Seven Questions

1. Who is our target audience? (hint: Don't try to be all things to all people)

1st - Media and Congress
2nd- General public – Includes Interior Dept workers.

2. What is the competitive landscape? (hint: Sites that do it well)

GAO does it better. They have well defined list of recent reports – new technologies like Twitter – links for Congress and media clearly labeled.

3. How do we differentiate ourselves? (hint: Secret sauce)

Create an IG home page that reflects the many projects that the office has investigated and issued reports on, using visuals including still pictures and video, with news summaries that are easy to read and link to full reports. One element of this would be a map of the U.S. to highlight investigations, listing topics to the right of the map. This could be a small icon on the main page that pops up and can be interactive.

4. How do we create our site? (hint: Staff and schedule)

Have a core group of two editors who write the news summaries and organize the home page. Also have a public relations person Twitter information about the latest reports. Have an IT person execute the act of putting new items on the Web site. Use an independent contractor to actually redesign the Web site and create a template that others can easily implement.

5. How do we get our content? (hint: Pre-built, manual, automatic, updated)

From investigations, audits, evaluations, inspections and assessments conducted by Interior’s IG. Many of these products have video and still pictures. Also, the Freedom of Information Office already creates two versions of the reports – one for the pubic and one for internal files, so this would not be an added step.

6. How do we market our site? (hint: Spread the word)

Get a list of media outlet contacts and have the PR person create e-mail lists to alert them to the reports, linking to the site. Send a press release highlighting that there are visuals, and link to reports on the site. Use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. There is an existing campaign marketing the IG complaint hotline. Since this already needs to be updated, create a new brochure to highlight the new IG Web site. Also link the Interior IG Web site to Recovery.gov – and on the Recovery.gov site, have a link to Interior’s IG. Finally, change the Web site address to InteriorIG.gov – easier to market than the current “doioig" name.

7. How do we sustain the site? (hint: Show me the $$$)

Federal appropriations/budget and employees already on the payroll. President Obama has already said he wants to make the federal government more transparent and interactive.