Theme Management Committee Covid-April 27 2020 - Comité de gestion des thèmes Covid-27 avril 2020

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Agenda

1. Updates

2. HC PHAC update - Rob

3. Contact Us - Jennifer


Notes and action items

1. Updates

TBS

  • DTO Newsletter is going out tomorrow or Wednesday
  • Testing on the landing page was completed over the weekend, recommendations will go up for approvals next
  • Testing on CERB and CEWS continues along with ongoing recommendations coming out of that testing

Susan Harper (Health Canada)

  • Working on pushing landing page changes towards approval and implementation
    • Reduce the number of links and make way for whole-of-government perspective

2. HC PHAC update - Rob Wiebe

We've come a long way from when the COVID site launched in January. The site has grown through a few iterations and now it's really taken on a whole of government approach as more partner departments are involved and others come on board.

By most counts, the site has been extremely successful to date in terms of:

  • Increasing public awareness about COVID-19
  • Providing access to key services related to COVID-19
  • Supporting strategic partnerships around COVID-19

Milestones since the whole-of-government digital strategy and implementation plan were created in the middle of March:

  • Posted Epidemiological information online
  • Kicked-off partnership between HC/PHAC (as Theme Lead and Dept Lead), TBS-DTO, PP and PCO
  • Leveraged the TMC, daily at first, to support whole-of-Government updates and direction for web
  • Created and issued online information for employees
  • Launched COVID-19 Self Assessment App and Tool
  • Started up weekly Health theme meetings to ensure partners are up to date
  • Issued Dashboard that tracks the COVID outbreak
  • Issued an email notification system
  • Supported the launch of two apps (COVID-19 app, ArriveCan app) and the Mental Health portal
  • Posted data modelling
  • Added web updates to the ADM taskforce agenda as a weekly standing item shared by ADMs (HC and TBS)
  • Issued Public education material in 30+ languages

In terms of visits, the site was highly trafficked during the last few weeks of March into early April, with page views reaching 5-6 million per day. Since then, numbers have taken a downward trend.

Some more stats:

  • The top three pages are CRA’s Apply for Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), Service Canada’s Canada Emergency Response Benefit and the Outbreak update page, which includes the case map and links to the full epidemiological report (PDF), links to data tables on StatsCan site and the interactive dashboard of COVID-19 cases and deaths in Canada and the data and modelling to inform public health action (PDF)
  • Application for Employment Insurance benefits remains the top outbound link, but with less traffic
  • In the Virtual assistant, Increasing the Canada child benefit replaced Support for businesses within the top 5 list
  • Traffic from search engines remained at 52%, social media and other websites increased slightly and direct traffic (typed, bookmarks, emails etc.) decreased slightly
  • Traffic from Ontario and Quebec decreased slightly to 42% and 18% respectively, while BC and Alberta increased to 15% and 12% respectively
  • The top downloaded PDF was the Daily Epidemiology update with 53k downloads
  • Slight decrease in mobile traffic from 61% to 60%
  • The Self-assessment tool app has 448k users to date and the Self-Assessment Tool Website has received over 4.2M visits

Regarding overall site management, we have 5 key factors that we keep in mind as we develop, issue and onboard content.

We want to the site to:

  1. adhere to accessibility standards
  2. be easy to use and understand from the users' perspective
  3. be easy to update and maintain
  4. perform reliably under load
  5. work properly in different environments, e.g., low bandwidth, with different browsers & operating systems, etc

We’ve proposed governance for managing the main page. We hope it will provide us a clear framework in which to manage link placement, number of links per category, linking out to the 3rd party products and content lifecycle.

We're working collaboratively with Service Canada (apps and email notification), TBS (UX, recommended tweaks to improve usability), ESDC (virtual assistant), Finance + CRA (response benefits) and other departments (INAC for Indigenous focus, GAC for travel content, CBSA for ArriveCan, etc.) to integrate their COVID-related content and optimize the whole-of-GC presence.

Challenges and how we've addressed them:

  • Accessibility and Usability

We've had to issue PDFs, PPs, dashboards and link to 3rd party apps and sites that aren't accessible. These come to us quickly and we have little time to prepare in advance.

The Daily Epidemiology update - this is a PDF and it is our top downloaded PDF

The COVID outbreak tracker had issues with respect to accessibility, usability and mobile. We had to release it on short notice and then made improvements once it was available to the public. We also linked to the data tables and made a mobile version after the tracker was pushed live.

