A hot topic in the Department of Health Digital team is how digital tools can be used to deliver and support live events. We’ve piloted a few different methods recently, with different results. I thought I’d share some of what we’ve found.
Following on from the success of our digital coverage at the G8 Dementia Summit in December last year, it’s been all hands on deck for the Global Dementia Legacy Event on Finance and Social Investment as we live blogged, live tweeted, live streamed (in 7 languages), shared photos, and shared videos throughout the day. With an agenda that included speakers from the World Dementia Council, world leaders in health, finance and research, Alzheimer’s charities and the Prime Minister, we anticipated a high level of interest over the course of the 7 hour event.
The Dementia Challenge homepage was taken over for the day by our coverage of the event and received a total of 2009 hits to the live video stream run by Fly on the Wall digital broadcasting. We also had 32 people listen in French, 24 in Spanish, 27 in Italian, 42 in German, 55 in Japanese and 207 in Mandarin Chinese; stats we’re really pleased about as it’s the first time we’ve done live interpreting, and the figures demonstrate we were meeting a clear need. We worked with Glasgows event management to run this huge event, the scale of which was obviously much greater than most of our other projects, but despite that there are many learnings we can take to inform our approach for smaller live events.
National Information Board committee meeting
I’ve recently supported the National Information Board secretariat (formerly the ISCG) who were tasked with live streaming their first committee meeting on the 10th of June. There was some precedent as the ISCG had done this before, and it was felt that it met a transparency commitment. As always we started by looking for evidence of user need, but soon discovered we didn’t have access to the stats from previous live streamed meetings. Without knowing how many people had tuned in, it was very difficult to measure how successful this was, so we decided to pilot live streaming the first NIB meeting with all the analytics in place as a test of cost vs impact.
We procured the services of live streaming experts Public-i who do lots of work with local and central government, and St Thomas’s Hospital kindly agreed to host us in their Governor’s Hall. Learning from Anna Hepburn’s previous experience with live streaming I knew there was a lot of prep work to do in advance of any live coverage, to promote your event ‘early enough to make sure that people know it’s happening and where they can access it’.
So for the NIB event the link was shared on Twitter via @DHgovuk and attendees Jon Rouse @RouseJonDGDH, Tim Kelsey @tkelsey1 and Ryan Callahan @ryanp2callahan also spread the word, employing the hashtag #NIBmeetings to group our tweets under a common search term.
The footage of the committee meeting will be available to watch back for 6 months and you can navigate to specific sections by clicking on the relevant speaker’s name on the agenda. Website visits peaked during the Secretary of State’s introduction, with the final total for the day reaching 84 unique pageviews on the live stream page and an average time of 3 and half minutes spent watching. With this data we were able to make the informed recommendation to explore alternative options for future NIB meetings.
DCLG Local Digital Discovery Day
In another example, back in May I supported the Department of Communities and Local Government with coverage of their Care Bill event; part of the DCLG’s Local Digital Campaign to showcase the best of government service digital innovation and to drive learning and development across the sector.
The DCLG and UK Authority teams are well practised at these events and their digital coverage reflects that - whilst I was tweeting from our @DHgovuk account we also had great engagement from attendees such as Karen Dooley @KarenDooley1, Nick Roberts @NickDRoberts and Julie Oxley @infoantech using the #LocalDigital hashtag. DCLG’s Linda O’Halloran @LindaSasta did a great job pulling together the highlights on Storify. Check out the GDS blog for more tips on live tweeting.
The event was filmed and by UK Authority managing editor Helen Olsen (@HelenOlsen) – and we’ll share the link to this via our DH Twitter shortly. Creating video content this way, rather than live streaming, is something we’re considering for future NIB meetings so people can easily watch specific speakers they’re interested in at a time that’s convenient to them. It also mitigates some of the technical risks of broadcasting live. You can follow the #LocalDigital Campaign activity on Twitter @LocalDigitalGov and a there’s full calendar of past and future events on the campaign website.
Live Streaming knowledge sharing
Following on from this flurry of live events, I met with colleagues from across government for an informal knowledge sharing session to find out what other teams have been doing and to talk about my recent experiences. A common challenge we face is how to deliver live events at little or no cost. Fortunately there are some free digital tools available, and the one that’s been most widely tested is Google Hangouts.
Alex Schillemore from the Digital Engagement team at HMRC talked about a Google Hangout they ran with the graduate recruitment scheme. Graduates often weren’t able to attend university career fairs but still wanted to get advice from the team, so hosting a webchat seemed like a good solution. In advance of the event the team encouraged graduates to send in questions via the HMRC Facebook page, Twitter or on the Hangout’s Q&A function to gather plenty of material for their experts to respond to in the live panel-style show. It’s worth noting the webchat was broadcast using Hangout on Air rather than Google+ Hangouts, which are better for smaller, private groups. Hangouts on Air stream through YouTube and are videos are automatically saved to your YouTube channel once complete, with the option to edit them if you wish.
