You’ve probably heard the scare stories about automation cutting swathes through traditional employment. Artificial intelligence (AI) can now even write news reports – so could content designers who create clear, easy to use information on GOV.UK also find themselves redundant?
Chris Howes (Defra group Chief Digital and Information Officer) reflects on the Sustainable Technology Annual Report (published 9 October 2019).
The Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales are responsible for providing flood warning information to people at risk of flooding in England and Wales. One of the main ways we do this is by sending free automated voice calls. We’ve recently improved this part of the service by switching to Amazon Polly.
Content written in the active voice helps users understand what they have to do to complete tasks. It reduces confusion by making it clear who is responsible for every action.
Over the past year the Environment Agency’s Flood Information Service has been working with Google and their Google Public Alerts system, to create an enhanced flood information platform. We can now proudly say that we are the first UK authority to push flood warnings through Google’s online notification platform.
We had some super pitches to us as ‘Digital Dragons’ in the ‘Pitch to Prototype’ session (at the Flood and Coast 2019 event). So what next?
Cathy Dutton (Interim Head of Interaction Design) reflects on setting up a User Centred Design Community of Practice (COP) for a small team at Defra’s Warrington digital hub.
I’m looking forward to being with dragons - no sadly nothing to do with Game of Thrones - but instead, taking part in the Flood and Coast 2019 ‘Digital Dragons' competition. Something of an honour and a privilege I have to say.
Mattie Yeta, Sustainability Lead, provides an update on the latest meeting of the Joint Sustainable Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) group including a discussion about urban mining and their industry best practice guide.
With this year’s Flood and Coast 2019 Conference getting ever closer to its go live date (June 18), it’s time to pull the cover off the show-stopping, new style ‘Let’s get digital’ final day of the event.
