CMS selection update

The CMS selection committee has completed its review of vendor proposals, which culminated last week with day-long visits by two finalists. We will be completing reference calls in short order, and IT Purchasing is set to begin contract negotiations with the finalists ASAP.

At this point, we need to keep the identity of the two finalists confidential to secure our position in the negotiation process. But I can assure you that both systems meet the requirements laid out in the RFP, and either solution will deliver a vast improvement over our current Web publishing environment and position us for smart, managed development of the university's Web presence.

While the selection committee has been hard at work, a separate CMS Project Team has been working for several months to ensure a solid foundation for implementation once the vendor is chosen. A scope document was completed early this year during the Initiating Stage, and we are head-long into the Planning Stage. Sections of interest in the scope document:

Purpose of Project:

The goal of this project is to establish a set of business rules and editorial processes to be applied by people and organizations at Virginia Tech, to align Web publishing efforts with objectives.

Some benefits include:

• Promote web publishing standards and best practices by all users regardless of ability
• Provide a publishing workflow check-in, check-out process
• Provide a tool to quickly prototype web sites and reduce the time to market
• Grow a central repository of accurate data, information and templates for repurposing to many web sites
• Improve security through a centrally hosted service by eliminating non-administered departmental and personal servers
• Provide content consistency by ensuring all websites within the CMS have a Virginia Tech "family look and feel," which ensures brand consistency
• Supports consistent navigation and user experience
• Compliance with W3C/508 (accessibility) standards
• Increase the currency and accuracy of information published on the Web
• Provide easy-to-use tools for offices to produce and maintain websites

Key deliverables:

• A fully installed and operational CMS that meets stated goals
• New business processes for developing VT websites
• Clearly defined support roles and nodes
• Clearly defined training roles and nodes
  • Creation of training content for various roles, e.g., end users, administrators, etc.
  • Training materials and on-line support, e.g., KnowledgeBase, Tutorials, Instructor-led, etc.
• Business rules for CMS participation and migration
• Migration of pilot sub-domains
• Reduced web development costs, individually and university-wide

I hope to be able to report back soon with news of a signed contract with a CMS vendor, and opportunities to see a demo of the system.