This is a guest post by Mark Jones, Web Content Authoriser
For several years now, our team of web editors have done a magnificent job of keeping the council’s website up-to-date, telling us when pages need to be deleted or amended, or when attachments are obsolete. This has resulted in our website being commended externally as being dynamic relative to those of other authorities.
However, given that we have over 300 editors across the organisation there are inevitably differences in approaches and contrasting levels of interest in the role. It is a time-consuming commitment, which can be difficult to balance with the demands of their day job.
With the arrival of the new website, our intention is to slim down our team of editors to one per service, to ensure that we deliver improvements by:
- Giving each service editor a sense of real ownership of the pages he or she is responsible for
- Turning the role of 'web editor' into a more specialised one, letting our smaller group become experts
- Allowing the web team to spend much more time with each editor on training, development, support and the exchange of ideas
- Allowing this smaller group of editors the chance to get together for regular group meetings, something which is impossible with our current number
- Ensuring that content across each service has a consistent look and feel, enhancing the overall user experience of our website
The intention is to have a tight-knit group of web super users, offering a professional and knowledgeable presence locally within each service, with the overall effect of delivering a joined-up feel to our website.