State's Digital Web Services Network Busy with Data, Dashboards, Design

The dots are beginning to connect rapidly for the Digital Web Services Network (DWSN), an initiative of the California Department of Technology (CDT).

In a virtual briefing this week, key players in the network updated almost 150 online attendees on how agencies and departments are using and sharing data in new ways, some of which are a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic that has upended the state’s economy and innovation plans.

Wednesday’s briefing — the first since January — included overviews of several key elements that network members in key departments are working on. Among the takeaways:

• The state’s Web Standards team, within CDT’s Office of Enterprise Technology (OET), continues to help state entities create and maintain their own websites and verticals, with more than 40 state departments and agencies now using approved templates and services. Richard Lehman, web innovation architect for OET, explained how a state agency can quickly and easily create and begin using a Web page — and, more importantly, the digital services it offers to the public — within minutes. The Web Services page offers a user-friendly overview of standards, guidelines and policies, and it includes tips and how-to’s for virtually every element of online digital services one could imagine: design, accessibility, usability, security and analytics.
• The state’s Geographic Information Officer Isaac Cabrera noted that as state agencies create and curate data from their Web pages and other sources, CDT is automating more of that data so it flows into pipelines and is incorporated into shared databases more readily. That also facilitates data analytics, which state technologists then use to further refine and enhance their digital services offerings within government and to Californians at large. Cabrera used the term “data ingestion patterns” to refer to how users are finding, using and adding data to state databases.
• Manveer Bola, the state’s acting chief technology innovation officer, talked about those data analytics. One takeaway for those designing digital services and websites, he said: Narratives are far more accessible — and are accessed much more frequently — than mere tables of data. He also cited the exploding use and popularity of data dashboards — tools that have become ubiquitous in tracking the COVID-19 pandemic but which are also gaining ground in other areas of state governance, as well.
• On the topic of narratives and “data stories,” attendees were reminded of some key concepts when loading a new public-facing website with content: Keep text short, preferably at the sixth-grade reading level. Don’t repeat information. And leave out background information about what the user doesn’t need to know.

Bola, who led the webinar, also announced that recruitment would begin soon for a new state Web Services leadership position. Techwire will report on that as it happens. He described it as “a very key role, a higher-level position.”

DWNS tentatively set its next forum for sometime in the third week of October.