We have a rich depth of experience in conducting communication audits, with most activity focused on Web activities. In addition, we have a background in general communication audits for large public sector systems.
Let us know if we can put these skills to work for your organization with a proven methodology we've used in the past or a custom solution unique to your structure.
Web Audits at the World Bank
Web Standards at the House of Representatives
IT Governance at the Substainable Development Network
Expert Panelist at the Congress Online Project
Evaluating Outreach at the Kyrgyzstan Parliament
As a consultant to the Internal Auditing Division, we led a first-of-its-kind management audit of the public Web site, which included all public facing Web sites for www.worldbank.org and www.ifc.org sites.
Each project involved developing a comprehensive methodology to evaluate the effectiveness of the organization’s governing processes, core processes and enabling processes. A written report served as the foundation of the official audit presented to the organization’s leadership.
Our report detailed our observations from an expert "heuristic" review, in-depth interviews with key Web managers and a management survey of all Web contributors across the organization. In addition, we the report outlined the impact of the status quo behavior and attitudes on the Web site performance and made actionable recommendations for necessary improvements.
Web Standards at the House of Representatives
We had two different assignments at the USHR, each which resulted in delivering recommendations for standards based on evaluation projects to measure Web site performance against best practices.
For the Committee of House Administration Democratic Staff, our approach was centered on completing custom Web scorecards for each lawmaker's site. Each scorecard made recommendations for specific priority improvements on their sites. After a pilot effort with key offices to validate our approach, we completed over 200 confidential Web site evaluations against a custom scorecard to measure adherence to rules of the USHR, compliance with Section 508 guidelines for accessibility, content and usability.
We briefed the Chiefs of Staff, Press Secretaries and Webmasters on the aggregate results to provide everyone in the Democratic Caucus with a means of judging their score against their peers. The Committee on House Administration issued the standards document to Democratic staff, based on this work, which set guidelines for Web performance for the first time. We also were able to share best practices across the House to encourage staff to reuse and recycle ideas that worked. At the conclusion of the project we delivered a comprehensive report analyzing the results and making recommendations for future management of House Web sites.
With the Chief Administrative Officer, we served as an enterprise content management consultant.
Here we began a series of peer reviews for the professional developers on staff to evaluate each others work, where participants provided valuable feedback about strengths and weaknesses to the team at-large.
We also surveyed the developers to discover their attitudes about which standards for Web sites were the most important. Finally, we independently evaluated select sites against the best-practice standards. By comparing the results of the survey - their attitudes - against the practices showcased in the sites themselves - their behaviors - we were able to deliver recommendations on a standards program that met the needs of this audience.
Our comprehensive report on the project detailed both our observations and ideas for the future to leverage improvements in Web management practices.
In this role, we also provided a number of other deliverables including:
| :: | an evaluation of their blueprint and information architecture for the House Intranet, named HouseNet |
:: |
a framework for model key performance indicators reports on the House.gov and HouseNet domains |
:: |
wrote the first edition of the content publishing guidelines for the House Intranet |
Substainable Development Network IT Governance
As a consultant at the World Bank we participated in an advisory review of over 40 sites which are part of the IT Systems for the Sustainable Development Network’s Global Program and Partnerships. This audit was focused on a range of IT governance issues including service level agreements, audience, inventory, feedback management, capitol planning and investment controls, monitoring and technology status.
The SDN effort led to a separate project working with a senior information officer in that unit to prepare a governance paper to implement changes. The paper was delivered to SDN directors and senior leadership to pave the way for institutional change.
Expert Panelist at the Congress Online Project
The goal of the Congress Online Project is to provide congressional offices guidance to improve online communications between Members of Congress and the public they serve.
The report is the heart of the effort. By identifying the best Web sites on Capitol Hill and delineating the practices that make them the best, the report aimed tol motivate many more offices to improve their Web based communications.
The research was conducted jointly by the Congressional Management Foundation and the George Washington University and funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Over the two-year project, Emerald Strategies, Inc. founder Kathy McShea served as one of the expert panelists which made the final selections of the Gold Mouse winners and assisted CMF staff throughout the evaluation and selection process. She also assisted in media outreach and planning efforts.
LEARN MORE:
Congress Online 2002: Assessing & Improving Hill Web Sites (PDF) Congress Online 2003: Turning the Corner on the Info Age (PDF)
Evaluating Outreach at the Kyrgyzstan Parliament
As a subcontractor to CMF, Emerald Strategies, Inc. provided support for a US AID contract to evaluate how the Kyrgyzstan Parliament measured up against global best practices for outreach, transparency and public participation activities.
The report was based on interviews with parliamentary staff, selected deputies, media and others working in the governance field during a field visit to Kyrgyzstan.
Operational areas that were examined included meetings, citizen involvement, press operations, parliament debate and identity, records and both online and offline public communications.
The Kyrgyzstan Parliament is an active body compared to other legislative branches in transitional societies. We witnessed roundtables on the criminal code, electoral reform, and closure of the airbase. We saw hearings on financial security laws, local decentralization and traffic safety.
Both inside and outside the walls of Parliament, the people of Kyrgyzstan are discussing laws, amendments and issues. In contrast to other developing countries, there appears to be a significant amount of legislative debate and lawmaking activity which is at an active pace and volume.
