Slides for plenary talk on "Web Strategies: Bridging a Continent" given by David Supple at the IWMW 2003 event held at the University of Kent on 11-13 June 2003. See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/webmaster-2003/sessions/#talk-3

1. University of Birmingham
7th
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. 5th
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

17. University of Birmingham

18. University of Birmingham

19. University of Birmingham

20. University of Birmingham
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. University of Birmingham
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