I wanted to be sure the first author was comfortable with the environment and the training programme we had in place was fit for purpose.

By the time I left Salford in December 2007 we had over 300 trained authors. We refined the training programme content as we went along based on user feedback, web team experience of workflow problems and a programme of continuous improvement in accessibility and other issues.

Key to getting devolved authors buying in to presenting a consistent user experience is to provide them with web standards – guidelines on minimum requirements, hints and tips and so forth. These are available to view at http://www.salford.gov.uk/webstandards.

A three-step workflow is in operation; this can be relaxed when authors reach a certain level of ‘maturity’ in web publishing. Full details are available at http://www.salford.gov.uk/help/webstandards/webstandards-qualitycontrol.

A different process was used for intranet content. Takeup of intranet at Salford was poor so in an effort to encourage both publishing and usage workflow was not implemented. With the benefit of hindsight this was not a success. If I could go back, I’d introduce workflow for intranet content also.

Social media is much more of an issue today than it was when I was in post. But even back in 2001 I was encouraging usage of internet resources internally to engage staff in the benefits of intranet and web for improving both customer outcomes and individual aspirations. This was largely successful but needs constant plugging away at. Having someone managing the intranet who looks for opportunities to promote the benefits of intranet and web to staff members (and making sure the distinctiion between the two is understood) is one of the tools for ultimate success. Social media has changed the agenda somewhat, but the principles remain fairly similar – encouraging takeup and usage!

One barrier we often come up against is that the required cost (of training) and time (of publishing) can be prohibitive. Colleagues can also sometimes feel that the web is not their responsibility (and often they do not have the time to support it, even if it were). We need to see a profound cultural shift, along with considerable support from senior management, for web content to become an integral, valued and prioritised part of people’s work streams.

In regards to the editor/publishing process we currently have a bottleneck on the final publishing of content. I’m hoping that the CMS we choose to go with will have enough checks and balances in place that we can go with an almost fully devolved publishing strategy. I don’t want to sound like I putting all my faith in the CMS but compared to our current system, I’m a firm believer in a new CMS that will at least ‘pester’ editors/authors about reviewing content and certainly won’t let anyone publish content without our chosen level of accessibility being met, I think these sort of features should be part of a standard spec amongst others.

Good luck with your funding, the pain and anguish is still fresh in my mind

@simonwakeman interesting, will pass this onto the web team.

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@simonwakeman Interesting to see your comments on public sector CMS. Are you around in Medway at all this week for a meetup?

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For “social publishing” we need to remove the technology barriers to people publishing, and rely on cultural factors/knowledge/awareness/common sense to control what someone blogging/twittering from within an organisation puts out.

Plus the real-time nature of social media interactions just doesn’t seem to fit with a publishing model which has multiple approval stages in it.

However that’s the ideal scenario, but in practice I suspect it’s more complicated than that..!