Eionet Portal Improvement Project - Kick-off email to the NFP/Eionet group

A blog post initially published 13 August 2018 on the former Eionet portal prototype

Dear Colleagues,

With the new organisation at EEA in place on 1 September I will become the responsible manager for the Eionet portal project.

Those of you have been working with us since before 2009 probably remember me from the time when both the IT and data aspects of Eionet were under my responsibility. Since then I have worked more on internal management at EEA, first as the Head of the Operational Services programme and since 2015 in the Executive Director’s office, while in the new organisation I have joined the Coordination and Strategy programme (CAS).

The development of the portal has earlier been on my task list. My last direct interaction with the NFP/Eionet group was indeed the revamp of the Eionet portal in 2007 (Not much merit in that, you might think when looking at it now, but the portal was certainly state-of-art at that time!). Since then the portal has grown, with new content, services and navigation added while outdated content has not been removed systematically. Website design trends and usability guidelines have also changed over the 11 years since we launched the current portal and the IT platform it is built on (Zope) does not offer content management possibilities that more modern web content management systems do. As a consequence of the growth without a strong overall coordination over time, the portal is now somewhat overloaded with navigation options and the old IT platform prevents it from being properly content-managed by non-technical staff. It is therefore high time to give it a complete overhaul and to move to another IT platform.

In 2018, we do not have IT resources reserved for a project on that scale (migration to another platform). Instead, we (the Eionet group in the new CAS programme) will use what remains of 2018 to gather your requirements and improvement ideas and work closely with the ICT User Group to prepare for the technical developments in 2019. We will also use the autumn to clean the portal from outdated content (either by removing it or updating relevant parts of it). Furthermore, we have ensured some support from staff in the new Data and Information Services Programme (DIS) to follow up the cleaning operation, for example by removing irrelevant navigation items and make some changes to the menu structure for increased usability.

The only “new” tool that we commit ourselves to introduce before the end of the year is a replacement of the old Eionet Planner, so we can again offer as of 2019 a calendar with the main events and deadlines of interests for the NFP/Eionet group. The Eionet portal and the Planner were both raised at recent CCC Working Group meetings and I also know that Ninni, Sofia and Regis have been working on some suggested improvements in that context and we will gladly consult them on the work they have invested in this.

As a preparation for kicking off the project we have created a prototype of a new portal as one might expect it to look like if designed from scratch in 2018. You can find it at fusia.eu and the password is simply Eionet. This prototype is currently not on EEA’s IT infrastructure and the future portal will probably not be based on this platform (WordPress). Instead, the current intention is to maintain this prototype during the initial phase of the project while gathering your comments and testing some ideas about the navigation, content, tools and services. The plan is then to build the new operational portal in 2019 as an extension of the IT platform of the EEA’s main website (Plone).

One idea that we have been experimenting with on the prototype portal is to introduce a structure that is more based on the role of the user. Therefore, we have for example added to the new footer menu a separate column for NFPs (quick link to services mainly used by NFPs). Another column in the footer offers other stakeholders direct access to their services (for example a direct link for the Management Board and Scientific Committee members to their Forum groups). Furthermore, the intention is also to collect all the information that is only needed by IT developers under one menu entry there, separated from the other content that is of wider interest.

Although not formally kicking off the project until 1 September I would be more than happy to get your initial comments already now. The prototype includes a blog where you can find a copy of this email and provide your responses. In this blog we will regularly keep you updated about the plans and progress and invite you to respond. Alternatively, you can also reply directly to me by email. Furthermore, the project will be on the agenda of the Webinar scheduled on 10 September (see invitation sent by Pia on 5 July).

Looking forward to again working closely with the NFP/Eionet group.

With best regards

Sigfús

Sigfús Bjarnason

Eionet systems coordination

Coordination and Strategy Programme (CAS)