The Web Council could oversee newsletter, but it would take dedicated staff to produce. The 

resources required would be determined by the depth and frequency of the newsletter vehicle 

desired. 

We recommend that the Web Services Committee (or another committee appointed by ITC) 

sponsor monthly 1.5 hour web application developer meetings where projects using tools are 

showcased and developers assist each other. Guest speakers would be sponsored occasionally.  

5 hours per month, for ongoing staff support to arrange for rooms, take and post agenda and 

meeting minutes. 

3.  We recommend that the ITC consider recommending funding for a small central web services 

organization. One model to consider would have three staff:  

Information architect 

Programmer and web developer (with training skills) 

Administrative specialist with web editing skills 

Ideally, these three staff would be centrally funded, and provide free services to act as a technical 

swat team for web applications, work with Computing Coordinators to build community, and as 

staff to the ongoing UCSC Web Council. A key role of the centrally funded web organization would 

be to develop, implement, and support the framework via technical development, training, and 

information architecture services. Their focus would be on web expertise, not on content, so their 

skills would be applied to both academic and administrative areas. They would leverage resources 

from across the campus. The estimated cost for the first year would be $250K for salary and 

benefits, about $50K for hardware, software, and miscellaneous supplies and expenses, plus an 

undetermined cost for office space renovation (if needed). 

Content Management 

Findings: In the past there has been a tendency by some to publish web content and forget about it.  

It is clear that this is no longer acceptable because out dated, inaccurate information can easily lead to 

customer confusion and liability for the University. Content management could mitigate this stale 

information. However, at UCSC, there are organizational issues that make implementation of a content 

management system difficult at this time.  

What is content management? 

The complexity of content management systems can vary widely depending on individual unit needs.  

All content management systems for the web must have at least the following six features: 

A designated owner for a given piece of content  

The ability to upload content 

The ability to store content 

The ability to download content 

An expiration date for a given piece of content 

A system to find, report, and update, expired content 

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Web Services Committee 

Page 14 

May 28, 2002