NWS Corporate Web Identity

1
NWS Corporate Web Identity

• Robert Bunge
• National Weather Service

2
NWS Web Overview

• About 300 websites and webmasters
• Websites build with little or no coordination
  over several year period
• Very few sites had similar look and feel
• About 1.6 million users per day (10-15 million
  hits per day)

3
NWS Web Farms

• Six Web Farms
• Six different locations
• No planning between farms
• Different architectures
• Different operating systems
• Different web applications

4
Corporate Web Image Project

• Started in 2000
• Driven by inconsistent look and feel
• Driven by different applications display same or
  similar data
• Problem recognized by both field and Headquarters
• Problem recognized by both webmasters and
  management

5
Some Samples
6
The Process

• Supervised out of NWS OCIO
• Cross agency Corporate Web Image (CWI) team
• Headquarters
• Weather Offices
• Regional Headquarters
• National Centers
• Section 508 specialists

7
The Process

• CWI Team led by representative from a field
  office
• Regular reports to NWS CIO
• One face-to-face meeting for groundwork, most
  communication carried out via email list serve

8
Goals

• Develop a standard look and feel for all NWS
  websites
• Improve navigation to NWS products by general
  population
• Homepages to be subject driven, not organization
  driven
• Improve accessibility and meeting of DOC policy

9
Approach

• Product centric
• Develop common navigation (functionality) to NWS
  products
• Geographic centric
• Make it the same experience regardless which of
  122 Weather Forecast Office websites you land on

10
The Work

• Development of several applications
• Designed to run off the same database
• Uses technologies (MySQL/PHP/Perl) that span
  different platforms/operating systems
• Planned from the start to run on many farms
• HQ graphic artist, CWI team members in field
  developed basic look and feel
• Tweaked and approved by entire CWI team

11
Public Comment

• Official 60 day comment period
• Almost all favorable
• Mostly technical issues (javascript)
• Gave us a leg to stand on
• Resulted in additional tweaks (removal of
  javascript) to the CWI templates

12
Implementation

• Led by someone from the field
• Regular status reports to CIO
• Basic implementation plan and schedules
• Did not require all pages done, just home, new
  pages and old pages if updated
• Deadlines driven by management

13
Status

• Most NWS websites done by March 1, 2002
• A few stragglers
• Automated systems that require programming
• Lots of old pages
• Overwhelming acceptance by public
• Usage up 25 across board, 50 for National
  homepage

14
The Basic Look and Feel
15
Lessons

• Planned coordination between management and field
• Both field (webmasters) and management agreed to
  overall goals
• Pincher affect pushed from bottom and top
• Management didnt micromanage

16
And It Doesnt Stop

• Round two approaching
• Final tweaks tended to degrade accessibility
• Collected comments/suggestions need to be
  reviewed and agreed upon by CWI team for 2nd
  generation CWI templates
• Fostered better communications between farms
• Leads to configuration management of applications