QA process: author, approver, web team

By using the workflow facility in the content management system we are able to impose a quality control process to ensure that content which appears on the public website is fit for purpose.

There are three levels of responsibility for publishing web pages - author, approver and web team, although a fourth, intermediary, supervisory responsibility is in operation in some directorates.

Role of an author

An author is responsible for creating new, or editing existing, web pages. He/she should gather appropriate text and images for publication and create the new web pages for publication to the staging server. Once in the workflow process, authored pages are flagged to a designated approver for authority to publish. Only limited publishing facilities are available to authors.

Role of an approver

Designated approvers are responsible for checking the appropriateness of pages for publication on the live web server. In addition to ensuring that the web standards have been followed correctly, an approver must also have regard to "corporate fit" for the new or revised pages, to ensure that directorate's communications strategy and other service offerings have been adequately addressed.

An additional responsibility upon the approver is to ensure that the web page has been properly meta-tagged in order that it can be correctly listed by search engines.

Once satisfied that content is accurate and appropriate, an approver can authorise the web page for publication to the live website in the public domain. Approvers have higher levels of access to the content management system than authors.

Role of the web team

The web team has a whole site management capability and is able to over-ride an approver's changes to a web page if necessary. The team is also able to impose additional workflow requirements upon business areas that do not follow the corporate web standards.

The team provides a centralised web page production resource, typically publishing content for service areas that have not as yet been given devolved web content ownership.

Training and support

Only authorised authors and approvers are permitted access to the content management system. Prospective users are required to attend a one day training session before they are permitted to use the content management system.