2012

The festive period is over; it’s back to work.

About the BBC website

So what will 2012 bring us, here at BBC intranet HQ?

Well lots of organisational changes for a start. Changes at the (near) top of the IT organisation will impact on the Gateway team, and me personally. Whilst the final details are being sorted, it’s business as usual and we have clear plans stretching into the summer that will provide the team with new challenges, and incorporate exciting new opportunities to get more involved in activities that don’t usually fall under the remit of an intranet team.

In addition to continuing with intranet management and associated technical development, the team will be taking on the responsibility for the development of the BBC’s corporate internet activity. Some have already been done http://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/ and http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/ with plenty more on the way.

Our approach, building on the successful implementation of intranet templates, means we will offer editorial teams a restricted number of  templates to use externally, to meet all their functional requirements, which will mean less money being spent on external design agencies, and ultimately save the BBC money. It’s a no brainer; why spend money trying to satisfy all the needs of everyone, when seven templates adequately meet the needs of the majority?

I’m in the process of clarifying the level of service we’ll be offering to the editorial folks, and we’ll be fully open for business in April 2012, whilst we ramp up our activities over the next couple of months.

So what are we going to be doing for the intranet? Plenty.

1. looking at what the Gateway homepage offers BBC users and making some suggestions to improve it even further
2. implementing improvements to our search engine
3. finalise version four of the intranet templates (which offers horizontal navigation, along the lines of the corporate sites) and make them available to publishers
4. assisting project teams in upgrade plans for existing technologies and agreeing the future role of the Gateway team
5. understand and manage the organisational changes to ensure no disruption to the current level of service/support and the Gateway team are clear what their roles and responsibilities are, and the business agrees and understands them.
6. manage the transition period to ensure additional corporate activities are successfully implemented with no impact on existing intranet support and development activities

So plenty to do, both internally and externally.