Nadia from the Department of Conservation about their intranet. See Nadia on LinkedIn.

DOC has about 2000 people across New Zealand. Many people at DOC spend time at their desks, but there are also a lot of rangers what work in the field. They don’t like computers very much.

The Current Intranet
Current intranet is centrally controlled by head office. Two people can publish on it. Has been neglected, and requires a better governance strategy.
– Was started in the 1990s
– Pages managed through Dreamweaver
– Navigation is not dynamic. All breadcrumbs are hard wired.
– Very hard for new users to know where to start. If you don’t know the subject matter, they get lost. It’s too hard to find your way around the site structure.
– Of the intranet, only 25% is content … with 25% navigation pages, and 50% links to the document management system.
– Search doesn’t work. People can’t find what they are looking for … eg, sometimes information is in documents rather than Web pages.

The New Intranet … Almost Ready to Release
They are 2/3 of the way through their intranet redevelopment … with new information architecture and decentralized content authoring.
– New information architecture, with a smaller number of top level sections. Want the sections to be robust enough to support a changing organizational structure.
– Developed a new page template hierarchy … where certain pages go.
– Provides access to common templates and forms. Will move to online forms in Phase 2 and 3.
– Introduction of the breadcrumb trail, including “You are here”
– Ability to link to the content management system, with central management if it is used in lots of different places. Can also delete once. All links to documents have to have a description.
– Personalization of the home page … favorite tools, recently visited pages, weather by region, most recently looked up staff members