By Mike Nevins So you've decided you want to host a World Wide Web site? Care to sleep on it and reconsider? A few words of caution - a Web site is more like a child than you can imagine. It can take on a life of its own, and it needs constant attention. It's neither easy nor inexpensive to establish, and there are often new programming skills needed along with a constant requirement to create new content. The best Web sites are frequently changed and updated, not only with new content, but often with a new look. The fact that information on a Web server is available to browsers 24 hours a day, seven days a week makes it a very attractive distribution vehicle. But continuous availability creates a need for a great deal of maintenance and support. There is, however, no more exciting medium through which to communicate today. If you have decided to proceed, you are not alone.
Learning New Languages Like many new things, there is an entirely new language associated with the World Wide Web. If you manage to survive the new words, acronyms and lingo and decide to publish on the Internet, you will likely want to do it on the Web. There are many things to consider when getting a site started. Dan Galloway, program director for the Commonwealth NetServer (http://www.state.va.us), Virginia's web site, said the key to success for a statewide project is executive support. "You have to have buy-in from the top. High-level management must understand and support the project for it to succeed." The Virginia site kicked off in early July and has already undergone one face lift. Graphics were added that dramatically changed the look of the home page. It has rapidly become a robust site with tremendous utility and enormous amounts of information. The Information Technology Clearinghouse, a gopher service that was the Commonwealth's first effort at online information service delivery, is also currently being updated for the Web. The clearinghouse provides information about Virginia's Information Technology Resources Management organizational relationships, statewide policies, standards, procurement guidelines and other information technology-related information. The online service is a collaborative effort between the Department of Information Technology (DIT) and the Council on Information Management. Some of the growing pains encountered during start-up included the expected learning curves associated with new technologies. "Learning HTML is not rocket science. We picked that up rather quickly and there were several people who had a personal interest. Many of our staff, however, were traditional mainframe programmers, so learning UNIX for the Web server presented a more serious challenge," said Galloway. The single biggest obstacle, however, was "getting people to cooperate," said Galloway. "The agencies are accustomed to operating independently - doing their own thing. The key for us was not to make the Web site seem like a project that represented our agency or any other, but rather a Commonwealth project. We're simply the coordinators or facilitators."
Still Growing ... As more and more agencies turn to the Web as a delivery mechanism for their public information, the amount of work associated with it is constantly growing. Galloway made it clear, however, that agencies were responsible for the maintenance on their portion of the site. "We've actually been very lucky," said Galloway, "we had an interest in going the Web route for information delivery when we had a change in administration. Along with Gov. Allen came some new agency heads who were interested in opening up state government to the citizens. Chuck Livingston [DIT director] has been very supportive of all of our efforts. That support combined with the incredible popularity of the Internet has made our work a lot easier." Michael Nevins is a co-founder and director of State Technologies Inc., a nonprofit research group. State Technologies sponsors public policy and technology forums and publishes the web service Government On Line: http://w ww.gol.org E-mail address: mnevins@gol.org
