Ironworks Government Solutions has been responsible for all ongoing maintenance, improvements, and new development for the website. Major activities have included the following:
Enhancing application performance: Prior to our involvement, the client’s existing implementation of Oracle Universal Content Management (OUCM) was extremely slow and sometimes required more than a minute for a page to launch. One of our primary objectives once engaged was to identify the performance issues and recommend a solution. Our approach was to re-code the application and re-architect the solution. In parallel with this process, Ironworks Government Solutions migrated the application from a one of the client’s hosting centers to another, while making other performance-related enhancements.
Conducting “Continual Improvement” of the User Experience: One of the overall, ongoing objectives of the project is to continually enhance the user experience. We have undertaken several initiatives in this area:
- Launched a new “skin” for the site, designed by the client, to enhance the visual design as a temporary measure until a full site redesign could be completed
- Currently in the process of a full redesign of Information Architecture and Visual Design
- Developing event management functionality that allows online event bookings and payments for eligible users
- Continually pursuing additional functionality to meet the needs of contributors and end users and seeking ways to make small, incremental improvements to the site
Providing Tier 2 and Tier 3 Application Support: The client has a 24 x 7 Support Center that is responsible for Tier 1 website support. The Support Center representatives have a basic knowledge of OUCM, but when they are unable to resolve issues reported by contributors, they escalate the issues to Ironworks Government Solutions. We track the issues, work with the Support Center and the contributors to resolve them, and offers ongoing training and feedback to the Support Center to assist them with future issue resolution.
Implementing Additional Technical Enhancements: We are also in the process of implementing additional technical improvements for the site:
- Implemented web analytics to provide better analysis of site traffic; future enhancements planned
- Developed enhancements to workflow functionality; additional future enhancements planned
- Developing functionality so that contributors can be authorized via their Common Access Card (CAC); future enhancement will allow CAC access to Controlled Access (non-public) content
- Currently adding a Disaster Recovery environment to the existing implementation housed in the Hosting Center
- Working with a third party video and content caching provider (Limelight) to implement more robust video capabilities on the site
- Working on numerous additional enhancement requests received from users
Providing Website Training Documentation: Ironworks Government Solutions is responsible for developing website training documentation used by the contributors and the Support Center. When we were first engaged by the client, we overhauled the existing training documentation and have since developed additional module-based training to address frequently asked questions and other items that are often performed incorrectly.