Advisory Group meeting notes, 18 March 2005

Room 101, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington

Attendees: Rakiihia Tau, Ross Bell (Chair), Georgina Johnson, Peter Sykes, Ruth Gardner, Bill Dashfield, Kaeti Rigarlsford (part), Katarina Rangi (Minutes) and Sarah Hill, National Service Delivery Manager for Local Government and Community Branch (part).
  
Apologies: Cyrus Nielsen (Policy Analyst).

1. Welcome

Rik opened the meeting with karakia at 9:00 am, Bill welcomed all attendees and Ross chaired the meeting from then on.

2. Minutes and Matters Arising

MOVED: That the minutes of the meeting of 13 December 2004 be accepted (Rik/Georgina).

ACTIONS:

• Bill to meet with Legal Service Agency and Community Sector Taskforce to discuss them providing content.
• Bill to talk to Intergen about adding a button for editing fonts when submitting Community Notices.

3. Website Usage and Developments

Visits and usage continue to rise. Visits are approximately 4 times what they were a year ago. The new How-To Guide on Research is proving popular.

4. Website Survey

Bill presented to the group on the outcome of the survey.  The group was pleased with the survey. There were discussions about how we may look at improving our service. It was good to see that in the survey no one complained that the website was too slow. As the usage is going up, a lot of enquiries are coming in.  The group discussed adding a Frequently Asked Question page to the website.

5. Digital Strategy Update

Cyrus Nielsen, the Policy Analyst working on this, sent his apologies.  Bill gave a brief overview.

ACTIONS:

• Bill to get an update from Cyrus about on the Digital Strategy.

6. Employment update

Sarah Hill, National Service Delivery Manager for Local Government and Community Branch, was introduced to the group.

Sarah announced to the group that Bill had been selected for the position of CNA website manager and he had accepted.  She thanked Ross for being prepared to be part of the panel.

Sarah announced the selection of the new Operations manager: Jools Jocelyn who comes with a background in Community and Policy. It was agreed that we invite her to the next meeting.

Sarah and Bill talked with the group about hiring a content editor for 2 days a week and the types of skills this person would require.  It was suggested to the group that maybe the current web maestro be approached, as she was familiar with the work and had the required skills and contacts. Sarah and Bill asked for feedback, which was positive.

Sarah also talked with the group about inviting the Minister to one of the meetings and wanted to find out what things the group would like to discuss with him. 

ACTIONS:

• Group to discuss at next meeting what topics they would like to cover with the Minister.
• Invite new operations manager Jools Jocelyn.

7. Communications, processes and guidelines

Bill has made amendments to the Selection Criteria and Editorial Policies as discussed at the last meeting.  Changes are mostly in presentation and the changes that were requested at the last meeting.

CopyLeft

The Group supported the new ‘CopyLeft’ statement.

Links Review Process

An ongoing checking of links is needed.  This will take approximately half a day a month, as there are over 900 links.

Process for (re)appointing and adding members to the advisory group

The group approve of asking the Pacific Island Advisory Group (PICAG) to nominate a representative. We will await information from PICAG and proceed via email.

ACTIONS:

• Bill to obtain LG&C signoff on the new selection criteria
• Bill to discuss proposed CopyLeft statement with Content Editors, as copyright aspects are covered in their contracts
• Bill to draft proposed process for (re)appointing members, for discussion at the next meeting

Relationships and Promotion

Bill suggested to the group that as the online enquiry workload from CommunityNet is growing, we could look at putting them through to the COGS online staff. They would have to be trained before they could take over answering all enquiries. 

Kaeti sees this as a valuable idea and maybe we should look at sending things out through the community regional offices.

Bill talked with the group about promotional postcards and other material running low and requiring reprinting, and asked the group for suggestions on other ways of advertising.  Peter suggested getting stickers to put on computers. Georgina also suggested pens.

8. Review of Communication and Long Term Plans

The group reviewed the Long Term Plan, item by item. As well as updating individual items, the group asked that:

• As most action items were ongoing, Completion Dates should be changed to review dates.
• Outcomes or Outputs achieved to date should be added to action items.

ACTIONS:

• Bill to update the plan as discussed and circulate.

9. General Business

The possible usefulness for Advisory Group members to have CommunityNet business cards was discussed.  The Group decided not to proceed with these.

10. Next Meeting Dates

Thursday 9 June 2005
Tuesday 6 September 2005
Tuesday 29 November 2005

The Group suggested that Peter be the chair for the next meeting.

Meeting closed at 4pm by Rik with prayer.