Decentralised metadata driven CMS with integrated thesaurus

Acronym of the case:

Thesaurus CMS

Web address of the case:

http://network.osha.europa.eu/about/

Country of the case:

EU Institutions

City/region:

Bilbao/Spain

Posting Date:

9 June 2009

Last Edited Date:

09 June 2009

Author:

Gorka Moral (EU-OSHA (European Agency for Safety and Health at Work))

CMS | thesaurus | Metadata

Type of initiative

Project or service
Network

Case Abstract

Created to control, categorise, and facilitate the work of a network of partners, and external editors, geographically located all around Europe and beyond, the EU-OSHA information hub stores and distributes the information placed in the system, in a variety of ways (RSS, alerts, e-newsletter, ...). Based on the metadata entered for each piece of information, it makes the creation of sections for specific topics, a really easy task. All you need is to define the uitable keywords for that topic, and define the display of the results.

Its integrated workflow, allows an easy management of the work. One editor adds a new entry; a reviewer checks that it is ok, and a manager decides if it is publishable or not. A work list allows each component of the workflow, to check his entries, or the ones he is responsible for.

This CMS solution integrates a hierarchical thesaurus of OSH terms, translated in 22 languages, which covers the most important topics on Occupational Safety and Health. But, if this is not your organisation's field, you can change it by any other Thesaurus.

Some features include:

The publications product, to publish pdf publications, with thumbnail autogenerated, possibility to add chapters, ISBN number, and others, as well as metadata;
The calls for tender facility, where you can easily add 22 language versions of the main notifications for a tender (contract notice, award, amendments, FAQs, corrigendums, etc.;
Seminars, to add all the documentation for any event, as well as speeches and speakers information, presentations, pictures, videos, etc., all tagged, and classified by topic or sector.

Description of the case

Domain

eGovernment

Topic

Services for Citizens | Multi-channel Delivery | Other

Sector

Education, Science and Research | Other

Start date - End date

January 2004 (Ongoing)

Date operational

January 2005

Target Users

Administrative | Business (industry) | Other

Target Users Description

Our target audience varies from workers in general, to OSH experts, including social
partners - employersâ€™ federations, SMEs, or trade unions.

Scope

International

Status

Operation

Language(s)

Policy Context and Legal Framework

EU-OSHA is one of the
executive Agencies of the EU. We are an information Agency, which central role is to contribute to the improvement of working life in the European Union. Set up in 1996 by the European Union and located in Bilbao, Spain, EU-OSHA is the main EU reference point for safety and health at work.

We work with governments, employers and workers to promote a risk prevention culture.
We analyse new scientific research and statistics on workplace risks.
We anticipate new and emerging risks through our European Risk Observatory.

We identify and share information, good practice and advice with a wide range of audiences, such as social partners - employers' federations and trade unions.

Project Size and Implementation

Type of initiative

Content provision

Overall Implementation approach

Public administration

Technology choice

Open source software

Funding source

Public funding EU

Project size

Implementation: €500-999,000

Implementation and Management Approach

EU-OSHA has a web team of 5 people, taking care of the overall management, and managing an external contractor, who does all the developments.

The Agency has a network of experts, who add contents directly on the website, supervised by Agency staff, and creates its own contents as well.

We are hosting more than 30 different national websites, each of them managed by an external webmaster, who manages the configuration and permissions on his site.

In order to manage all the different users and groups, there is a workflow policy, where only the managers (Agency staff, mainly), can publish the contents, while they are added and reviewed by the external experts.

We have, as well, a language policy, which, basically states that all the general information is translated into the official EU languages, whereas the more expert focused, technical information, is kept in English only. To be able to cope with this, we use a taylored XLIFF tool, which allows us to export pieces of text, that can be worked in the Translation Centre, and then, reimported again onto the system, just by pressing a button.

The main factor to make this all work, is the cooperation between the different teams (Web, IT and OSH experts). Each project is defined in advance, so different solutions are proposed, and the best one choosen. As all the teams are involved, we make sure that it fits the users needs, the web standards, and that it will not crash the system, once online.

Technology solution

Our system uses Zope and Plone (both open source software), as basis. Above them, we have been customising some default features, as well as adding new ones, in order to deal with our needs.

This has lead to a much powerful platform, fully open, and ready to use.

The pages are WAI AA compliant, as long as the content is.

We have incorporated our own thesaurus with safety and health terms, to categorise the information properly. The good thing is that anyone could add their own keywords as needed.

Impact, innovation and results

Impact

The main results are that non computer literate users, can add information onto the system in an organised way, and this fact, has increased the quantity and quality of the information we offer, increasing as well, the ammount of visits to the website, on a constant basis.

Acording to the most recent survey, most of our users are satisfied with the website, and in fact, it was awarded in 2005 as best in innovation in content management.

Track record of sharing

All the relevant technical information is available on our software website.

We are offering there all the documentation, and the possibility to download the complete system, or just the products we have developed ourselves.

Feel free to share your impressions and comments from the proper section of the website.

Lessons learnt

Cope with the needs of a large decentralised network. Geographically located all arround the world. Some maintaining their own websites, in our system, which means different levels of knowledge, access, and capabilities, for each of them.

Enhance the use of metainformation to categorise the information and make it findable, and
user taylored (by topic, by sector, by target group, etc.).

Manage multiple language versions in a manageable way, for a large amount of
information, using xliff. This allows us to export and imoprt pieces of text to be sent to the Translation Centre of the Commission.

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practice Decentralised metadata driven CMS with integrated thesaurus