We’ve been running webchats at DH for a few years and published some guidance about running effective webchats on our blog.
My top lessons learnt
There are three key things that will contribute to the success of any live event:
- Engagement - use existing online presence to build and encourage participation before the event
- Preparation - do a full test run to check your tech (cameras, sound, internet connection, website platforms etc)
- Iteration - stats are essential for measuring and analysing the success of your event, and help you to improve for the future
7 comments
Comment by simonfj posted on
Hey Kylie,
Thanks for the heads up. Seems like gov is going through the same issues .edu has been going through since all these new webby comms tools were invented.
Could we stand back and take an overview of what you're going though with supporting the NIB group's secretariat, as it is the same situation for everyone in the gov and edu space. If you view things from the perspective of .gov.uk, then you're addressing the same problems as the secretariats who must support these committees (I.e. groups). http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/
The big change is that ongoing inquiries revolve around these kind of groups, and not departmental websites. So the center of your universe revolves around this page, and how we can combine the best of broadcast/streaming, and social/interactive, technologies in order to be inclusive of citizens. https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/national-information-board
Our greatest problem is that we have yet to formulate a directory for these "topical" groups. So in order to find one (or two or three) who is inquiring into an area of interest, one must try and find
them in these two lists, at the right time. https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations and https://www.gov.uk/government/groups It's a bit like trying to watch a thousand TV channels without a TV guide.
At the same time, many people in two levels of gov.uk, are doing the same thing as your colleagues, pre and post mortem. i.e. Meeting "for informal knowledge sharing session to find out what other teams have been doing and to talk about my recent experiences". So you can see that these learning groups are trying to coalesce, without the benefit of a group-orientated institution.
I won't go into which broadcast and interactive media tools might be the most useful combination to support a group's secretariat's shared learning. That's an ongoing experiment for every teacher/moderator. But I should point out that talk in the eduspace is about "flipped classrooms" - putting the evidence up (on a NIB page) prior to a "live panel show", and taking questions from the audience in advance.
Perhaps we should just focus on this group's inquiry as it is the primary one for gov.uk's reinvention. http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/procedure-committee/inquiries/parliament-2010/e-petitions/ You and your colleagues obviously have a lot of experience in bridging between a petition and its inquiry.
OK. Enough for now. If you're interested I can illustrate how the group structure could be put in place, by using the NIB as a template. Just let me know. School's out!
Comment by Kylie Mulholland posted on
Hi Simon, thanks for your comment and for taking the time to read the blog.
In terms of bringing committees and organisations etc into a single directory and filtering by theme/area, I can see how that might be useful. The Government Digital Service manage the structure of GOV.UK so I’d have to hand off to them in this case, they welcome all feedback and I’m sure would be happy to chat to you - https://gds.blog.gov.uk/about
I’m not sure what you mean by ongoing inquiries - committees tend to be strategic steering groups for specific areas of government, and don’t necessarily facilitate or run inquiries. In terms of the 2010 inquiry into e-petitions that you referenced, GOV.UK has a tool for creating and signing e-petitions: https://www.gov.uk/petition-government
Finally, the flipped classrooms theory is close to what the HMRC adopted for their graduate webchat that I mentioned. HMRC got great feedback from the students, which reinforces how effective this can be.
Thanks again for your interest, always happy to chat.
Comment by simonfj posted on
Hi Kylie,
Just one more note. (You'll have to excuse me. I've spent too much time in media, so I tend to view things from an (potential) audience's perspective).
There's no "history" for the NIB. So no one will know that this inquiry has been going on, for years, as the http://www.england.nhs.uk/iscg/
You've also got no linkages to the other channels you're using, like #NIBmeetings , mentioned on the NIB site, so that's another channel a newbie won't know about. It's a pity cause twitter seems quite fashionable around the UK gov traps. And the link to the live stream, which would become the spot to link to the footage of the event, is a natural extension to the "minutes, agenda and papers".
I'm trying to understand where the NIB's "related inquiries" are. There's no mention of these events,although they would seem to be related (to the same audiences). http://www.hscic.gov.uk/article/1582/Events and http://www.hscic.gov.uk/article/2764/Board-meetings
So all up, it seems like we have lots of discussions going on, which is good. But we've yet to begin to aggregate them on any form of systematic basis.
Just so you know. There are so many conversations like this going on around the world. They all come down to "putting yourself in the citizen's place". http://mindblog.dk/en/2014/07/01/find-the-problem-before-you-solve-it/ Your post is acting as a magnet for the ones in the engagement space. Bet you never considered yourself a best-selling author when you wrote it.
