Radiology Website Project
The Department of Radiology Website (www.rad.washington.edu) is the main public-facing web presence of the UW Department of Radiology. The primary goal of the website is to serve as a compelling representation of the department and its activities across the academic, research, clinical and administrative spheres. The website also serves as a department intranet, providing a resource for collaborative information management in support of the day-to-day functioning of the department.
Goals of the Project
The Radiology Website project has two main goals:
- Maintain a highly visible, cutting-edge web presence for the entire department to advertise our department to the world
- Provide a working tool to support the daily activities of department members in their academic, research, clinical and administrative duties
Roles and Responsibilities
Creating a world-class website is a complex, difficult and unending task. It demands the coordinated participation of a large number of individuals, each fulfilling their duties to the project. For a project overview, it can be helpful to review the various roles required as well as an awareness of the responsibilities of each role and who within the department serves in each capacity.
Project Management
What it is:
Any large-scale project requires proper management to reach its intended goals. A website can be seen as an ongoing project with no termination point. Project management in the context of a website project is responsible for maintaining a long-range plan for the site and shepherding any and all activities within the site along the route described by the plan.
What are the responsibilities:
In the context of the Radiology Website Proejct, the project management is responsible for maintaining the long-range vision of what the website needs to be. It is also responsible for evaluating the needs of the department and addressing those needs with appropriate solutions. Project management is responsible for maintaining a balance between the requirements and desires of individual sections and the goals and objectives of the entire department.
Who serves in this role:
Project management for the Radiology Website project is performed by the Radiology IT Subcommittee with the assistance of the Radiology Webmaster and the Chief Administrator. Questions about the project and its direction are best addressed first to the IT Subcommittee or the Webmaster.
Systems Administration
What it is:
The Radiology Website project runs in the Plone content management system. This system is supported by the Zope application server, the PostgreSQL relational database system and a wide array of other networking software. The entire system is spread across a cluster of three Apple XServe servers and backed up regularly both to a local RAID storage unit and to remote backup locations across network connections. Systems administration is the process of maintaining, monitoring and upgrading this entire technology stack.
What are the responsibilities:
Systems Administration as described above is responsible for maintaining and upgrading existing software and hardware and installing new programs or machines. It is also the job of systems administration to monitor the ongoing health of existing hardware systems and running software processes. Systems administration ensures the security of our web properties at a hardware level by maintaining and monitoring firewalls and security logs.
Who serves in this role:
Ideally, the job of systems administration would be undertaken by a specialist. In our system, however, this job is performed by the Radiology Web Services team.
Platform Customization
What it is:
No content management system is ever exactly what you want it to be. A certain level of customization is always required to get things working the way you want. Platform customization is the process of bending the selected software to serve the needs of the organization.
What are the responsibilities:
Platform customization has a wide range of responsibilities. It is responsible for ensuring that the platform software interoperates with external systems like UW PubCookie SSO (the UW NetID system). It is responsible for the creation of custom products to create the look and feel of the website. Platform customization is also reponsible for developing add-on software to support operations of the department. Packages such as the ePAR Lite system and the FEA/REA accounts system fall under the purview of platform customization.
Who serves in this role:
Radiology Web Services is responsible for this activity. The job is performed by the Web Services development team, Cris Ewing and Max Burdge.
Technical Support
What it is:
Bugs and unexpected behavior are a natural part of any piece of software. Nothing is perfect. Technical support helps users to solve problems that crop up in the daily use of a tool like the Radiology Website.
What are the responsibilities:
Technical support is responsible for replying to incoming queries from both department members who are having trouble with their interactions with the website and external customers who may be having difficulties with our online classroom or other public facing web pages. First tier technical support is responsible for directly interacting with customers and for flagging difficult problems, so that the Web Master can step in
Who serves in this role:
First tier technical support is handled by the Radiology Web Services team and primarily by program assistant Mary Giles. Cris Ewing and Max Burdge handle more difficult problems and work to streamline bug fixes with planned software upgrades or releases (see platform customization above).
User Support
What it is:
Proper content management demands the participation of a number of content creators, editors and owners. User support exists to assist these people in the performance of their duties.
What are the responsibilities:
User support is responsible for assisting the content creators, editors and owners who actually manage all the content in the Radiology Website. It is responsible for taking calls for help from users and answering questions regarding page layout, link management, organization and all other aspects of the content management process. User support is also responsible for the training of new department members in the skills they will need to properly do their jobs on the website. User support is also instrumental in ensuring that best practices are being followed by creators, editors and owners throughout the department.
Who serves in this role:
Primary user support is a function of the Radiology Web Services team, specifically program assistant Mary Giles. However, in the distributed model of content management we are using, expert users throughout the department can also serve as first tier support personnel for new or less experienced users.
Content Ownership
What it is:
Content ownership means overseeing both the information presented and the organization of that information.
