introduction lewisham - population 250,000 council - employs 10,000+ strategic partners council =...

introduction

Lewisham - population 250,000

council - employs 10,000+

strategic partners

council = heirarchical - arcance language - jargon

council delivers over 700 different services

organised into depts, divisions, directorate

users = local people, visitors, students, businesses

don’t know or care where the services come from - as long as they work, are free or cheap and are there when the user wants them

building a content management system

modernising government

starts with the users - information demands based on enquiries, not on the heirarchical structure of the council

Increasing use of the web

Central Government believes services can be delivered online = 24/7/365 - in the long run could be cheaper.

Could be more effective - 80% of contact is for information

Government target of all services online by 2005

Also want ‘seamless’ and joined up services

Many services provided by multiple providers - problems getting the council to work together, let alone other organisations


example of social care

elderly person admitted to hospital - range of services and providers which now have to work together

huge number of people stay in hospital because nowhere else for them to go = very costly and a lot of people don’t like being there

service agencies which might deal with this - nhs, social services department, voluntary sector organisation, commercial organisation

if the information held all over the place, then it can be difficult to quickly get an overview of key facts, details etc

lots of other examples - which is why central government is trying to create something called ‘e-government’


e-government

e-government - all services online by 2005

certain criteria for this

e-GIF - e-Government Interoperability Framework

standards and guidelines for digital information

- data sharing - xml / xslt

- data structure / description - metadata / categorisation

- data accessibility and usability


history of the web in local government

its relatively new - local gov didn’t have the internet before the web

sharp learning curve for many organisations

cultural change - who does what?

political context - what to use it for?

greater demands being made by users - not just static information - want to be able to:

- pay for services - skip licences

- apply for services - eg student grant

- participate in decision making - consultation


creating web sites vs creating good web sites

html - relatively low entry level - first council web sites mix of vanity publishing and some core information - some are still like that

little attention paid to information management

even less attention paid to the user

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amount of information is increasing exponentially

demands of users more sophisticated and complex

higher expectations

necessity to share / disseminate information from other providers


information management

need to think of an information model

publishing strategy

information policy

what are the rules?

what is allowed / not allowed?

what is the tone?

how long does the information stay there?

how to make accessible to all sections of the community?

how to organise this information effectively?

how to store the information?

how does the user retrieve the information?building a content management system

static web sites

small internet - one person ran the DNS (Jon Postel)

static web sites satisfied a certain demand ( not least by authors)

too easy to publish badly

- web has grown

- amount of information has grown

- demands and expectations are greater

- services delivered more complex (think amazon)


easy / complex

easy for authors to use - basic templates - add their name, title, content, add word doc, image, map, audio

separate design from content - most authors aren’t necessarily good designers

designer embodies information architecture, usability and accessibility and standards and conventions - many authors don’t understand this

separate design and content means that design is controlled centrally - this means that global changes are possible (in fact desirable)

design can then be corporate, global


why bother?

large organisations have corporate goals - sell a product, deliver a service

want to do these as effectively and low cost as possible

also have to look at the costs of doing this badly or getting it wrong:

- bad PR

- legal problems

- causing problems for people

- loss of business

- alienating customer base

- amount of time it wastes

- demoralising for staff and usersbuilding a content management system


storage - store all the content in a database

publishing - centralise the rules, distribute the tools

integration - with other systems, back office systems, other databases

categorisation - sort the information

search - across bulletin boards, files, forums, calendar

presentation - write once, read many (worm) - web, DPA, WAP, DiTV

collaboration - multiple authors

personalisation - portals / user experience

security - control levels of access

information management - enforce standards


workflow and content management

publishers

editors

authors

workflow

helps the publishers to control the information allows multiple authors of contentfacilitates version controlcontrols life cycle of the information

authoring - live - expire - archivebuilding a content management system

importance of workflow

information needs to be up to date / accurate

large number of authors - smaller number of publishers


APLAWS content management system

core system written in Java

J2EE

Oracle database

hardware architecture -

internet --------http-----APACHE server

|

sun netra - resin sun netra - resin

|

Oracle database


using a database

Oracle is used for APLAWS - but could use Postgres

for cms - database overlaid with management software

provides series of standard functions - referred to as library services:

- single point of access - through log-in procedure

- log-in security

- check in / check out - content only accessible to one person at a time

- version control


content chunks

individual chunks of info can be managed & re-used separately

chunk of info =

- logo

- address

- picture

if changed once, change everywhere


standards - xml / xslt

part of e-GIF = interoperability = xml / xslt

99% of authors don’t know what this means

get the xml generated from within the CMS / database

xslt used to provide the style sheets for the content

- serve up the same content in different formats for different channels

- create text only versions


standards - usability and accessibility

99% of authors don’t understand this

enforce the standards centrally, can provide easy to use sites for everyone

top level navigation - survey of all 33 London Boroughs:

- range of links 5 - 55+

- range of ways to describe terms:

jobs, vacancies, employment, work, labour

- lack of consistent top level navigation

- lack of consistent make up of pages - some have link to home, some don’t

confusing for the user


accessible web sites

basic set of rules to follow -

- use of alt tags

- written description of non-text resources

- ability to change size of text

- colour schemes of pages

- does the text make sense? (eg avoid ‘click here’)

again, enforce these through the cms

authors concentrate on producing content - the system provides the rules


metadata and categorisation

…go back to the information model

what is metadata?

- a way to describe information in structured way

- examples = tv guide, book catalogue

- e-GMS / e-GMF - e-Government Metadata Standard / Framework

- based on Dublin Core

- 21 elements

- element = title, author, keywords, description, copyright, publisher etc


do you need to use metadata?

one argument says no - free text searching is fine….…however…

how to search on non-text content? audio / video etc

metadata can be used to add descriptions about content which are not explicit in the content

metadata used through rdf / xml can be used to give semantic meaning to content


adding metadata

can embed metadata into html page


subject categorisation

Government Category List

APLAWS Category List

- set of top level categories and levels two and three


search category

use the categories to help organise the information at the point of production

can be added by a set of pull down menus:

top level category - education

level two - schools

level three - primary schools

can then create:

- bread crumb trials

- show the relationships between content


dynamic generation of content

user doesn’t need to know how all this works -

add the content using a template

template puts the content into the database

database is used to store the data

content can then be presented to the user in a variety of formats

- the key areas are dealt with by the database and the cms

- the standards are built into the system

- xml dynamically generated

- metadata can be automatically created

- consistent look and feel is created


resources

Office of the E-Envoy - www.e-envoy.gov.ukDepository of large number of documents relating to metadata, xml schemas etc

Govtalk - www.govtalk.gov.ukDiscussion boards plus documents which are currently being consulted on

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative - www.dublincore.orgEverything you ever wanted to know about metadata but were afraid to ask

Tomatoes are not the Only fruithttp://www.govtalk.gov.uk/documents/Tomatoes%20are%20not%20the%20only%20fruit%202002-12-19.pdfVery good introduction to thesaurus, taxonomies, metadata by Maewyn Cummings

Pan Government Thesuarus Workshop http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/documents/Workshop%20Report.docWorkshop report by Stella Dextre Clarke which has a lot of useful insights

SeamlessUK - www.seamless.org.ukCreating a thesaurus and interface for content

Ukonline - www.ukonline.gov.uk - search ‘government’ for lots of resources

APLAWS Pathfinder - www.aplaws.org.ukInformation about the project, plus all the project products, including a category lis


resourceshttp://vivisimo.com/Vivisimo search engine - useful to look at clustered search results

http://labs.google.com/setsGroups information together on basis of search term

www.ukoln.ac.uk - a good introduction to metadata and a dublin core metadata enter - type in a url and see what the metadata could be

http://www.users.lantic.net/chow/dsd/darkstreet/metatag.htmlFree metadata tool to download from the internet - gives some indication of how to add

Creating the Semantic Web with RDF and XMLJohan HjelmPaperback - 304 pages (25 May, 2001) John Wiley & Sons Inc; ISBN: 0471402591

Information Architecture for the World Wide WebLouis Rosenfeld & Peter MorvillePaperback - 486 pages (3 September, 2002) O'Reilly UK; ISBN: 0596000359

Philip and Alex’s Guide to Web PublishingMorgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc1999 ISBN: 1-55860-534-7


introduction lewisham - population 250,000 council - employs 10,000+ strategic partners council =...

Documents

static information

information management

information architecture

information search

core information

information government

users information demands

council web sites