When's the book coming out? (Need an agent? 🙂
Comment by Kylie Mulholland posted on
Hi Simon,
The NIB page on GOV.UK follows the standard format for GOV.UK committee pages (see https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/aapb for another example) which we try to keep consistent, clear and simple. As part of that approach we don’t include notes on history or context - we state the purpose of the committee as it stands currently.
The strategy and terms of reference for the NIB committee are currently being reviewed, and will be different from the ISCG committee that no longer exists. These will be available through the GOV.UK site once they’re final and will give more detail on the NIB’s priorities and objectives - which should help to explain the work the committee are involved in.
The minutes from the latest meeting (available to download) give the link to the webcasting site for people to watch back the footage. We encouraged NIB members to tweet the link to their followers and help to build an audience, and using the hashtag #NIBmeetings was a handy way to track this.
As I mentioned in the blogpost, we’re considering whether live webcasting NIB meetings is something worth continuing and how we can best engage people with the work the committee will be doing in the future.
Finally, you mention the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC). The HSCIC deliver technology and information services on behalf of the Department of Health, and Andy Williams and Kingsley Manning from the HSCIC sit on the NIB leadership group to feed into the work of the committee. You can read more about the HSCIC here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/health-and-social-care-information-centre
Hope that’s useful and thanks again for the comments!
Comment by simonfj posted on
Many Thanks Kylie,
And I'm sorry for lecturing. Just a way for me to get my thoughts straight.
You can see one of the biggest problems for anyone trying to get an education. One committee (can we call them "groups" as it's the general term which both content people like yourself, and network guys that "provision services" for committees, groups and all those other similar terms that fall under "agencies and public bodies", use). One committee sets up doing the same/similar inquiry as another shuts down, and never the twain doth meet. Bit like having a lobotomy between inquiries 🙂
This is something the research guys on every NREN (National Research & Education Network) are trying to reform on a global basis. How do we get the similar groups doing the same research together, so they can share their learning? It applies as much to people like Liam's group as it does to any Local and National group. https://governmenttechnology.blog.gov.uk/2014/07/04/learning-by-sharing-a-conversation-with-the-australian-government/
So we might rewrite your byline here as (maybe) "sharing an inquiry digitally". I went looking for something which relates to our discussion at the UK parlie site, as they will drive this, and the departments will follow their lead. Lo and behold! http://www.parliament.uk/business/commons/the-speaker/speakers-commission-on-digital-democracy/web-forum/
We'll see (which approach and combination of tools will work to) enlarge the public sphere. http://www.katelundy.com.au/?s=public+sphere
I think a little differently than the GDS guys, cause I'm looking at things from the backend (i.e. the inter-networks), so this (for me) is all about the "common services" various groups like yours will want "provisioned" (at an IP address). So you'd understand why I push the group-centric thinking.
It might help everyone if you talk about "broadcasting" rather than "webcasting". It's closer to what's really going on here. i.e. The broadcast and interactive networks are aligning, and people like yourself are trying to get a handle on the "right" combination.
OK. Enough for now. You've given me plenty to read. I'm making far too much noise on the GDS blog as it's the only one which acts as an aggregation point just yet. https://gds.blog.gov.uk/ But you'll find so much of this inter-network services reformation (especially from the NHS end) will come out of discussions between "GDS National and Local" and a focus on the idea of one citizen's (personal data) account for ALL their services, and their groups of (similar) interest.
GDS ain't even had that discussion yet. Be good.
Comment by Kylie Mulholland posted on
The Committee on Climate Change successfully used Google Hangouts (for free) recently for a stakeholder event. Some stats from the feedback they received:
-86% of live-streaming attendees wouldn't have been able to attend the London event.
-89% said they could follow the presentation OK
-93% said it was useful to be able to have discussions with regional colleagues which they wouldn't have had in London
-75% said the events were Good or Excellent
-98% said they would attend a similar event
The team borrowed a digital camera from a colleague and were pleased with the sound and visuals. They got some feedback about sound quality not being very 'professional' but largely people understood it wasn't expected to be completely slick.
Comment by simonfj posted on
Yeah, the consumer stuff is OK.
I'd never knock anyone having a go with what's there for free.
But we're trying to introduce the same culture as people in the labs. That means you'll want a virtual room, where people know your topical group gets together on a regular basis.
Check out this one. http://www.vidyo.com/company/news-and-events/press-releases/vidyo-selected-by-cern-to-connect-20000-scientists-for-mass-global-collaboration-on-high-energy-physics-research-and-lhc-experiments/
I know, i know 🙂 One extreme to the other. But there so many offerings out there. I'm just trying to get a handle on what size suits different group.gov.uk. So they and their mates can have a regular natter. https://insidegovuk.blog.gov.uk/2014/09/15/web-editors-next-content-clinic-thursday-18-september/
BTW. When are you going to give these guys a wrap? http://www.nhscitizen.org.uk/how-do-we-test/