Web Content and Online Communications Review
Salford City Council
Web Content and Online Communications Review
Version 1.0
Salford’s Intranet and Internet web sites have evolved to provide a credible and professional information resource for their respective user communities. There is considerable scope for enhancing both sites to deliver both interesting and interactive user experiences.
This paper scopes what I believe Salford City Council needs to do to develop our online services into useful information resources in terms of technology deployment and changes in working practices, and invites input from other business areas on the proposals made.
John Fox
Corporate Web Content Manager
Customer Services
23rd January 2002
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This document recommends that Salford City Council should:
- Implement a devolved web publishing solution to enable directorates to create and maintain their own web content on the salford.gov.uk domain.
- Implement a two-stage design strategy for both Intranet and Internet web sites.
- Provide managed Internet access for all members of staff.
- Implement a protocol governing the use and application of e-mail facilities.
- Define and communicate terminology to be used by staff and members when referring to the Intranet and Internet web sites.
- Implement online content plans to address key end user information needs.
- Promote the services available to the community on the Internet web site.
- Mandate key criteria within the new Corporate Communications Strategy to recognise the contribution that online information resources can make to deliver the Council’s six key pledges to the community.
- Establish a web management team to assume an advisory and bureau service for the Council’s directorates and elected members.
Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY______
PRESENT SITUATION______
Intranet site______
Enthusiasm for Change______
Look-and-Feel______
Internet web site______
Timeliness, Validity of Content______
Enthusiasm for Change______
Look-and-Feel______
Internet Access______
Global E-mails______
E-mail and Internet Usage Policy______
Terminology for online services______
WEB PUBLISHING______
Present situation______
The vision______
Devolving ownership to directorates______
Authoring strategy______
Organisational impact______
Human resources______
Financial investment______
WEB DESIGN______
Intranet______
Encourage user buy-in and regular usage______
Design Strategy______
Internet web site______
Corporate Identity______
Design Strategy______
REVIEW OF SITE CONTENT______
SOLAR______
SITE CONTENT PLANS______
Internet web site
Intranet
E-MAIL AND INTERNET USAGE STRATEGY______
E-mail Protocol______
Access to the Internet for All Staff______
MARKETING PLAN______
CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY______
HUMAN RESOURCES – WEB CONTENT MANAGEMENT______
Appendix 1______
Secondary content plan for salford.gov.uk______
Appendix 2______
Additional background resources______
PRESENT SITUATION
IntranetInternet web site
Internet Access
E-mail Usage
E-mail and Internet Usage Policy
Intranet site
The Intranet is currently available to staff in the Civic Centre and immediate satellite offices such as Minerva House. Approximately 2,500 Council staff have access to the Intranet (of which some 1,200 are able to access the Internet).
The quality, breadth and depth of Intranet content is generally good, though quantity varies between individual directorates. According to the site user statistics, most users appear to only use the Intranet to look up internal telephone numbers, to access the staff noticeboard and to read the jobs bulletin.
Enthusiasm for Change
There is widespread enthusiasm for further development of the Intranet to provide a business-relevant and staff-friendly information resource but this is currently hampered by a lack of self-governance for individual directorates. In short, there is too much reliance on IT Services to collate and publish content.
Web publishing is the biggest issue for the future development of the Intranet. Devolved web publishing needs to be introduced as soon as possible
Look-and-Feel
There is no logical site design, no corporate identity common to all pages. Whilst some are branded strongly with careful use of graphics, many are top heavy graphically, and still others have only plain text and minimal site navigation.
The Intranet lacks consistent navigation – for example, sets of pages are published but there is no straightforward means of moving forward or backward within a set of documents, or indeed sometimes even to return to the Intranet home page.
The overall look-and-feel of the Intranet needs to be addressed. There should be a minimal corporate identity. It is vital that the Intranet has an identity that is substantially different to the Internet web site and, in order to encourage staff take up of the service, the look-and-feel should have a fun element, at least to begin with. This will also assist staff who have regular contact with members of the public to differentiate between internal and external information
Internet web site
These comments are based on the Internet site design in use until 21st December 2001 when a revised home page and a new site A-Z Site Index were introduced to improve site navigation.
The content, design and depth of information available on the web site is altogether much better than the Intranet. This is only to be expected, but much needs to be done to develop the site into a useful information resource for the community, and as a self-promotion tool for the city as a whole.
