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Ambition

The Environment Agency wanted to carry out a root-and-branch review of its public website and intranet to deliver greater value to business and the public at less cost.

In particular, the Agency wanted:
  • A review of content and services to increase the effectiveness of its service to business and the public.
  • The development of a clear policy and set of website management guidelines.
  • Recommendations on how to best merge its intranet and public website groups into a single, cohesive team.
  • Clear identification of its killer content and its filler content, to better promote killer content and get rid of filler content.
The Agency also wanted a model by which it could identify, on an ongoing basis, if its website and intranet were delivering value.


Enter Gerry McGovern's team

With the Agency's website and intranet team managers, the McGovern team worked on a project to apply the McGovern Readers-Tasks-Carewords methodology. The project involved:
  • Interviewing internal stakeholders and representatives of internal and external reader groups.
  • Structured half-day workshops with the combined teams to develop personas, identify key tasks, and refine web-presence objectives.
  • Systematic analysis of detailed feedback from interviews and workshops.
  • Workshop with the Agency's executive management to align web strategy with Agency strategy.
With this approach, the team rapidly identified key opportunities for major improvements, deficiencies in the current process and practices, and a robust strategic direction for the development of the Agency's interactive services.


Value delivered

Using the McGovern Readers-Tasks-Carewords methodology, the project provided the Environment Agency with:
  • Putting People First, a report detailing 10 key recommendations for improving the effectiveness of its web presence.
  • A value-driven management model based around cost justification for core tasks.
  • Situation analysis identifying where maximum impact could be achieved most quickly.
  • Overview of a strategic publishing approach for improved governance and more effective use of resources.
  • Identification of task completion as the most relevant performance metric.
  • A series of workshops and talks that won over key stakeholders to the task-based approach.
The project provided the Agency with the strategy and tools for determining what should, and should not, be included in their external and internal web presence.


About the UK Environment Agency

The Environment Agency for England & Wales is the Government body responsible for all things pertaining to the environment. The Agency's responsibilities range from issuing fishing and fly-tipping licences, to providing flood-warning, pollution and hazardous materials advice.

The Agency views web-based self-service as the strategic preference to improve its services to the public and support tools for its staff. However, with over 50,000 public website pages and over 30,000 intranet pages-figures that were growing daily-there was too much content. The Agency's senior management recognised that, in addition to being inefficient, this content glut was adversely impacting search, navigation, classification, and architecture.


"Our work with Gerry McGovern is driving a real change in the way the agency views its online presence. The Strategy they provided has put us on track for having a really customer-centred website."
Simon Ashley, Internet Manager, Corporate Affairs Directorate, Environment Agency


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Customer Careword approach in greater detail