denotes premium content | Feb 7 2012 
Enterprise Information archive
Volume 2 Issue 10
How refreshing!
Public sector IT is often given a hard time in the press – and not without good reason. All too often, it seems, government IT project are permitted to run over-budget and behind schedule at great expense (and with little discernible benefit) to the taxpayer.
So it made a refreshing change this month to hear that the
The vast majority of these visitors, moreover, left government sites satisfied. Eighty per cent said that they found all or part of the information they were looking for and more than three-quarters said they would return to the site in future.
According to Martin Greenwood, a programme manager at Socitm, it is more important than ever for public sector organisations to get to grips with who is using their sites, for what purposes and how they find the experience. "What will be important is for councils to maintain the levels of satisfaction we are seeing," he says.
That, in fact, is true for every type of organisation, in every industry sector. An optimised web site can make a vast difference in how the organisation presents itself to the outside world. And, perhaps just as important, it can free up resources to concentrate on other projects for effective information delivery, be it the launch of a new intranet, the development of a system for storing XML-tagged documents or the provision to managers of a web interface, giving them access to back-end transactional data in report formats.
These subjects are all covered in this issue of Enterprise Information and we hope you find the articles useful and informative. And if there is any other area that you would like to see covered in the magazine, don’t hesitate to contact me at jtwentyman@ark-group.com. Likewise, we’re always on the look-out for interesting case studies and workshop articles from our readers, so if you have any experiences you would like to share, do let me know.
Jessica Twentyman, Consulting editor
Features
Workshop: The pros and cons of XML
When and how should organisations adopt XML as a document storage and publishing format? By Neil Bradley
Workshop: The intranet post-mortem part IV
Intranet re-launches must be carefully planned to ensure a positive end-user response, says Paul Chin.
Workshop: Creating database-driven web applications
Getting fast answers to tough business questions need not involve a time-consuming, costly IT project.
Q&A: Essex Police
At Essex Police, the chief constable has a computerised ‘dashboard’ that provides him with key data about how his force is doing in meeting its targets for crime reduction.
Cover story: Negotiating the RM standards maze
Standardisation is meant to make life easier for everyone, but the profusion of records management standards – and their comings and goings – has not necessarily made life easier for records managers.
Case study: Scottish and Newcastle
Scottish and Newcastle is taking the headache out of handling a multitude of delivery notes and invoices by using an outsourced electronic document management system.
Regulars
Opinion: Content outside of the box
With the rise and rise of social networking sites – where people can publish their news, thoughts and opinions and solicit feedback – it is time to think ‘outside of the box’ about your own web site content.
Last word: Am I bothered?
As director general of the Federation Against Software Theft (FAST), it strikes me as a sad world we’re living in when four-fifths of the British public admit they’d turn a blind eye to theft, or to be more precise, software theft.
Book review: Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships
Once I got beyond the cover and the title, this book was full of real-world insights and practical, detailed case studies.