Unhelpfully, navigation of the site is reliant upon the user understanding the directorate structure of the Council, which is an unreasonable presumption to make. For this reason some very good content on site has been difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint – for example “history of Salford”.
Timeliness, Validity of Content
There are examples of information having been published on the Internet site which are now clearly out of date, for example, the A-Z of Council Services.
This highlights the problem of only one department being responsible for the maintenance of site content. All content needs to be reviewed and where appropriate either updated or deleted.
Some pages on the web site are very cumbersome and over long. There is at least one example of a web page which, when printed out on paper, uses nine A4 pages.
There are a number of alternative web sites that have been developed by the Council – for example oninsalford.com, visitsalford.com and chapelstreet.org.uk. I understand that these have been developed for a number of reasons but ultimately each site detracts from the overall value to the community of the principal salford.gov.uk web site.
Each new web site created serves to dilute the perceived value of the salford.gov.uk web site to the community, because we are spreading the breadth of content/services available across numerous sites, instead of focussing on a one-stop shop delivery channel.
Since it is now impossible to reverse this process we should concentrate upon developing the principal web site such that it becomes a recognised and useful information resource for the community. There is no reason why the separate web sites should not be incorporated into the principal site over time.
The new corporate communications strategy (due end March 2002) must include our recommendations on the use of separate web domain names and provide guidance to directorates, both of which are discussed later in this document.
Enthusiasm for Change
In common with the Intranet site there is widespread enthusiasm for the development of the web site into a truly useful community information resource but this is currently not possible because self-maintenance by individual departments is not available. In short, there is 100% reliance on IT Services to collate and publish – and maintain - content.
Web publishing is thus the biggest issue for the future development of the web site. Devolved web publishing (“content management”) needs to be introduced as soon as possible.
Look-and-Feel
The current design is actually quite good, but the black background is depressing, the burnt red navigation bar is quite sombre and hyperlinks are not underlined. Site navigation is loose and inconsistent.
Our principal Internet web site must carry a strong corporate identity, whilst recognising the diverse needs of different directorates and target audiences. It is vital that the web site presents a strong, coherent identity that reflects the City Council. This assists staff who have regular contact with members of the public, helping them to differentiate between external and internal (Intranet) online information.
Internet Access
Not all staff have Internet access. There appear to various reasons for this, some historical, some financial and some possibly based upon a lack of understanding by senior management of tools that are available to effectively manage Internet access by staff.
Providing Internet access to our staff enables them to utilise numerous information resources in the public domain which are either difficult or costly to access via normal channels – for example, information from central government departments, other local authorities, online directory enquiries (significant cost saving potential), postcode lookup, environmental hazard audit searching, Land Registry, etc.
All web content available to City Council users is controlled by a product called Websense, which is maintained by IT Data Communications. Websense can limit Internet access, and - provided that appropriate policy guidance is in place to support employee Internet management - there should be no call for alarm by senior management. However, Websense needs to be administered more effectively than at present – this is discussed in more detail later.
Global E-mails
There are almost daily examples of inappropriate “global” mail messages being sent to all users in the organisation. Whilst the number of users permitted to do this is fairly restricted, content of such messages should be published on the Intranet not sent by e-mail.
E-mail and Internet Usage Policy
There is a Policy in place, which was revised in summer 2000. The document does not, though, take account of recent Human Rights legislation and needs to be revisited.
Terminology for online services
Anecdotal evidence suggests that individuals get confused between the differences between “Intranet” and “Internet” or between “web sites” and “web pages”. Mention “Intranet” to someone and they are likely to assume that you’re speaking about the web site, and vice versa.
To counter this, one needs to devise a name for either one or both services. We should hold an internal competition to get suggestions for a name for the Intranet, and perhaps use “SalfordWeb” for the web site (also consider registering the selected name as a trademark).
Further, and to stimulate a sense of corporate togetherness and ownership, it is important to educate users, publishers and senior management/members to the concept of a single web site for the organisation.
The easiest way to achieve this is to determine that salford.gov.uk is “the web site” and individual directorate’s mini-web sites are either “collections of web pages” or “information collections” or some other euphemism.
It is the expression “web site” that is most misleading and must be avoided if at all possible. Far better to tell someone to “look at Environment’s web pages” than “look at Environment’s web site”.
Recommended: define and communicate terminology to be used by all staff and elected members.
