Institutional Web Management
Workshop 2003
Supporting Our Users
Steve Musgrave
12 th June, 2003

Institutional Web Management
Workshop
Community Portals
Steve Musgrave
12 th June, 2003

A False Dawn over the
Field of Dreams

A False Dawn over the
Field of Dreams
“If you Build it they will Come”

Three Intertwined Strands
• Telematics
• Information Engineering
• Social Science
When computer networks link people as well as machines they become social networks
(Garton et al 1997)

False Dawn over the Field of
Dreams
• Analyses the attributes of community portals
• Considers the business drivers
• Questions the sustainability of such portals
• Suggests a likely direction that portal evolution may take.

Why, What and Who questions
• Why are communities on-line?
• What are Community Portals providing?
• What are the distinguishing features?
• Who are the content providers?

Research Questions
• What are the elements, characteristics and emergent properties that constitute an effective portal for e-community development?
• What Telematic technologies and systems are best suited to ‘portal’ delivery?

Research Survey
…..to gain an understanding of the:
• Drivers
• Benefits,
• Political arguments
• Technology applications

Survey Questionnaires
• 467 Local Authorities in UK
• 180 forms to IT Managers and e-Envoys
• 234 to Chief Exec’s fao Regeneration
Off’s
• 53 to Portal project managers.

Number of completed questionnaires
(467 Local Authorities) sent
IT Managers and e-Envoys 180 received
25
Chief Execs/Regen Off’s
234 128
Portal project managers 53 16
Follow-up calls 20 n/a

SOCITM Survey

SOCITM Categories
• Promotional
• Content
• Content Plus
• Transactional

SOCITM Top 10 Sites
• Camden, Hertfordshire CC, Tameside
MBC, Westminster City
• Birmingham City, Maidstone BC,
Stroud DC, Sunderland City,
Wrexham CBC, Wandsworth

SOCITM Survey Results
Better Connected 2003
Content Plus
Transactional
4
2%
3
29%
1
20%
Promotional
2
49%
Content
0% have no website
(down from 1%)
20% are Promotional sites
(down by 14%)
3
4
1
2
49% are Content sites
(up by 7%)
29% are Content Plus sites
(up by 7%)
2% are Transactional sites
(up by 1%)

What is being looked for in a
Community Portal site?
• ….tools to enable content development at sub-regional micro-community level……need more than just a template.
• In particular there is a need for a content authoring toolkit, and integration into back-office services.

Survey Findings
• Gaps in provision
• disparate nature
• need for authoring tools
• lack of integration of services
• constraints on broadband communication infrastructure

Community Portals
• from fragmentation
• to integration
• a hybrid future

Integration
• JCA (J2EE Connector Architecture)
• UDDI (Universal Description, Discover and Integration)
• Web Services
• WSDL (Web Services Description
Language)
• SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)
• SRW (Search/Retrieve Web Service)

Overcoming lack of Integration
• Middleware
• Middleware
• Middleware

DfES Website
• School Common Transfer Files

www.planning-portal.gov.uk

• middleware
• middleware
• middleware
• money
+Money

Culture not just islands of technology – more like foreign lands, - and with culture and language barriers
‘The Online Government Store’

Technical Survey
• Doug Schuler - Wired for Change
…..availability of on-line services is only half of the equation of making the technology accessible and affordable.
Access to the hardware needed to connect to on-line services is the other half and
Community Computer Centres were established to fill a societal need. Installing computer terminals in all branches of the Seattle public library system provided access.
Schuler: 1996

Telecommunication
Infrastructure
• PSTN, ISDN, SDSL
• Fibre services - no speculative dig!
• Satellite services for rural communities

DiTV for Public Service
Access
…we also expect to see considerable cost efficiencies across government by incorporating departmental and local authority DiTV offerings into a centralised service offering a single point of entry into government services. It will also remove the need for other departments to build independent and potentially incompatible content management systems.
e-Envoy Andrew Pinder May 2002

UK Online Interactive

Information/Content
• Structured content
• search interfaces to locate relevant resources
• toolkits for local generation of content

Business Process Change

Clicks and Links

www.clicksandlinks.co.uk

www.eastserve.com

www.cybermoor.org

www.connect.org.uk

www.knowsley.gov.uk

DiTV with Telewest

Seamless UK

www.enrichUK.net

Information/Content provision infrastructure shared services content providers m2m interfaces broker and aggregators fusion portals presentation

Butler Group Portal Model

EIP / Corporate Portal / Grid

Enterprise Information Portals
• Plumtree
• Hummingbird
• SAP Portals

1. Basic site
2. E-Publishing
3. Interactive
4. Transactional
5. Holistic e-Gov
Linear stages ?
Interactive
E-publishing
Transactional
Account Mang’t
1
2 3 4 5

Reflection

A tale of two Portals
• BlackburnWorld
• www.blackburnworld.org.uk
• Blackburn East On-line
• www.beonline.org.uk

blackburnworld.com

www.beonline.org.uk

Sunrise

cetis http://www.cetis.ac.uk
CETIS
VLE Component Deployment
Library
Component
Message
Server/ESB/MO
M
SRS Component
Directory Service

cetis http://www.cetis.ac.uk
CETIS
MultiVertical Integration
Learning Object
Repository

College On-line

Yorkshire Forward

Maricopa Learning eXchange
(MLX)

EducaNext Portal

C-Elect (Huddersfield)

The Online Government Store
The Quality Framework for UK Government Website Design

eDUCATION Environment
JORUM
College
On-Line
National
Yorkshire
Forward
VLE
MLE
Regional
NW eRepository
Community
Portal
Institutional
Portal
Local

eDUCATION Environment
UK-online
National
JORUM
College
On-Line
Regional
Yorkshire
Forward
NW eRepository
VLE
MLE
Community
Portal
Institutional
Portal
Local

The End