DOD service gives employees more Web power

Officials at the Defense Department’s Civilian Personnel Management Service (CPMS) will launch new functions June 1 that will enable nontechnical employees to update content on the agency’s Web site faster and more easily than before.

Currently, employees send e-mail messages with changes to the agency’s two information technology employees, who then publish the updated information, said Tony Pietrocola, president and co-founder of Cleveland-based Tenth Floor. The technical employees, who had other IT duties, sometimes took days or even weeks to publish the new content across the CPMS Web site’s 27,000 pages, he added.

“It was such a bottleneck,” Pietrocola said.

About a year ago, Pietrocola met with CPMS officials and demonstrated his company’s BASE-10 Web content management software, which can allow easier management of multiple Web sites or pages. It is built on the Microsoft .NET framework and provides an integrated workflow process.

“In the system, you log in, write the content and hit the save button,” he said. “The system automatically sends it to the next person and they can either approve or reject the content.”

The system provides the agency a complete audit trail and more accountability, he said. The roles-based system gives users restricted access to documents based on their job titles. He said certain users are even allowed to change not only content but also the look of Web pages.

Pietrocola said the biggest challenge for any agency or organization is to make its Web site more efficient. He said organizations need to do a better job of cleaning up expired Web pages, finding relevant content and updating content.

CPMS paid $120,000 to $140,000 to implement the software for an unlimited number of users, he said. The company charges a yearly maintenance fee, which is based on the percentage of the license and includes version upgrades.

Tenth Floor, which was founded in 2000, entered the government sector about a year and a half ago. Its content management software has been implemented in local governments and school districts in the Cleveland area and also at the Ohio Health Department.