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 dont 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 building a content management system

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 dont 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 building a content management system

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 building a content management system

history of the web in local government its relatively new - local gov didnt 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 building a content management system

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 amount of information is increasing exponentially demands of users more sophisticated and complex higher expectations necessity to share / disseminate information from other providers building a content management system

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) building a content management system

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 arent necessarily good designers designer embodies information architecture, usability and accessibility and standards and conventions - many authors dont 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 building a content management system

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 users building 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 building a content management system

workflow and content management publishers editors authors workflow helps the publishers to control the information allows multiple authors of content facilitates version control controls life cycle of the information authoring - live - expire - archive building a content management system

importance of workflow information needs to be up to date / accurate large number of authors - smaller number of publishers building a content management system

APLAWS content management system core system written in Java J2EE Oracle database hardware architecture - internet http-----APACHE server | sun netra - resin | Oracle database building a content management system

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 building a content management system

content chunks individual chunks of info can be managed & re-used separately chunk of info = - logo - address - picture if changed once, change everywhere building a content management system

standards - xml / xslt part of e-GIF = interoperability = xml / xslt 99% of authors dont 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 building a content management system

standards - usability and accessibility 99% of authors dont 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 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 dont confusing for the user building a content management system

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 building a content management system

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 building a content management system

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 building a content management system

adding metadata can embed metadata into html page building a content management system

subject categorisation Government Category List APLAWS Category List - set of top level categories and levels two and three building a content management system

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 building a content management system

dynamic generation of content user doesnt 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 building a content management system

resources Office of the E-Envoy - Depository of large number of documents relating to metadata, xml schemas etc Govtalk - Discussion boards plus documents which are currently being consulted on Dublin Core Metadata Initiative - Everything you ever wanted to know about metadata but were afraid to ask Tomatoes are not the Only fruit Very good introduction to thesaurus, taxonomies, metadata by Maewyn Cummings Pan Government Thesuarus Workshop Workshop report by Stella Dextre Clarke which has a lot of useful insights SeamlessUK - Creating a thesaurus and interface for content Ukonline search government for lots of resources APLAWS Pathfinder - Information about the project, plus all the project products, including a category lis building a content management system

resources Vivisimo search engine - useful to look at clustered search results Groups information together on basis of search term - a good introduction to metadata and a dublin core metadata enter - type in a url and see what the metadata could be metadata tool to download from the internet - gives some indication of how to add Creating the Semantic Web with RDF and XML Johan Hjelm Paperback pages (25 May, 2001) John Wiley & Sons Inc; ISBN: Information Architecture for the World Wide Web Louis Rosenfeld & Peter Morville Paperback pages (3 September, 2002) O'Reilly UK; ISBN: Philip and Alexs Guide to Web Publishing Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc 1999 ISBN: building a content management system