So what's the plan now?

OK, so it's launched, it's been live for 3 months - just entering the 4th.

What next?

Keep it alive! Well, that's the idea at least.

We've had a bit of an unfocussed period

Everyone involved in the new news publishing process was getting used to it. It's really been a case of tweaking it as we go along for that. It has got a lot better. More refined, less re-writing and more actual editing in the editing phase and advance preparation of content.

Having an application that allows the news publication to be scheduled has made this much easier. We knew before having this that we needed to be preparing content well in advance but it was difficult to find the time to do it as some time had to be given to actually publishing the item - and remembering to do it on the relevant day.

Now that we have a system which allows you to publish an article and schedule when it appears we can write, review, edit and publish all prior to the publication date.

The feedback systems are also working. Although people don't make a lot of noise, generally only saying something when something goes wrong or is misreported, at least now they can and they do.

But it's taken a lot of guidance and support from us to get to here. And that has taken time.

We have also been swamped by the amount of content that we're dealing with.

The content owners have never had to prepare their content for publication in this way. On the old Intranet things either got published as they were - in office document format - or were prepared in FrontPage. Usually by someone who knew that this needed to be public but didn't know how or have the time to present it for on-screen publication.

This means all of the 'static' content needs to be prepared. This means collaborating with the content owners to make the necessary amendments.

Some people have taken to this quite quickly and easily, for others it's just not possible with their workloads.

Also, some people still haven't realised the potential of the Intranet.

I know it's up to us to promote it and educate people on its potential.

At the moment we're facing a long list of content to be prepared and published plus general tidying and maintenance, enhancements and future developments. With only one web designer and a colleage and manager working on it this is making very, very slow progress.

We have enough work to employ a content developer full time but for various reasons we can't.

So back into the pile we go...