University of Glasgow
Version 1.3
February 2006
Contents
Over the last ten years, web delivery of information has evolved from a simple mechanism for researchers to share documents into a crucial part of the way that information is communicated, business is carried out and the image of an organisation is projected. For many commercial organisations the Web delivery has always been a corporate function, carefully managed with staffing and control as a central function. In academic institutions, where much of the early Web activity was centred, Web delivery has grown up as more of a ‘cottage industry’ driven by enthusiasts with different roles in different parts of the organisation.
Given the current importance of this mode of delivery of systems and information for universities, institutions need a more coordinated approach than hitherto and the purpose of this paper is to lay out a strategic approach to the use of the Web in the University.
The Web serves many purposes in a University. It serves as a showcase for academic research, facilitating contact between academics, it serves to attract potential students, funders, sponsors and collaborators and it is essential for delivering internal processes. The web provides a powerful and flexible tools in all these areas and beyond. One of the big strengths that the web has is that it allows individuals and groups to be extremely creative in the ways that they share information and interact. A Web Strategy must seek to nurture creativity, whilst at the same time providing an environment that is easy to use for the large number of staff who need to use it to share and publish information but at the same time does not expose the University to unnecessary risk.
No single person or group has a monopoly on expertise and creativity in the use of the web as a communications medium and a major element of this strategy is that there should be a willingness for all involved to learn from each other, contribute their ideas and enter into discussion as to how to achieve particular ends. Mechanisms to assist in this should be an important outcome. This strategy aims to build on existing good practice, whilst at the same time reducing the need for everyone to be a technology expert. Providing mechanisms to publish information on the web is the domain of a relatively small group of technical staff both in the centre and the faculties, whilst the bulk of the content is the responsibility of a wide range of staff in all parts of the University.
The principles on which the web strategy is based are that it should not be needlessly intrusive or constraining and that all measures should satisfy one of the following tests:-
necessary for the purposes of ensuring that the University C&IT infrastructure and information is secure and that systems are protected from undue risk of attack,
necessary in order that the University web presence complies with relevant legislation and does not therefore expose the University to undue risk of litigation,
necessary to protect the University’s image and reputation as a leading academic institution
In order to achieve implementation of the policies and guidelines in this strategy there are two options and it is up to departments and faculties to decide which is the most appropriate for what they are trying to achieve in a particular case:-
some or all of the responsibility can be delegated to central service providers and/or support mechanisms,
or
faculties or departments can take on the responsibility for themselves from faculty or departmental resources and as a result have the freedom to be more flexible.
The pre-requisites for successful implementation of the strategy and thus achieving its goals are:
management support for it at appropriate levels (University, Faculty and department),
awareness raising, since failure to adhere should not be through ignorance of the strategy or the policies and guidance that flow from it; awareness raising requires:
The University has decided to invest in a Web Content Management System (wCMS), which will be an important tool for those departments, faculties and services that do not wish to take on the responsibility for providing the underlying web technology and support for themselves as described above. Investment in the wCMS is part of the University’s strategic approach to the web and is intended to allow web publishers to concentrate on content rather than technology of delivery. Irrespective of technology of delivery, there are five areas covered by the strategy:
The guiding principle in determining the roles of central versus devolved managers/contributors should be that of not duplicating at local level functionality/information with is already supplied centrally. Obviously this principle is closely allied to the ideas of best use of support resources and of non-duplication of data touched on elsewhere in this document. Equally obviously, for this principle to work the centrally supplied information/data has to be accurate and reliable, and available in a sufficiently flexible format that it can be easily integrated into many different contexts at the local level.
The central operation should prepare and publish all corporate aspects of the University web site and should have overall responsibility for ensuring that the whole GU web site complies with current legislation. As part of this function the centre should provide templates/CMS operating modes, guidelines etc. which allow local managers/contributors to create material in the knowledge that the environment within which they are creating web pages is helping them to comply with the law and also to meet corporate branding and stylistic requirements where appropriate. The central operation should use a wide range of means (e.g. a web forum, newsletter articles, training events, etc.) to disseminate information about GU web policy and other relevant issues such as legal requirements, and to receive feedback from the wider web community to help the centre do things better by learning from the wider community.
Local managers/contributors should be exactly that. They should provide information relevant to the activities of the operational unit for which they have web responsibility. If they wish to include corporate information on local pages then this should be achieved by reference to an authoritative source rather than by just duplicating the information locally. Maintaining a web operation the size of the GU site is a large and complex exercise. Local managers should assist by keeping their local constituency of information contributors informed on GU web policy and by encouraging them to use guidelines, standard templates and the CMS system when it is operational.
The reference document on Security of web servers (indeed, all servers) is the University’s Bastion Host Policy (BHP) available at http://www.gla.ac.uk/cert/policy/
The BHP is approved by the University Court and is designed to keep the information, systems and networks secure from attack, it states that Computing Service will run a properly managed and maintained central web operation and that all GU web functions should be hosted by that operation unless there is a good reason for not doing so.
The BHP provides detailed lists of requirements in relation to each of the following aspects of server operation (all relevant to web servers):
Role (BHP has 6 bullets under this heading)
The purpose of
the server. The community it serves etc
Location (BHP has 5 bullets)
The physical circumstances of the
server
Management, Support & Operation (BHP has 10 bullets)
Who
runs the server. Maintenance arrangements. Location of backups. etc.
System Administration (BHP has25 bullets)
Security measures.
