1. University of Birmingham 7 th Institutional Web Managers Workshop: Supporting our Users David R Supple - University of Birmingham Bridging a Continent

2. University of Birmingham Session Overview Part 1 of 2 part session Workshop with Ian Upton, Corporate Web Team on how Strategic Overview –Culture of Chaos –Institutional context –University of Birmingham web –UoB web strategy – gaining the high ground –Strategic development path –Content strategy –Portal strategy –Portal integration –Questions

3. University of Birmingham Culture of Chaos Control Results Focussed Responsible Corporate Freedom Technology Focussed Fickle Individual

4. University of Birmingham Institutional Context Founded in 1900 27,000 FTE students Research based institution. 5 th in country for research excellence £280m turnover 6000 members of staff Member of: Russell Group Universitas 21

5. University of Birmingham 250k + html pages? 500+ content authors 300+ web servers Fixed IP address campus network – 17,000 points of access No firewall 6.6 million distinct visitors a year to corporate pages alone Distributed content generation Highly devolved political campus University of Birmingham Web Presence

6. University of Birmingham UoB Corporate Web Team Manager Web Developer x2 (now x3) Web Editor x2 Originally set and up to languish in External Relations Re-setup as part of Corporate Information Services (MIS) January 2000

7. University of Birmingham UoB Web Strategy: Gaining the high ground. Strategies to take control Birmingham’s External Strategic Web Review c1999 Lipmann Hearne: – Organizational structure that centralises technical web services such as application development, hosting and supporting web coordinators in schools and departments – Increase training and support for these web coordinators – A cohesive, comprehensive web program within the context of the University’s devolved management structure – Development of the infrastructure to create and sustain a strong web strategy program.

8. University of Birmingham Web Strategy.... Other key recommendations: – Develop the web strategy as product – Develop the service – “Sell” the solution – Make sure the strategy is totally inclusive – Taking leadership – Developing best of breed “Ally” sites – Developing a community – Leveraging legal and commercial issues to tackle difficult “sales” SENDA, DPA, FOI, copyright, IPR, etc...

9. University of Birmingham Infrastructure New Hardware Environment Features: 6 new dual processor servers Hardware load balancing setup All IIS / Win 2k “Hardened IIS build” :) £35k £15k ongoing Naming schema from Royal Bengal Restaurant, Earlsdon http://www.royal-bengal.co.uk

10. University of Birmingham A Focused Environment Web servers that serve web Databases servers that serve databases Standardised Productionised Locked down Isolated Documented Anti-guru philosophy (no offence to any gurus present!)

11. University of Birmingham Template Environment

12. University of Birmingham Template Environment An environment, not just a set of base html files: The templates uses Server Side Includes to enable changes to be made to the website globally. The template provides two levels of SSI, global and local. Global SSI’s contain elements that are common to the whole of the University website and the Local SSI’s contain elements specific to a school or department. For example, the ‘fading background title graphic’ and the graphic at the top right corner of the page can be set locally. Web coordinators are responsible for local SSI’s New virtual domain structure of www.xxx.bham.ac.uk

13. University of Birmingham Template Environment Results: Pages have a consistent look and feel and have a common navigation bar making the site much easier to navigate. It is much easier to create web pages, authors are freed up from having to create the complex HTML needed to define the navigation bars and other look and feel elements. Authors have more time to concentrate on page content.

14. University of Birmingham Distributed Site Management FrontPage Server Extensions 2002 Devolved site management allows coordinators to: Change users passwords Add / remove users Administer subwebs

15. University of Birmingham Internal Selling Drove the strategy hard and fast and politically at every opportunity – didn’t take no for an answer. Balance of over committing – 3 year project and a queue! Project planning Ally sites, demonstrate and apply peer pressure Willingness to commit, and a certain degree of trust and autonomy for the team

16. University of Birmingham

20. At the 2 year point… Vastly increased level of consistency in navigation, look and feel 75% of corporate sites now in the corporate template – around 225 virtual domains Strong campus acceptance of web strategy – many bridges built and relationships rekindled New communication through web coordinator network However: – Poor standards compliancy, not even html compliant – Inability to re-task digital assets

21. University of Birmingham Birmingham’s Strategic Prerequisites

22. University of Birmingham Levelling the ground: Content Strategy Stop playing “catch-up” Understand common needs in content generation areas both internally and externally Lack of time Lack of funding Ease of technology rather than content focus Develop a strategy around: – Content value – Asset re-use Integration with Portal seen as key

23. University of Birmingham

24. UoB Content Strategy Challenges Standards –Implementing standards to legacy resources –Standardising access to federated resources –Using acceptable, simple, standards that are not cutting edge Content needs to be: –There! (obvious but needs to be said) –Relevant and easy to find content – increased content noise –Standardised –Accurate –Easy to discover Real world challenges of managing: Content ownership Content classification – will content classifiers will inherit the earth?

25. University of Birmingham Rebuilding the ground: Portal Strategy Taking the content further – developing more relationships with content creators and consumers A further dimension of process review, making the business an e-business from the ground up (webteams rebuilding businesses!) Data simplification not just integration Technologies to remove data noise through personalised environments Integrated e-learning environment to deliver MLE

26. University of Birmingham Key Internal Drivers for Portal Recognition of increasing academic and student time and workload burden Research – need for easy to access related resources and research administration Teaching and learning – requirement for delivered support and resources Marketing Quality assurance Administrative efficiency gains

27. University of Birmingham Key External Drivers for Portal Increased competition within HEI sector Increase in University enterprise activity Changes in student profiles – time and geographical access Portal interoperability drivers – interaction with key external agencies through Portal Increased focus on accessibility Portals to be offered by many if not most HEI’s Enterprise vendorware will provide web front ends

28. University of Birmingham What kind of Portal are we building? Enterprise Portal? Discovery or Knowledge Portal? Collaboration and Messaging Portal? Community Portal? We are actually building an e-business, rebuilding the institution for the inside out, with the Portal as a technical and cultural tool. Enterprise meets knowledge management? –Compound Portal –Enterprise centric, but with some essential community stickiness, and a taster of discovery to begin with –Extensions into collaboration A Portal that provides functionality but also pays the bills through its ROI.

29. University of Birmingham UoB Portal Content / Personalised Delivery Provision of personalised content streams is a cornerstone of our Portal strategy – building relevance to users But not at the expense of increasing: Costs per digital asset Administrative burden Academic Burden Data barricades –Or serving uncoordinated unmanaged content that is not authorized to be seen

30. University of Birmingham Identity Management One of biggest challenges is ID management to unite our discovery and enterprise identities Mapping of discovery assets against: –Multiple communities –Proliferated and redundant identities Resource and application identity silos for Enterprise applications User profile and control and administration –Need for devolved ID management for all aspects of the identity including profile –Coordination and accuracy of federated attributes –Privacy and security –Regulations and compliance

31. University of Birmingham Questions