Data modeling information - this has been tricky to manage. So far we’ve posted a PP deck in PDF. The process to complete and approve the content means it comes to us last minute; doesn't give us a lot of time to do an accessible HTML version. Requires context and complex long descriptions (interpretations) that take time to prepare and don’t come to the team in a timely way.

To address these challenges, we are accelerating the creation of an html accessible version of the Daily Epidemiology report and data modeling portal that can be updated automatically. The hope is that once this version is technically ready and has caught up to current modeling trends issued by the department, it won't take much to keep up to date as the graphs don't seem to change significantly from week to week.

We also did some socialization and are getting in early on projects now. For example, we are releasing another Dashboard this week. Since we got in early, we were able to influence accessibility and usability fixes and create the necessary links for the data release with StatsCan and OpenData.

  • Issuing data

The key numbers around cases, number of people tested, probable cases, confirmed cases, deaths, that appear on different pages of the site, for example, the main page, the outbreak page, in the map and in the different reports that are being generated and issued were updated manually every day.

A few times, due to entry error, timing, backend coordination for when the data was available, the numbers would differ on different pages. And depending on when the page was viewed, conflicting numbers made their way into the public environment either through the Minister, CPHO or the media.

To address this issue, work was done on automation. Over the period of a few weeks, all values/graphs/tables on the site were designed so they could be updated automatically. Improvements on coordination and data entry were also made on the backend to make it quicker/easier for data entry and to have a number of values auto-calculated to reduce the chance of transcription error.

The work will further reduce the risk of having inaccurate, out of date information on the website and will free up hours of work daily for those on the different teams.

  • Extreme volume, evolving content and guidance

The COVID situation is changing so fast and the advice to Canadians is changing quickly along with it. The team needs to be able to get content updates out as quickly as possible, in the best way we can while managing numerous competing priorities. Every day brings new challenges and we have little lead time when new content is required.

At the same time, our work environment has completely changed and we have had to adjust to a new way of working remotely while maintaining the same high level amount of work. We are living COVID-19 for long hours at work and also have to deal with COVID-19 impacts on families and daily activities afterwards.

Due to the speed under which we have to work and the long hours that we're all putting in, there have been a few cases where content was issued that shouldn't have been. It needed to be changed online immediately or pulled down urgently.

To help with priorities and approvals, we worked internally to get a better handle on what is priority content, e.g., health and safety, linked to ministerial announcement, and created a hybrid approval process that sees priority content get a different level of scrutiny than non priority content and go through one point of approvals. It's only been a week but it's going well. And it has the added benefit of helping to manage priorities for the team in that non priority content does not often need to be issued after hours.

Positive outcomes in terms of collaboration and innovation:

  • We've built up capacity
  • We are better able to prioritize
  • We are putting in place governance for the main page
  • We have guidance that helps us streamline efforts and approvals
  • We're making some changes / improvements to the site based on metrics
  • We’re thinking forward, identifying big pieces that are coming our way
  • There is a better understanding of each team’s roles and responsibilities and expertise

What's next?

  • Hoping to have the governance for the main page approved this week
  • Building out a new topic page for PPE and medical supplies
  • Looking at how to optimize the main page to ensure that the top of the page is used for one top task and that we have guidelines to manage
  • More dashboards / maps are coming
  • Automate the daily epi report and the data modeling content
  • There's a kids' game on the way - similar to a game developed for the Canadian Space Agency – Mission: Astronaut. The goal of the game is to equip children with necessary information and insights to not only help in reducing anxiety and uncertainty around the pandemic, but also to give them the know-how to take preventative actions.

Even though everyone is apart and working long hours remotely from home while juggling family/work/impacts of pandemic, there is an extraordinary spirit of collegiality, collaboration and an overall sentiment of “we’re in this together.

We’re working collaboratively with other teams and departments in an agile way. Lines are blurred across teams and focus is on getting things done so Canadians have the latest.

The collaboration and support within the department and with partners is amazing and the expertise that everyone brings have created an exceptional COVID-19 site that we all can be proud of.

If you have any questions, email Rob Wiebe.

