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Scottish Government intranet is two years old

January 22, 2019 by kirstenboag No Comments | Category Our work

It’s been two years since the new look Saltire – the Scottish Government’s digital workplace – went live.
We worked hard to turn our bursting-at-the-seams, outdated intranet into a slick, user-focused site, and the work didn’t stop when we launched. Since then we’ve made many more improvements, a lot of which came from staff suggestions.

We’ve created new homepage apps such as the ‘Need to know’ (a quick checklist of crucial news and info for staff) added a rotating homepage promotional banner and improved search. We’ve introduced a workflow to help keep content up-to-date and improved the commenting functionality on news stories. We’ve already done loads, and there’s much more in the pipeline.

One change we’ve made recently helps new users make the most of Saltire. The introductory tour and welcome checklist opens automatically for new users and shows them around the site.

Global award winners

In 2017 the site won a Step Two Gold Award, recognising our

• homepage apps, which save time by helping people to complete tasks more quickly
• clear, simple and concise content and improved search
• shared service model which supports eight executive agencies and saves public money

There’s been a huge amount of interest from people in the intranet/digital workplace world and, over the last year, we’ve been invited to promote the Scottish Government at intranet events all over Europe (check us out!).

One of the things people are fascinated by is the fact that while Saltire is essentially one intranet, there are eight additional versions of the site for our executive agencies like Transport Scotland and Disclosure Scotland. This number is soon to rise to 10 when we welcome Scottish Forestry and Forest and Land Scotland in April. Each site has the same look and feel, but they all have their own branding and news.

Not only are we delivering a service to up to 15,000 users – our shared service means the agencies have been able to create their own bespoke sites at minimal cost, saving public money.

In the past there was a tendency to ‘launch and leave’ a new website but we’ve remained focussed on continuous improvement. We make regular incremental changes, test ideas and use analytics and insight to inform the next update. Our plan is for the site to keep evolving, giving people a great user experience, and make sure content is accurate and clear, with easy access to other corporate systems.

We’ve achieved a lot in the past two years and we’re proud of what we’ve done, all of which have helped provide an all-round better user experience. We hope the next couple of years will be just as successful.

Tags: Communications, Digital Communictions, digital workplace, intranet

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