UK Health & Safety Executive sets intranet standard

The UK Health & Safety Executive (HSE) has become a role model for the rest of UK government - at least where intranets are concerned.

Speaking on the role of intranets in government at an Intracus workshop this week, HSE intranet project manager, Kenny Macdonald, shared the secrets of his success. His intranet - completed last month - reaches 4,200 staff and cost around £300,000 in total.

He said: "I recommend you choose a suitably skilled and experienced technical partner for the job. Secondly - run a pilot scheme. You're going to learn an awful lot from that and you're going to be able to sell the idea to people within the organisation. Thirdly - give people a reason for going to the intranet when it goes live. Ours was a staff directory. There could be other ideas.

"Lastly, I'd suggest you tightly control the quality of information on the site, because there's going to be nothing more off-putting than people asking a question of the site and it delivering 95 per cent irrelevant material."

Representatives from government agencies who heard him were impressed. A source within the Department for Environment, Transport & the Regions (DETR) said: "We tried to do this, but people can't find things on our intranet. Our experience completely contrasts with the HSE's."

He said DETR staff did not want to use the intranet and that many of their PCs were not configured to view it properly.

Sandra Baker, senior Net manager at Sport England, which allocates lottery funds for sport, said: "My biggest problem is making the intranet work internally. It's difficult to push that cultural shift within the organisation."