What are the responsibilities:
Content owners are ultimately responsible for the presentation of information within the website. Ownership carries responsibility not only for each page within a given section, but also for the overall organization of pages in that section. Owners are also responsible for establishing needed metadata structure for the content in their control. This involves the creation of keyword or tag ontologies and the management of other important metadata to help improve the visibility of their information.
Who serves in this role:
The Department of Radiology has chosen to work on a distributed content creation model, which means that the ownership of content is widely distributed across the department. Each academic, research, clinical and administrative section should have an identified owner who takes ultimate responsibility for the content in their sections. Additionally, the general areas of Academics, Research, Patient Care and Administration should have a single identified owner responsible for the top-level pages which are not the property of any one section.
For more information on specific section owners, please see the Radiology Content Design Committee (RCDC) List. We are in the process of updating this list now, relying upon input from section owners.
Finally, each individual within the department has a personal page in the website. (To access your page, log in to the site and click on the My Folder link on the top right.) Each department member is the sole owner of the information on his or her page. Department members with a staff assistant are free to delegate editing to this person. However, it is the responsibility of each and every member of the Department of Radiology to ensure that the information on his or her own personal page is current and correct.
Content Editorship
What it is:
Content Editorship is the process of ensuring that the information presented on a given page is both correct and readable.
What are the responsibilities:
Content editors are responsible for reviewing the pages created by others for accuracy and completeness. Editors must bear in mind the audience for a piece of content and help to ensure that the information is presented in a way that can be understood by that audience.
Who serves in this role:
As with ownership, editorial responsibilities in the Radiology Website are widely distributed. Each academic, research, clinical and administrative section should have one or more identified editors responsible for the review of pages in their sections. Additionally, the general areas of Academics, Research, Patient Care and Administration should have one or more identified editors responsible for the top-level pages in each area, pages which are not the property of any one section.
For more information on specific section editors, please see the RCDC List.
Content Creation
What it is:
Content Creation is the process of writing page content and applying appropriate layout to ensure that the content is both clean and readable.
What are the responsibilities:
Content creators are responsible for writing pages, uploading files and images and creating links between pieces of content. Creators should respond to requests from the owners of sections and create pages or upload other content in response to stated goals.
Who serves in this role:
As with ownership and editorial functions, the role of content creator in the Radiology Website is widely distributed. Each academic, research, clinical and administrative section should have several identified creators trained in using the authoring tools in the website. Additionally, the general areas of Academics, Research, Patient Care and Administration should have one or more identified creators responsible for authoring and laying out the top-level pages in each area.
For more information on specific section creators, please see the RCDC List.
Information Upkeep
What it is:
Content management is a journey, not a destination. Information becomes irrelevant or outdated. Data grows stale. Documented policies change.
What are the responsibilities:
The responsibility of information upkeep is to regularly ask the question 'Does this still apply?' If the answer is no, then the information must be updated or removed, whichever is most appropriate.
Who serves in this role:
It is the responsibility of every member of the Department of Radiology to help ensure that the information we are providing on our website is the most up-to-date and accurate possible. Owners, editors and creators should regularly review the pages within their areas to ensure their accuracy, but even those without a named role can help with this process by notifying the appropriate individuals when they see inaccurate information on any page.
If a link is found to be broken, if the reader encounters an error message, if a search result seems irrelevant or ambiguous, please let someone know. The Radiology Website has been live for less than two years and already contains more than 3,000 pages. The only hope we have for ensuring that the whole thing works is the active participation of all of our members.
History of the Project
The history of the Radiology Department Website is long and storied. Our web presence is remarkably strong, due primarily to an early adoption of web technology by the faculty of the department. What follows is the story of the site and how it came to be what it has become.
In the beginning…
In 1994, at the dawn of the World-Wide Web, Michael Richardson, MD set up a modest website to show the world what was happening with UW Radiology. Through his efforts the site grew over time to become a powerful representative of the department. Web search engines routinely returned the UW Radiology website as a top result when searching for keywords such as 'radiology', 'academic radiology' and 'university radiology' as well as many others. Educational content on the site drew attention from viewers across the globe. All was well.
But over time problems mounted. The existing site was built in a proprietary, closed system that was difficult to extend and learn. Despite the best efforts of Dr. Richardson, members of the department remained reluctant to participate in the upkeep. Various sections of the department established a large number of alternative sites to represent themselves. This led to a fragmented presence online that failed to serve the needs of members of the department and was a poor representation of the department as a whole.
In 2006, Cris Ewing was hired by the department to lead a project unifying the entire departmental web presence under a single site using the already established 'www.rad.washington.edu' domain name. He began by rigorously evaluating candidate software systems with which the new site might be built based on a list of requirements established by the department. After a few months of testing and evaluation he and the rest of the department's IT Subcommittee decided to use Plone, an open-source, enterprise-level content management system based on the Zope Application Server and the Python programming language. Once this decision had been made, the time came to plan the design of the new site and plan the migration of existing website resources into the new system.