1
A Web Strategy for Princeton
Report of the Web Strategy Task Force
Introduction
In the spring of 2001, a task force was assembled to examine how Princeton was using the World Wide Web and to propose a strategy, or at least elements of a strategy, for how it might use it in the future to support its programs of teaching and research, to conduct its administrative activities, and to communicate with and serve a wide variety of audiences both internal and external to the University. Although the task force learned a great deal about ways in which faculty members and students use the Web in their research and as part of the teaching program, the focus of the task force was not on individual use of the Web for academic purposes, but on use by departments and offices of the University to achieve their missions and by the University as a whole as a central element of an overall program of engagement with the many constituencies of the University and the broader public.
The members of the task force are listed in Appendix A and on the website developed by the task force at The task force was initially chaired by Bob Durkee, vice president for public affairs, who was later joined as co-chair by the University’s newly arrived vice president for information technology and chief information officer, Betty Leydon.
The initial charge to the task force was as follows:
1. Identify the audiences (internal and external) with which the University seeks to communicate and do business via the Web and elucidate both their goals and our goals for those interactions.
2. Compile an up-to-date inventory of the ways in which the University currently communicates and does business via the Web and an assessment of their effectiveness.
3. Propose a strategy for improved and expanded University use of the Web and policies, guidelines, and an appropriate administrative structure for carrying it out (including recommendations regarding staffing, reporting relationships, accountability, oversight, etc.). Answer the question: What do we want to be sure people can find and do via the Web and what kind of experience do we want them to have?
4. Specifically, consider:
a) the mission, design, and content of the University's home page, including all links directly from that page.
b) the design, content, and responsibility for maintaining pages that are one or two levels removed from the home page.
c) the possible development of rules, templates, or guidelines for other University-related pages, whether individual offices or programs should be required to maintain pages, and, if so, according to what standards.
d) the nature and number of University-related portal pages.
e) the websites of offices that attract an especially large number of visitors (including websites related to admission and financial aid).
f) relationships with pages commissioned by the University but maintained outside the University, such as the athletics home page.
g) possible e-commerce opportunities, implications, and concerns.
h) policies regarding webcasting.
i) the status of efforts to develop a University-wide calendar.
5. The task force needs to be aware of uses of the Web for internal administrative purposes and for academic purposes, but those are not the principal areas on which it will focus.
Organizational Phase
The task force began its work with a series of eye-opening meetings in which staff members from the Office of Information Technology (OIT) and other offices demonstrated the many ways in which Princeton was already using the Web and the many resources already available to students, faculty, staff, and alumni. (Some of these presentations are available on the task force website.) Perhaps most striking about these early meetings was the degree to which everyone on the committee, even senior staff members of OIT, were unaware of all that was available, and the degree to which offices throughout the University were working on Web-related issues in isolation or duplication. There was an early consensus that, if nothing else, the task force could make an important contribution by encouraging cooperation, collaboration, and the sharing of information, and by increasing awareness throughout the University of the Web-based resources and services that were already available.
This report will not recount the many ways in which the Web is used, but it might be instructive to list the topics that were covered in these initial presentations: a history of the Princeton University Web; the Princeton home page; Web publishing; academics on the Web (through OIT and the Educational Technologies Center), including the creation of websites for all undergraduate courses and special projects for the Library, the Art Museum, and alumni educational programs; streaming media; independent departmental initiatives in the Woodrow Wilson School and the Library; independent outsourced initiatives in Athletics and the Alumni Council (TigerNet, which began in 1994, now has 19,000 alumni registered and 70 discussion groups); student Web space; e-commerce; portals, including the DEMAND (DEpartmental MANagersDesktop) portal for integrated access to administrative applications; P2K initiatives; calendars; database capabilities; legal issues (including privacy and intellectual property); Web security; content management; and technical infrastructure.
By late spring, the task force had made an initial attempt to organize its work, broadly categorizing the questions before it as follows:
Questions of Purpose: How does the University want to use the Web to support its programs of teaching and research; to conduct the business and administrative activity of the University, including e-commerce; to support the undergraduate and graduate admission processes; and for internal communication within the University community and external communication to a broad range of groups.
