Intranets keep getting bigger and bigger. The UK Government has completed the first phase of its Government Secure Intranet (GSi) serving 350,000 public servants and 154 government departments.

It provides information sharing and collaboration for government officials in the UK and other European government bodies, reports TechWorld.

“GSi was first established in 1997, and provided basic messaging and Internet access. The new GSi will add centralised identity management providing users with different levels of access to confidential material.

The first phase has put into place direct connections between GSi and other government and inter-government bodies, allowing communications to bypass the public Internet. There are, for example, peering connections between the Criminal Justice eXchange, MoD, NHSNet/N3, EU Council of Ministers and TESTA, a network that joins other European Government networks, according to Energis.

Scotland has put a cross-governmental internet called GSx into place, linking the central government, the DVLA, and the TV licensing and Registry Offices.

Seventeen government departments are using a confidential version of the network, called xGSi, and civil servants who need to exchange secret data have been allocated their own virtual private networks at different levels of confidentiality. The network is voice-ready, for if and when the government decides to switch over to an IP-based voice system.

The network is already handling one million emails daily, and in June blocked one million viruses and quarantined 2.7 million junk emails, Energis said.

The second phase, coming in September, will add the identity management. Incredibly for a government IT project, this first phase has been rolled out 15 months ahead of the deadline. The entire migration was completed in 18 months, and Energis was able to arrange for customers to be released from contracts with previous GSi suppliers, so that all users are on the same GSi platform.

The ahead-of-time delivery is a contrast to some previous government IT upgrade projects, which have earned a record for being late and over-budget.

One example is a Child Support Agency IT system, which involves a Java-based application developed by EDS, is expected to cost the government £456 million over 10 years and has been plagued by problems. It was launched two years behind schedule and £256 million over budget and was blamed in 2003 for delaying payments to tens of thousands of single parents.

In July of last year, the Select Committee on Work and Pensions issued a highly critical report that called the system an "appalling waste of public money", and recommended it be dumped altogether unless it hit a 1 December deadline.

The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) late last year suffered what has been described as the biggest computer crash in government history after a "routine" software upgrade, losing 80 per cent of its 100,000 PCs in the crash.”

A lot has been made in the past couple of years about intranet best practices and what are some of the norms, universal standards and typical costs.

Of course, there is no easy answer. Every company is different and there are huge degrees in difference between varying industries, corporate cultures, differing technology, etc.

When recently asked to speak about the subject at a 2-part conference in New York and Chicago I developed the "5 Winning Ingredients for a Successful Intranet." Again its worth stating that it depends on the company -- what already is working at one company may not necessarily be working well at another and therefore an independent assessment is necessary to determine the "5 most important ingredients" or focus for an intranet or portal.

However, there are some universal truths that I've learned from working with and observing the work of many dozens of corporate intranets and portals.

Top 5 favorite ingredients:

5 - Simplify

Number one user complaint: “I can’t find anything!” So focus on the basics:

Content Information architecture
Effective search
Self-service tools

Avoid:

Animation
Too many colors
Flash
Non-HTML (or ASP, JSP)

4- Standardize

Standardize development (templates, footers, style guide)
Editorial policy (content formats, roles and responsibilities)
Taxonomy (categorizing and storing content)
Email (acceptable use, broadcast email limitations)
Default home page setting
Browser auto launch

3- Promote

Organization-wide understanding, acceptance, and use of the intranet is critical to success. Think:

Pre-promotion (e-mail alerts, survey, news stories, word of mouth)
Education (new hire orientation, online demo, webinar)
Marketing (print, PDF, e-newsletter, press conference, webcast, premiums, etc.)

2- Content

Content is still king. Firstly you need an editorial policy. But your content should be...

Timely and relevant: know what your employees want and get it published
Answer “what’s in it for me?”: Don’t just re-publish a press release – write for the employee
Succinct: text should be limited to 50 per cent of the words you would write in a print publication.
Promote scanning: by breaking up text using short paragraphs, sub-headings, bullets and call-outs – avoid long, continuous blocks of text

1- Plan

Intranet performance and success (and that of the site) is determined before construction with the identification of business requirements. Subsequent, mandatory planning constructs the blueprint for ongoing management. Failure to develop an integrated plan can ensure failure.

Nothwithstanding needs and requirements, Gartner estimates that one third of projects exceed budgets and schedules by almost 100% in small to mid-size companies. This is largely because of planning failures and an inability to properly document requirements.

Intranet Best Practices