Corporate Website Officer - Birmingham City Council
August 2008 - April 2015
Birmingham, United Kingdom
My role in the Corporate Webteam involved being the final publisher in the workflow of the content management system, ensuring page authors from service areas across the whole council maintain the strict standards of accessibility, plain English, technical competence, and corporate branding rules – referring web pages back where necessary to be redone, and keeping an overview of the website, facilitating the sharing of good practice and a watching eye on weaker pages. I also led monthly surgery sessions for service area users of the Content Management Systems in use at the times - initially Morse, then Fatwire - in which I facilitated the sharing of good practice, hints and tips, and offered live user support when CMS users had difficulties.
I was involved in the strategic development of the website as a whole in terms of content, design, and technology, creating information architectures, graphic designs, bespoke technologies and microsites, and individual pages as needed, as well as identifying and managing the resolution of defects, creating requirements documents and leading on the requirements and procurement process for the new Jadu CMS, and writing the content strategy to which the new Web Content Team rebuilt the site from scratch. Lastly, the role also included creating microsites for service areas in Wordpress, creating bespoke from scratch or customising existing Wordpress themes as required.
During my time in the team there were a number of periods of management hiatus, in which we acted collectively and collegiately, deferring to any given team member for matters of particular expertise; during these periods I acted as the project manager for the team, creating project workplans, convening team meetings, and acting as the client voice with our IT partner.