3. Contact Us - Jennifer Mealing (DTO)

Redesigning Contact us pages to reduce the number of people spending hours on the phone or waiting days for an email back. Canadians can find answers easily:

  • Contact us HC PHAC (Prototype)
  • 1-800 page
  • Contact us with CERB - CRA
  • ESDC Contact us page

Started working on Contact us with Health Canada and PHAC in March 2020. Approach for all the contact pages has been similar:

  • Understanding what top call drivers are
  • Based on our Contact us optimization project with CRA
  • As the situation changes, the Contact page has to be updated as often as weekly based on the call drivers
  • Monitoring daily and working on the prototype
  • Phone number is placed down the page, using the expand/collapse pattern - accessible, but self-serve options are more prominent

Peter noted: before anyone says "but these look like FAQs" - they are , but this is probably the *one* use case where a FAQ makes sense -- after they've already made the decision to pick up the phone :)

Links to the prototype will be posted on Slack.

Multidisciplinary team worked really well. Working with call centre and subject matter experts really helped to.

Celeste: We should create a deck about this success story of tying in multiple types of data and then usability testing to improve outcomes for Canadians. Great for senior management.

4. Discussion on the Department for Women and Gender Equality (WAGE) and where it lands in IA

  • Currently providing data for researchers, not content for victims
  • If content for victims is developed, could fit somewhere related to health - more discussion needed


Ordre du jour

1. Mises à jour

2. Mises à jour de SC ASPC - Rob

3. Contactez-nous - Jennifer


Notes et actions à prendre

1. Mises à jour

SCT

  • Le bulletin d'information du BTN sortira demain ou mercredi
  • Les tests sur la page principale ont été réalisés au cours du week-end, les recommandations seront prochainement soumises à approbation
  • Les tests sur la PCU et la SSUC se poursuivent, ainsi que les recommandations suite aux tests

Susan Harper (Santé Canada)

  • Travaille à faire avancer les changements de la page principale vers l'approbation et la mise en œuvre
  • Réduire le nombre de liens et faire place à une perspective pangouvernementale

2. Mises à jour de Santé Canada - Agence de la santé publique du Canada (Rob Wiebe)

  • Insert or link to Rob’s notes
  • Si vous avez des questions, envoyez un courriel à Rob Wiebe

3. Contactez-nous - Jennifer Mealing (BTN)

Nouvelle conception des pages Contactez-nous afin de réduire le nombre de personnes passant des heures au téléphone ou attendant des jours pour recevoir une réponse par courriel. Les Canadiens peuvent trouver facilement des réponses :

  • Contactez-nous de SC ASPC (Prototype)
  • Page 1-800
  • Page Contactez-nous de la PCU - ARC
  • Page Contactez-nous d’EDSC

Nous avons commencé à travailler sur la page Contactez-nous avec Santé Canada et l'ASPC en mars 2020. L'approche pour toutes les pages de contact a été similaire :

  • Comprendre les principaux facteurs d'appel
  • Basé sur notre projet d'optimisation de la page Contactez-nous avec l'ARC
  • Au fur et à mesure de l'évolution de la situation, la page Contactez-nous doit être mise à jour aussi souvent qu'une fois par semaine en fonction des facteurs d’'appel
  • Suivi quotidien et amélioration du prototype
  • Le numéro de téléphone est placé en bas de la page, en utilisant un modèle afficher/masquer (aussi appelé accordéon) - disponible, mais les options en libre-service sont plus importantes

Peter a noté : avant que quelqu'un ne dise "mais cela ressemble à des FAQ" - c'est le cas, mais c'est probablement le cas d'une *unique* utilisation où une FAQ a un sens - après qu'ils aient déjà pris la décision de téléphoner).

Des liens vers le prototype seront publiés sur Slack.

L'équipe multidisciplinaire a très bien fonctionné. La collaboration avec les experts du centre d'appel et les experts en la matière a vraiment aidé.

Céleste : Nous devrions créer une présentation sur cette réussite qui consiste à relier plusieurs types de données et à effectuer des tests d'utilisabilité pour améliorer les résultats pour les Canadiens. C'est parfait pour la haute direction.

4. Discussion le ministère des Femmes et de l’Égalité et leur place dans l'AI

  • Nous fournissons actuellement des données aux chercheurs, mais pas de contenu pour les victimes
  • Si un contenu destiné aux victimes est élaboré, il pourrait être adapté à un domaine lié à la santé - il faut en discuter davantage
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