Paul Geraghty sticks his neck out

FWIW, I ran a District LG (Local Government) website for 10 years.  I developed a CMS as I went along, html then .asp then shortly after in php.

About two years in I realised there were clearly two types of content.

• Static
• Dynamic

I also realised there were broadly two types of content owners

• web-hostile
• web-friendly

So the CMS I made, and therefore the website, 'evolved' to suit these facts of (LG) life.

For the most part I left the static content as html, and only I edited it - I just made a simple "request for change" online form so that the web-hostile crowd :

a) identified the url
b) identified the paragraph they wanted changing
c) did most of the typing for me.

At every turn I would run up and show them all the dynamic content they COULD be playing with, with minor successes.

But by definition "static content" hardly ever changed - if it did change more than say, once inside a month, it was time to have a meeting and dicuss the real message that the owner wanted to get out to the public and by and large those conversations lead to me discovering that they needed something more, usually based on some kind of datastore CRUD element or application.

Taking this course also meant that the static content pages could contain as much complex information as was necessary, I was free of any CMS constraints about layout or content, bringing in webservices from off the web for graphing - linking to databases from .xls files etc.

The web-friendly crowd, who were writing and maintaining the really interesting stuff had access to and used more KM-like content such as dynamic FAQs, articles, events, image libraries  etc.  Some of this dynamic stuff was piped onto the home page partly as "reward" for taking the time to contribute, and was a very effective motivator.

There were a few web-friendly people who only had static files, but that could be very rich in both form and content because they were willing to work with me to develop the applications sitting beneath the content - custom applications made to solve their particular needs e.g. queryable Air quality tables with and historical data with graphs and maps, complex election reporting etc.

One of the biggest benefits in developing this system was this LG fact of life: The web-friendly users (call them "bright young things") never stayed in the job for more than about a year, then they got promoted, moved sideways in LG or just plain quit.

This LG had a policy of not replacing people straight away, mostly for budgetary reasons (I don't know how widespread this practice is).

So we can add to the mix of LG facts of life;

• People quit and are not replaced immediately
• Some people have several roles in the organisation

So if the boss of the web-friendly "bright young thing" was not able to confirm that the dynamic content was still valid, I could rip the lot off the site with one action (or hide it, more accurately).

Also, it occassionally happened that a web-friendly person was replaced with a web-hostile person, and the same scenario played out.  Articles just ran out of time and got removed automatically anyhow, other dynamic content was ripped off by consent.

I had distinct problems with the web-hostile crowd in that almost to a (wo)man they sent me content which was unsuitable for publication on a website "as is".  Full of officious complicated text, packed with jargon and phrases such as "the council will ..." not written in plain english, nighmarish.

I would sit for hours explaining how I intended changing their copy to make it web friendly (my favourite lead comment was "can you explain what this document means?" - they would say something in plain english and I would type it out quickly.  That became the lead paragraph.) and sometimes I would be told "just put it on as it is", which I rarely did except in the case of docs which clearly had some legal connotations.

Anyhow that was the scenario, I am sure you recognise some patterns there (or anti-patterns).

This system worked well.  The site featured in the annual Socitm "Better Connected" top 20 websites 4 times in that 10 year period, and was usually in the top 10 percentile in Sitemorse except when I was indulging in some DTD-swopping for one reason or another.

I did some hunting around and it is possible to score a piece of text on its readability, by working out the length of words, words per sentence etc. I planned to hardwire this into the CMS and score the static content and rank the worst pages, and also to work as a 'nag' to all online content as it was being saved. They ended my contract before I could implement it.

My points are these:

1. You will always need a gatekeeper, and make sure they have the necessary clout (but they will be unpopular)
2. Web-hostile people should be kept away from the CMS, or at least the publish button
3. Software alone cannot guarantee you will carry good content, but it can have an important role to play
4. LG CMSs are not designed from the ground up for local government, and it shows
5. LG CMSs stifle innovation almost as much as does carrot-chasing Socitm scores

Poor management skills elsewhere in the organisation, such as the inability to delegate, will cause inapropriate content to surface on your website - but software (such as layers of access control) is not the answer to that problem - it just throws up another level of complexity to confound users.

Tools are emerging designed to help people to create better content but until your CMS provider adds the algorithms/applications you are stuck.

I originally posted this as a reply to another blogger - the blog name escapes me now, I am reproducing it here now as an aide-memoire really, plus I am looking for employment in Local Gov in the UK again.