Transcript No Slide Title

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
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 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’
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 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
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 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
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
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
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 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
building a content management system
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
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 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
building a content management system
resources
Office of the E-Envoy - www.e-envoy.gov.uk
Depository of large number of documents relating to metadata, xml schemas etc
Govtalk - www.govtalk.gov.uk
Discussion boards plus documents which are currently being consulted on
Dublin Core Metadata Initiative - www.dublincore.org
Everything you ever wanted to know about metadata but were afraid to ask
Tomatoes are not the Only fruit
http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/documents/Tomatoes%20are%20not%20the%20only%20fruit%202002-12-19.pdf
Very good introduction to thesaurus, taxonomies, metadata by Maewyn Cummings
Pan Government Thesuarus Workshop http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/documents/Workshop%20Report.doc
Workshop report by Stella Dextre Clarke which has a lot of useful insights
SeamlessUK - www.seamless.org.uk
Creating a thesaurus and interface for content
Ukonline - www.ukonline.gov.uk - search ‘government’ for lots of resources
APLAWS Pathfinder - www.aplaws.org.uk
Information about the project, plus all the project products, including a category lis
building a content management system
resources
http://vivisimo.com/
Vivisimo search engine - useful to look at clustered search results
http://labs.google.com/sets
Groups 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 XML
Johan Hjelm
Paperback - 304 pages (25 May, 2001)
John Wiley & Sons Inc; ISBN: 0471402591
Information Architecture for the World Wide Web
Louis Rosenfeld & Peter Morville
Paperback - 486 pages (3 September, 2002)
O'Reilly UK; ISBN: 0596000359
Philip and Alex’s Guide to Web Publishing
Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc
1999 ISBN: 1-55860-534-7
building a content management system