Questions Pertaining to Rules, Standards, Practices, etc.: Should we develop visual, organizational, content, design, technical, and legal standards and templates for “official” University websites (with the term “official” to be defined)? In which cases should their use be “mandatory”? When use is not mandated, what incentives should be offered? Should we create “recommended” vendor lists for outsourcing? How should we improve the design, content, and navigability of the University’s main home page? Can we better index the University website and adopt a better internal search engine? (Google was installed as the internal search engine shortly thereafter, to general approbation.) Who should be responsible for content management of individual office or departmental websites?
Questions Pertaining to Support for Web Use: What resources are necessary (staff, servers, software) to support greater use of the Web? If the University sets standards and expectations, what must it do to enable users to meet them? Can we provide adequate training and technical support for developing and maintaining websites? Can we develop simple and flexible tools for Web design and content management that can be applied with a minimum of technical sophistication? Can we provide graphic design support for creating, embellishing, and modifying websites? Can we develop policies and procedures for authentication and security so that information is accessible to those who should have access and inaccessible to those who should not? Can we develop an administrative and policy structure for overseeing and managing Web use?
Working Groups
In June 2001, the task force took two important steps: it welcomed Betty Leydon to its deliberations and it created working groups to develop recommendations in five areas in which it had decided to concentrate its efforts. The five groups, with their chairs and charges, were as follows:
Group I: Outreach and Assessment (Lauren Robinson-Brown and Lorene Lavora)
Mission: Inform the University community of services available to them to use the Web to communicate and conduct business; and
Assess the desirability of Princeton supporting other potential uses that are currently available elsewhere or are likely to become available in the foreseeable future.
Group II: Policy (Bob Durkee, Betty Leydon)
Mission: Develop a set of policy statements to guide University Web usage; and
Evolve into a Web Policy Council composed of senior-level providers and users that would provide continuing policy guidance and help set priorities and resolve disputes.
Group III: Design and Standards (Hank Dobin, Serge Goldstein)
Mission: Define what is meant by an official University website and the nature and level of support to which such sites are entitled;
Create a set of basic technical standards and tools that all University websites could incorporate and propose which, if any, should be mandatory;
Create a University style guide, design templates, and content management programs that can be used by creators and managers of University websites;
Develop policies and procedures for training and assistance for those managing a University website; and
Recommend strategies for dealing with issues of security, legal requirements, access for those with disabilities; etc.
Group IV: Home Page (Lauren Robinson-Brown, Lorene Lavora)
Mission: Assess both internal and external user satisfaction with the home page and its key links by conducting a survey to understand what users are seeking and how successful they are; and
Thoroughly review the structure, organization, design, content, and ease of navigation of the home page and work with the Communications office as it develops an improved arrangement for the page.
Group V: Transactions (Nancy Costa, Van Williams)
Mission: Research, share expertise, and make recommendations regarding transactional, i.e. “doing business,” rather than information-providing aspects of the Web, including e-commerce, ticket sales, student admissions, job applications, library uses, forms, etc.
The following sections of this report will describe the activities of the working groups. The expectation was that these groups would work through the summer, report back to the full task force in the fall, receive additional feedback, pursue additional work based on that feedback, and join with all members of the task force in developing a series of overall findings and recommendations. In fact, much of this happened. Each of the groups worked over the summer and posted materials on the website, and much of the work that began under the auspices of the working groups continues to this day. The task force as a whole did meet in the fall and drafted a set of overall recommendations that are presented at the end of this report. But two developments in the early fall deterred the task force from the full completion of its appointed rounds and delayed the preparation of this report.
