In 2012, Web Services staffing changes coincidentally overlapped months when new and aggressive attacks on university servers caused many Rice websites to go off line for several days. Web Services regrouped and Andrea Martin, Director for IT Enterprise Applications, stepped in to lead the team through a time of rebuilding infrastructure and process improvement. In addition, a Committee on Web Services was proposed by Moshe Vardi, Co-chair of the IT Advisory Committee. He also recommended Ann Lugg, Director of Communications for the Brown School of Engineering, co-chair the committee with Martin.
Committee members included Sean Rieger and Jennifer Ongoco (Public Affairs), Jennifer Wilson (Center for Written and Oral Communications), Jon-Paul Estrada (Jones School), Kate Cross (GPS), Keri Bas (GSCS), Louma Ghandour (Faculty Development), and Pamela Jones, Sherri Kingston, and Mary Widner (Natural Sciences).
“We started by looking at Web Services’ products and services, and at their practices from a customer stand point,” remembers Lugg. “The committee was filled with customers who could answer questions like ‘What is useful to us?’ and ‘What can be improved?’ and Andrea would bring us slides in the beginning, showing concerns or issues that had bubbled up since the last meeting.”
The committee met throughout 2013 and surveyed Web Services customers and identified common themes. Lugg noted, “Web Services implemented the survey as part of their follow up when projects were completed. Andrea shared those survey results with the committee.”
Communication throughout a web project was identified as a priority in need of improvement. “Customers want to be kept abreast of developments,” Lugg said. “Send them updates and estimate the amount of time left to completion of the project. The way bills were presented needed clarification and explanations. And there seemed to be little notification to the customer if project scope creep resulted in revised costs or time lines.” The committee recommended more frequent communications between customers and members of Web Services’ development team – personal contact, not automated updates. “Someone who could talk in every day words,” added Lugg.
The committee then tackled perceptions and products. “We built on Andrea’s momentum,” Lugg continued. “Drupal became available for content management, and there are improved resources for WordPress. The people on the committee continue to make suggestions and feel they are contributing to something worthwhile. We can see improvements are being made.” Although there are still complaints about CMS400, no content management system is perfect. Other CMS solutions were briefly considered before it was concluded that it would take a lot of time to look into the available products sufficiently to determine whether they’d be better than what we had, and in the end, “we had such a large Rice investment – in terms of money and time – tied up in CSM400 that it just didn’t make sense at this point to abandon it and reinvest in something else that would have another, different set of complaints.” Instead, other options to CMS400 were offered, like Drupal and an improved WordPress, as well as improved training on CMS400.
“Our first priority was to work through issues with current Web Services customers,” reflected Lugg. “We haven’t gotten to the point of advertising for new customers or reestablishing former customers’ confidence in the new Web Services. It is the recent customers who have really seen the change for the better.”