Glad you asked

	Danny Shaw, chief knowledge officer, and Bess Andrews, director of Public Affairs
	From previous issues: Earned time Mental health care advocacy Recycling Choosing Children's president Exceptional Care, Exceptional Service Patents Building's names Shuttle service Donation money Night shift employees Smoking near the hospital

Question: What is the status of the intranet
redesign?

Answer: In late spring, Public Affairs and the Information Services Department (ISD) embarked on the first phase of the intranet redesign to determine how our current intranet meets the information and transaction needs of Children's Hospital Boston employees, and gather feedback on the site's strengths and weaknesses. We enlisted experts from the Bentley College Design and Usability Center to conduct focus groups, an institution-wide online survey and individual usability testing of the site by Children's employees. This helped us nail down specifics about staff members' hopes and expectations of what a successful site would contain and how it would look and function. Overall, more than 400 Children's staff participated in the process.

The usability experts boiled it down to this: "Participants envisioned [the new intranet] as a unified resource that offers a single point of entry into and reference for Children's administration, research and clinical care activities. They expect a revised site to be better organized, more visually appealing, updated with far more frequency and more tightly integrated into their workday. They envision more frequent use, with less time spent per use."

ISD has begun piloting a new content management system (CMS), with a few departments. The new CMS will allow each department to create and maintain their own content on templated pages that share a common look, organization and functionality. Other exciting improvements include a new search functionality that will allow ISD to index a broader scope of content and present the results in a much more user-friendly format. We're also hoping to add a tool that allows departments to post their own News and Announcements on the new homepage.

We are looking forward to a roll out in early 2009. Keep an eye on Children's News for information about training on the new CMS, which will be available through Learning and Development in Human Resources.

Thanks for asking!

Got a question? Send it to news@childrens.harvard.edu.