The NYS Forum, Inc.

2005-2006 Best Practices Award Winners

POLICY
NYS Governor's Office of Employee Relations
Successful Web Communications in NYS Government

The Business Problem

In 1999, New York State issued Technology Policy 99-3, Universal Accessibility for NYS Web Sites. This policy required State agencies to ensure that their web site content was accessible to individuals with disabilities, and required conformance to the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines at Priority 1 level. Underlying that policy was an assumption that the individuals preparing content for agency web sites understood enough about the HTML code underlying web pages to make corrections when necessary. Shortage of employees with sufficient experience to implement Technology Policy 99-3 was a significant impediment to achieving the goal of universally accessible state web sites, and consistently cited as a problem by web developers and content providers.

The Forum's Webmasters' Guild and IT Accessibility Committee provide educational sessions for employees who work on the State's official web sites. Both groups were acutely aware of the disparate levels of technical expertise among the state's web developers and the problems this caused.

The Solution

In October 2004, the IT Accessibility Committee brought the problem to the attention of the New York State/Public Employees Federation (PEF) Professional Development Committee (PDC), a labor management committee with responsibility for the Statewide training of employees in the Professional, Scientific and Technical Services (PS&T) Unit. The PDC recognized the problem and agreed to fund a training series that would build the necessary skills using standards-based principles.

A shared sense of purpose by the involved organizations led to immediate action:

• The Guild and the IT Accessibility Committee conducted an online survey to assess current skills levels, skills needed, and preferred training methods.
• Experts from the IT Accessibility Committee outlined a training series based on the survey results.
• GOER issued a Request for Proposal to identify a training partner.
• An Advisory Committee composed of representatives from the GOER, the Office for Technology (OFT), PEF, The Forum, and the Center for Technology in Government (CTG) was established to assist.
• The Advisory Committee worked with the selected training partner, MicroKnowledge, to create curricula, market the series, and provide input at critical junctures.
• Several members of the Advisory Committee, with PDC approval and funding, began scripting a video to reinforce the training series.

In November 2005, the 13-class series was announced. A unique feature of the series was its holistic approach to web site development. In addition to providing web developers with the technical skills required for creating terrific, standards-based web sites, the series also provided non-technical training for public information officers, agency executives, and program managers, covering best practices in web design, accessibility and usability. Agencies were encouraged to - and many did - send their entire web team through this training.

The coalition that championed this training broke new ground to make the training widely available. Arrangements were made for funding for State employees outside the PS&T unit to attend and classes were open to non-Executive Branch state employees, local government employees, and not-for-profit employees on an as-available basis, at cost.

Between November 2005 and May 2006, more than a thousand State employees attended training. In June 2006 a 10-minute, web accessible, educational video was released.

Measure of Success

Participants' class evaluations were overwhelmingly positive. The following table shows the summary responses for six questions (listed below the table) from all participants in each of the 13 classes that made up the series.

Class	#1	#2	#3	#4	#5	#6
Accessible/Usable Navigation	4.46	4.46	4.50	4.63	4.63	4.63
Creating Effective Images	4.58	4.61	4.32	4.58	4.50	4.56
Creating Successful Web Sites	4.13	4.09	3.93	4.08	4.04	3.97
Dreamweaver Advanced	4.56	4.45	4.33	4.62	4.59	4.49
Dreamweaver Basic	4.46	4.43	4.40	4.36	4.41	4.38
Formatting Text with XHTML and CSS	4.29	4.24	4.29	4.46	4.48	4.37
FrontPage Advanced	3.91	3.55	3.91	4.27	4.36	4.36
FrontPage Basic	4.67	4.67	4.61	4.76	4.85	4.47
Including Proprietary Formats on Your Web Site	4.42	4.41	4.21	4.54	4.55	4.31
Overview of Successful Web Site Communications	4.15	4.13	4.12	4.15	4.31	4.01
Understanding HTML	4.65	4.65	4.63	4.66	4.69	4.37
Web Site Testing and Validation	4.25	4.09	4.00	4.05	4.12	4.16
Working with CSS	4.53	4.42	4.48	4.58	4.57	4.47
Overall Average response by question:	4.39	4.32	4.29	4.44	4.46	4.35

1. The program objectives were clearly explained.
2. The program effectively met its stated objectives.
3. The program materials helped me to under the subject matter.
4. The instructional methods helped the presentation of the subject matter.
5. The program content increased my understanding about the subject matter.
6. The subject matter will be useful to my job.

Strongly Agree - 5

Agree - 4

Neutral - 3

Disagree - 2

Strongly Disagree - 1

A follow up survey is underway to document impact of the training on the job. It is evident immediately to the IT Accessibility Committee that far fewer state employees need beginning level information because of the training requests they receive. In addition the volume of requests for information they receive has decreased by nearly half, and the types of questions are more sophisticated.

Impact on Government Operations

As the public looks more often to the Internet for government information and service delivery, improving the design, usability and coding of agency web content improves the overall responsiveness and reliability of government web sites for the general public. People with disabilities are one segment of the population most likely to benefit from having government information and services available through the Internet. In addition to expanding the information available to them online, properly designed forms and applications can increase the range of services they can acquire independently.

Realized benefits and return on investment

Improved skills for web developers will likely translate into improved web content for those using assistive technology to navigate the web, increasing the potential audience for web-published material. Moreover, having a reliable and accessible web platform should help to reduce the necessity of staffing brick-and-mortar offices and hard copy printing.

The industry has demonstrated that web sites accessible to people with disabilities are also accessible to those with mobile devices. Efforts to improve accessibility and usability benefit a wide-ranging audience, especially in the younger demographic (the mobile audience) and the older demographic (the aging population).

Because the training emphasized standards-based design principles, improving the skills of web developers not only improves the end product, but also has had a positive impact on job performance. By establishing a foundation of core skills, employees can more easily transfer from agency to agency, increasing career mobility and making the transfer of advanced skills more efficient. Finally, the emphasis on best practices helps ensure that content providers create content that will be easily understandable by and accessible to its intended audience.

Contact:

Onnolee Smith

Assistant Director

NYS Governor's Office of Employee Relations

2 Empire State Plaza

7th Floor

Albany, NY 12223

(518) 474-1370

osmith@goer.state.ny.us