Means of addressing known vulnerabilities. etc.
Registration (20 pieces of information required)
Contact
details of relevant staff. Statement from HoD. etc.
Faculties/departments who choose to run their own web servers need to demonstrate that they are adhering to the BHP.
The BHP is a weighty document and will be seen by some as overkill for small local web servers which hitherto have been straightforward and uncomplicated to run. Such an attitude ignores security issues. Often the reason why such small operations are easy to run is precisely because security has not been implemented in any very satisfactory way. However, a small web server can be compromised just as readily a large web server and with equally devastating affects on other users of the network. The whole point of the BHP is security, and only those who are prepared to implement it should be running a web server whatever its size on the GU network, no matter how good they think their reasons may be for doing so. For the majority who require a web presence the solution should be to host their web operation on central servers and thereby sidestep entirely the BHP problem at local level.
There is not necessarily a legal difference between disseminating information via the web and on paper, but the web may well reach a wider range of people thus material must be checked and considered carefully before publication.
Detailed guidance on legal matters is not practicable here. However, Web Publishers must:
Comply with the terms of relevant legislation listed below, and obtain advice if necessary.
Remove or request removal of any material that is known or found to be illegal in terms of any applicable legislation.
In addition, material that contains personal details must comply with the Data Protection Act (see the guidelines at http://www.gla.ac.uk/dataprotection/guidance.html) and monitoring of web usage must comply with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and the Human Rights Act.
The web is a major channel for the communication of information about the University and what it does. As a 'Public Body' (as defined in the Freedom of Information Act), the University is obliged to make information available to any member of the public that requests it (subject to a limited number of exceptions). To comply with the Act, the University has prepared a 'Publication Scheme' (see http://www.gla.ac.uk/foi/publicationscheme.html) that provides members of the public with 'self-service' access to a wide range of information via the web. All web sites within the University should be designed to make it as easy as possible for people to find what they are looking for, otherwise the University will be inundated with requests that require individual manual attention and which must be attended to in order to comply with Freedom of Information. Information supplied under the Freedom of Information Act must be what the University holds (as it is an offence to destroy or alter information after a request has been received), and so information published via the web should be accurate, complete and appropriate so as not to cause damage to the University’s reputation (see also section on 'Duplication of Information' below).
The University web sites should work for users, both disabled and non-disabled users. Technical web accessibility alone is not sufficient. Web sites must allow users to achieve their goals; they must provide a useful experience for users. Good accessibility practices benefit all users, not only disabled users – this is the principle of universal design or 'design for all'. In addition accessibility for all is a requirement of the Disability Discrimination Act.
The reference document on Web Accessibility is the Web Accessibility Strategy (WAS) available at http://www.gla.ac.uk/infostrat/WAG/Draft_Web_Strategy_Accessibility_v1.html
Some guidelines on the production of accessible web pages and tools that may help in this are to be found at http://www.gla.ac.uk/publications/webpublishing/accessibility/
Good accessible web site design involves:
Communication - writing for the web.
Usability.
Information design.
Information architecture (navigation schemes, metadata, search engines).
Visual design.
Good accessible web design is hard to capture in rules (although the Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines are a good starting point - http://www.w3.org/WAI/guid-tech.html). Web designers need to take appropriate account of best practices in the above fields and apply them to their work.
Providing a useful experience for the users requires taking the user's perspective and catering appropriately for the different audiences of the site. Different audiences includes people using a range of browser types (including text to speech and text only browsers as well as graphical browsers from different suppliers) and operating systems, having different information needs, abilities and disabilities. It is not sufficient to say that I have a reasonable experience finding and reading this information with my browser on my machine, there has to be some level of assurance that all those likely to need to read the page can have such an experience. The amount of effort that this is likely to take will depend on the size and diversity of the audience for the information.
The University of Glasgow wishes to be effective in promoting a positive and consistent image to the outside world, in order to manage its reputation in line with University strategic goals. An organisation's visual identity: the way it presents itself through the graphic design of all its visual communication; plays an important role in the projection of its overall image. It is likely that, as in the past, the University's Visual Identity, or to policies governing its use, will change in the future.
To allow such changes to be reflected in the sites they create and maintain and to ease the maintenance task more generally, all web publishers should make efforts to separate the information content from the way it is presented in their web sites. This will allow them to make changes across many pages by making just one change rather than by changing each page individually. The separation of content from presentation will allow for a dynamic website, and will create an information infrastructure where changes in presentational requirements, new opportunities for delivering information, and new legislative demands, can quickly be centrally addressed.
Information about the University Visual Identity is to be found at http://www.gla.ac.uk/publicity/visualidentity.html and graphics together with specific details for use are to be found at: http://www.gla.ac.uk/general/graphics/.
Where there is an existing source of information, every effort should be made to use that (for example from authoritative University databases) rather than re-entering information. There are two advantages here:-
a reduction of effort in compiling and maintaining information (particularly the latter)
a reduction in the risk that two pieces of information about the same subject are in conflict which exposes the University to risk in relation to potential student or other information seekers that might rely on wrong information.
These matters are particularly important in relation to the Freedom of Information Acts.
In each case it will have to be determined where the authoritative version of information is held. In many cases this is likely to be centrally, especially where the information is likely to be required by many people in different parts of the University, but there will also be cases where it makes more sense for this to be somewhere else when it is primarily used in one department or faculty
. Information about central information sources and gaining authorisation to access them are to found at http://www.mis.gla.ac.uk/.