WEB PUBLISHING
Web publishing is the key to the ultimate future success of our Intranet and Internet web sites.
Present situationThe vision
Devolving ownership to directorates
Authoring strategy
Organisational impact
Human resources
Financial investment
Present situation
Content is created by originating users and given to IT Services by e-mail, floppy disk or on paper. The text is transferred to Microsoft FrontPage and thence published to the Intranet or web site as applicable. Individual business areas do not have the ability to publish direct to either site.
Specifically, for the web content published is added to a FrontPage template that follows the web site’s look-and-feel and an appropriate navigation bar is added to the left column of each page.
On the Intranet, new content is published using FrontPage but no definitive page template or look-and-feel is applied. There are many instances on the Intranet of pages that carry only a City Council logo and a link back to the home page. There are other examples where a completely different identity is given to the content – which, whilst far from unacceptable, indicates a lack of coherent publishing strategy.
The amendment of content on each site requires the relevant page to be re-loaded to the appropriate online service by IT Services. There is thus a requirement for the originating department to contact IT and for IT to undertake the amendment activity.
The limited publication process is further complicated by a requirement to use a single computer located in the R&D area as a result of restrictions imposed by IT Data Comms.
The vision
It is proposed that we implement a process whereby nominated users in individual directorates are able to publish direct to either the Intranet or web site from their own desktop using Microsoft Office. This can be achieved by utilising the pre-existing networked drive/file service in conjunction with a proprietary off-the-shelf web publishing application such as Transit Central™. Microsoft’s FrontPage is not suitable for a devolved web publishing deployment.
Transit Central (TC) enables an administrator to set up templates that recognise the characteristics of, for example, a Word document. TC then publishes the same Word document (after automatic formatting as a web page) to an Intranet or web site (or both) wrapping a “corporate” look-and-feel around the new page. Differing levels of automation and tailoring are possible.
One of the key benefits of Transit Central is the fact that authors continue to create content using familiar tools. Documents created in standard business formats such as Microsoft Office are the source material for the site. Although authored for print use, TC is able to optimise these documents for online use. This is known as single-source publishing.
With single-source publishing one original document is the governing authority but it can have many “looks” and purposes in an organisation. TC can be used to repurpose the content for each audience (eg Intranet and Internet) and use. Single-source publishing is a very different approach from models where authors creating a document are responsible for anticipating a web look, storing multiple sources and converting to or “saving as HTML”.
Manual conversion of content to HTML is not only tedious but creates a fundamental content management problem. The hand-tweaked HTML version tends to become a separate source document rather than simply a rendition of the original. Each change in content made by the author needs to be re-implemented in the HTML version, and for minor changes the effort may not seem worth it. It’s easy for web content to quickly become out of date and out-of-sync with the authored source. Furthermore, when documents are added using this process, navigation links to next and previous pages, and from reference documents such as tables of contents must be manually updated. Transit Central eliminates the costs associated with manual updates.
The philosophy behind TC is that content should be maintained from a single source, that is, in the authored format, regardless of the form of output. Then changes in the content need only be made once – by the author – allowing more timely updates of the web-published version and clarifying “ownership” of the content accuracy. Print and web versions of the content stay in sync. Moreover this shifts the burden of web publishing away from the present web team bottleneck and back to the authors. But the shift is subtle. Authors are completely shielded from HTML and continue to work in their standard editing applications.
TC repurposes content for online use. Customisable templates provide an administrator with:
Complete control over font sizes and colours, paragraph formatting, navigational constructs and buttons, and the inclusion or suppression of content.
The opportunity to transform and optimise content for on-screen delivery in standard browsers.
The ability to chop information into screen-size chunks (useful for large procedural manuals, for example).
A consistent look-and-feel of related web pages.
Multiple web presentations of the same original document for different audiences, or to provide unique layouts for viewing and printing.
A fast and easy way to maintain navigational links, tables of contents, and indexes when source documents are updated.
An easy and painless way to update web pages, so they remain in sync with source documents.
The administrator sets up an individual author and allocates a directory on networked drive where documents for publication can be placed. TC, working rather like a sausage machine, picks up the raw material periodically, and pushes out at the other end a web page that mirrors the source document (including images) but formatted for the web and with site navigation and design added automatically. The page is published to the site and placed in an identical directory. This means that the author can set up multiple web pages, all linked together, in advance of publication, and without any reference to the administrator.