Developing a Unified Public Web Presence for a Disparate Public Sector Organization
Problem
A large, complex public sector organization with branch offices in every state and abroad had public-facing websites with inconsistent branding. The lack of consistency in the look, feel, and functionality of geographical office sites made it difficult for users to locate specific content and was detrimental to the public perception of the organization as cohesive and unified.
The organization had formally tasked members of the Public Affairs Office (PAO) with the responsibility for reviewing all public-facing content and ensuring quality assurance with the security, accuracy, and propriety of published content in conjunction with established policy guidelines. The old system allowed webmasters to publish content on behalf of functional content owners without including the involvement of PAO in content review. Additionally, this system had no built-in method for ensuring the relevance of dated information.
Lastly, this wide array of organizational websites was hosted on costly web servers distributed across the country.
Approach
Synteractive met with PAO to design an extensive governance document wherein guidelines for a new system with consistent branding were clearly set. These guidelines defined a consistent look and feel, site structure, set of page layouts and applications that would be used across all sites. As new requirements were requested, changes to the overall look and feel can be deployed across all sites by an Enterprise Web Change Control Board.
The new system was built using Microsoft SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. In its user-friendliness, MOSS provided an opportunity for functional content owners, who were more familiar with the subject matter, to create and edit web site content, eliminating the need for an intermediate webmaster. After site changes are made, they are submitted to a designated set of content approvers from PAO who can instantly publish approved site content to the Internet.
The new system was built using two web servers, consolidating the computing power to bi-regional data processing centers.
Result
By defining a consistent branding and implementing this change across the enterprise, the organization achieved a cohesive web presence. Through the use of MOSS 2007, functional content editors were able to easily maintain team content before submission to PAO. The required approval step allowed for the inclusion of mandated data policy measures so PAO could ensure the quality and timeliness of all information on public display.
By reducing the disparity of servers, Synteractive increased the efficient use of the organization’s powerful hardware while reducing the cost of software licenses and minimizing the number of required technology professionals for maintaining the hardware. Above all, these server consolidations lead to increased security.