One was the transformation of the newly renamed, and later thoroughly reorganized, Office of Information Technology under Betty Leydon’s leadership. To some extent, the Web Strategy Task Force had been created to begin a series of discussions and establish a set of working relationships in anticipation of the arrival of a new CIO, but always with the expectation that the new CIO would then take on principal long-term responsibility for articulating a Web strategy for the University. Others, of course, also need to play an active role in developing and carrying out such a strategy, including importantly the academic leaders of the University, those responsible for its overall communications strategy (including the vice president for public affairs and the director of communications), and those responsible for its business activities (including the treasurer). One of the recommendations of the task force, which Betty has strongly endorsed, is that there should be regular ongoing consultation with a group like the task force, and there also should be periodic consultation with other users, including faculty and students. The more Betty and the offices reporting to her became engaged in Web-related issues (as we hoped would be the case), the more the work of the task force was integrated into more regularized channels. This was a positive development, but it did alter the role and nature of the task force.
The second major development, or more accurately succession of developments, that delayed the work and the report of the task force were the attacks of September 11 and the discovery of anthrax in Princeton’s local post office. These developments preempted many regular University activities, and fully consumed the time and energies of many who were leading the working groups and the task force. The University’s response to these events demonstrated the enormous power of the Web in times of crisis as a mean of conveying information, building a sense of community, and carrying out the work of the University. But we were also reminded that while the Web dramatically amplifies human capacity, its effective (and sensitive) use depends on human talents, energies, and judgment, and that as user expectations increase, so too do the demands on the staff who design the Web, fill it with content, and make it work.
As already mentioned, the following sections of this report describe the work of the working groups. The concluding section conveys the recommendations of the task force as a whole.
Policy
Both the task force and the policy group spent several meetings developing a draft policy statement that would guide the work of the other working groups and could be proposed to the University as a starting point for further discussions of Web strategy. The draft policy statement is as follows (and also attached as Appendix B):
WEB STRATEGY POLICY STATEMENT
Values
As an institution devoted to teaching and learning and a community devoted to scholarship and service, Princeton places high value on providing broad and easy access to useful, accurate, and up-to-date information and services via the Web and on expanding and improving its use of the Web to communicate with its many audiences and conduct its business. It is committed to excellence in content, design, and customer service, and to using the Web both to enhance its commitment to diversity and to build an ever stronger sense of community. To effectively carry out its commitments to excellence and expanded use, Princeton will need to dedicate the resources needed for systems infrastructure, development tools, and staff support and training. The University respects the individuality, freedom of expression, privacy, and creativity of individual users of the Web, while also committing itself to the highest possible standards of reliability, efficiency, security, ease of use, and technical support for providers and users. As a University with a distinctive identity and mission, Princeton expects that its websites will convey that distinctiveness—that they will have a look and feel that conveys a sense of the idea and the place that is Princeton.
Audiences
Princeton strives to communicate with and serve the following audiences through the Web: current students (undergraduate and graduate), faculty, and staff; prospective students, faculty, and staff; trustees; alumni; parents of students; current and prospective donors (alumni and non-alumni); the news media, broadly defined; opinion leaders; political officials (principals and staff, at local, state, and national levels); local residents; the general public.
Proposed Policies
To advance the University’s values, goals, and purposes, we propose the following policies for University use and management of the Web:
1. It is the University’s policy to encourage and support increasing use of the Web to communicate with internal and external audiences, to enhance programs of teaching and research, and to conduct the University’s business. This encouragement and support must include appropriate funding levels for systems infrastructure, developments tools, and staffing levels.
2. The University recognizes that some uses of the Web will supercede and substitute for existing practices while other uses will complement other means of communicating, conducting business, or engaging in teaching and research. It is the University’s policy to use the Web to replace existing practices when that can be done in a way that advances the University’s values, goals, and purposes.
3. It is the University’s policy to respect individual freedom of expression and to encourage creativity, individuality, and innovation in the use of the Web, but also to establish basic technical, design, content, and legal standards (including respect for copyright and accessibility requirements) for “official” University websites. Official websites would include those of University offices, departments, programs, task forces, and official events. These standards will include a requirement to have a Princeton “identity” (to be defined) and to be linked to the Princeton home page.