of the site and what the user can expect to find.
  
• Under "Partial list of Oakland Arts Organizations (nonprofits)", a logo-like button entitled "Cultural Arts" does not identify itself as a City department and provides almost no information when the user clicks on it.
  
• Under Public Arts Advisory, again there is no explanation, just a list of names. Why is the user not informed of the role of the Public Arts Advisory Board, and the public arts program? The Government Home page contains a picture of City Hall and "rollover buttons" that presents a slide show of other civic structures. But passing the cursor over those buttons provides no information about the buildings. There is no indication that actually clicking on these "rollover buttons" will reveal captions for the pictures.
  
• Some files, such as newsletters (Office of Information Technology - OIT), press releases, calendars and other documents (Grant Guidelines under Arts section) lack any descriptive information and must be downloaded to see what they contain. This can discourage the user from using the site since downloading and examining each file takes time.
  
• Under Doing Business within the Business Home Page, clicking on Permits provides no information at all, just a list of headings of "notes".
  
• Under Life Enrichment, an address for the agency appears but no explanation of what the agency does. Then, clicking on Cultural Services takes the user to a page that simply lists two ordinance headings. Again, the link tells the user almost nothing about Oakland's cultural services and programs.
  
• Municipal codes are buried under Government/Community and Economic Development. Since most of the codes refer to matters other than economic development, why are they hidden here?

The above examples are just a few of the instances where lack of lead-in information and poorly arranged information make the site confusing and difficult for people to find what they're looking for. (Note that not everyone does it wrong, for example, the Oakland Community Network page opens with "What is the OCN?" All pages should begin in a similar fashion.)

Interface Issues

The user is subjected to inconsistencies in how one maneuvers through the site. The most serious flaw is the variety of button styles that in effect do not enhance access and ease of use. In some cases, the user may not know that what they see is a "button" they can click on. Moreover, there are numerous instances of no return buttons or links to previous pages.

Examples:

• The illegal guns notice on the Government Section Home Page looks like a reproduction of a billboard that in no way suggests it is a button one can click for more information.
• Under Community Oriented Government (Reinvention Strategy/CMO) one encounters a very different type of button, one with arrows pointing backwards and forwards. This looks like a button utilized for a QuickTime movie, rather than to change pages.
• The area of Finance and Accounting has yet another button, which actually looks like two separate buttons since the words "Financial Services" and "Home" are in different colors and are slightly separated on the page. They actually constitute a single button.

Other issues affecting interface:

• Some pages (Accounting under Financial Services agency and the Community home page) are too large for a 17" screen to view without having to scroll horizontally.
  
• The Map Room requires a Windows-only plug to be downloaded. MacOS and other operating systems are not able to access this information.

CONCLUSIONS

Oaklandnet.com has the look and feel of a web page that is, as the consultant states, "cobbled together." This is caused by: (1) a target audience that toggles between public, city staff and those who are assumed to have prior knowledge; (2) a range of inconsistencies in the "look" of the site; and (3) a similar range of inconsistencies in access mechanisms.

The examples cited in this report (and others not cited) on a one-by-one basis may be of little consequence on their own. But in the aggregate, they constitute a public web site service that offers a significant number of instances where the audience can be bewildered and frustrated. The paucity of information in some areas, hidden or inappropriate buttons, use of acronyms, different logos and banners and the apparent lack of city-wide web page basic standards for design and content all contribute to a web site that can overwhelm and dismay users (citizen and city staff alike).

RECOMMENDATIONS

The full text of the consultant's report lists a number of recommendations that OIT could take to improve Oaklandnet.com. The Auditor offers the following as a general description of what needs to be done.

1. Each entity or department on the site needs to understand the purpose of their participation in the web site and clearly identify the audience for its section. Information for city staff and information for the public should be split apart, perhaps through the use of an Intranet.
2. Standards for both graphics and text/content need to be developed for implementation by departments participating in the web site. (However, creativity in web page presentation should not be inhibited by such standards.)
3. The web site needs to be reorganized so as to offer a logical presentation of information.
4. The City needs to provide additional resources to Oaklandnet.com. Currently, only one person is charged with attending to the web page needs and demands of the entire city government. This is a difficult assignment and makes working with OIT on a department web page difficult and sometimes strained. There can be too much delay in having web pages updated, a problem which will then discourage citizen usage. (People told the Auditor they were not getting phone calls returned and there were lengthy delays in web page updates. Some department staff indicated they have given up and in some instances secured outside help in creating and maintaining their web page.) In addition, OIT's current training budget of approximately $300 per person ($22,000/70 employees) is far too small to enable staff to maintain the skill level necessary to keep abreast of appropriate technology

As stated in the overview of this report, a great deal of information is currently available for the user on Oaklandnet.com. It is an information platform that can be built upon and improved. Now that Oaklandnet.com has been up and running for several years, it seems timely and appropriate that it be reviewed for effectiveness and corrective action taken as necessary. The City Auditor hopes this report provides the Council and City administration with information that can be helpful in so doing, andin rectifying existing problems with Oaklandnet.com.

Prepared by:
Alton Jelks
Deputy City Auditor

Issued by:
Roland E. Smith
City Auditor