@ MN Pollution Control Agency. Watershed Webpages

Transcription

1 @ MN Pollution Control Agency Watershed Webpages NASCIO 2012 Recognition Award Category: Open Government Initiatives Contact: Glenn Skuta, State of Minnesota Project Initiation: January 2011 Project Completion: August 2011

2 Executive Summary One of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency s (MPCA) primary responsibilities is to protect the quality of surface water in the state lakes, streams, wetlands. The agency manages water in geographical units called watersheds. For these purposes, the state is divided into 81 of these watersheds. Each watershed has a large (and growing) amount of information critical to tracking the health of its waters, planning for its future, and keeping myriad stakeholders current on what's happening. Previous to the watersheds app, information on watershed projects was divided up into hundreds of pages in a deep and dizzying category structure on our website. Getting monitoring and assessment data related to a watershed required users to go to a different part of the site and again drill down. Multiple databases with multiple interfaces made finding related sets of data for a watershed a frustrating experience. The project's goal was to bring all information about a given watershed into one spot. It also introduces the concept of watershed to new users, and provides information in a way that is friendly to regular citizens, but still remains a useful tool for water professionals and other engaged user groups. The team also worked to leverage and extend the PCA website's content management system to allow easy updating by a larger team of people. Templates were created, and large swathes of content were normalized and divided up into data sets. Custom administrative interfaces were then developed to manage that data -- without content managers needing knowledge of either databases or web page coding. In addition, bridges were researched and developed to connect data from enterprise sources and feed them into the CMS watershed pages. This supported MPCA s effort to make more of its data outward-facing and accessible, and created a replicable model for other content areas of the agency. This project also significantly advances the agency's use of the Joomla CMS, making it one of the most extensive and advanced implementations of the platform in the country for a government agency. 2

3 Business Problem and Solution In an effort to streamline water management across the state, the MPCA started taking a different approach to water management a few years ago called the watershed approach. Although the agency was doing its water work differently, the water web pages did not reflect this change and were dated. In late 2010, the agency communications team saw a need to restructure the water pages to reflect this new approach. As the communications team was in the early stages of watershed web brainstorming, a water data integration project was also underway. This legislatively funded project would make water monitoring, assessment and project management data more accessible to the public via the MPCA s website. Communications staff recognized that the information created from the data project was critical in telling the whole water story; however the initial web mock-up showcasing the data was numbers-heavy and was not visually appealing, access to it was not intuitive, and the data was not linked well to other narrative and descriptive watershed information. The data as well as other information (newsletters, background information, contact information, etc.) needed to be presented in such a way that a wide variety of users would find the pages approachable. The general public needed to be able to see the big picture, while consultants and other stakeholders could find out more about the details of what was happening in the watershed. The communication team presented this new watershed web vision to MPCA leadership. It was well received and fast tracked. Leadership was excited to tell the water story in an interactive and easy way, as well as showcasing our progress. Even though there was enthusiasm at the leadership level, there were several internal challenges to overcome. The interactive map interface is a key feature of the watershed web pages as it allows users to easily find their watershed. As a user hovers their mouse pointer over the map, the watershed they are over is highlighted, including pop-ups on the map of the larger cities in the watershed. The cities feature was developed in recognition that many people do not know what watershed they live in. It was determined that people would be able to orient themselves readily by the use of city pop-ups, while at the same time being educated as to their watershed address. 3

4 Significance The watershed webpages give a strong geographic context to watershed project information. The pages now bring multiple projects and their related data all together in one place for a given watershed. The stakeholders served are the watershed project managers giving them a tool to organize and present the work going on in the watersheds; local water resource managers and citizens - who now have a central place to go to for watershed information and data. This was an opportunity to take their vision of new watershed pages and wrap it around the new data tools making them user-friendly for all audiences (general and technical.) To do this we knew we had to: Allow citizens to find their watershed easily, as many people do not know which one they live in. Develop a one-stop-shop. Give a general overview and provide opportunities to drill down into more technical information. Create pages in a way that are adaptable and allow for growth from the long-term data integration project. Showcase pages at the Legislature to show the data integration project s progress. Benefits The watershed web pages are located at The new web pages provide the following benefits: Clickable watershed map click on any watershed and it will take you to that watershed s page. If you do not know your watershed, you can type in your city. Tabbed approach allows users to go to the section that is most relevant to them. Majority of the data integration project information is captured in the restoration and protection tab technical information presented in a way that allows for people to see what the impairments are, what projects are going on, etc., without visiting multiple pages or trying to locate databases on the MPCA site. The web pages are easy to update and flexible. New needs can be easily accommodated. Non-Flash interactive map (image map tied to a database). 4

5 Use of tabs organizes lots of information and data, and to present the least techie content first. Templates that power these tabs are simple and allow for easy modification of UI Example 5

6 6