As you probably know from prior posts, with the work of my predecessor Alexicon Kurka, we finally have the long-planned official CDS webportal up and running, and presently accessible from http://portal.slcds.info.
Warm congratulations and thanks to Arria Perrault, Alexi and their team for this work. See more on the historical development of this project here:
http://forums.slcds.info/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1681
Note the portal is a statutory requirement for CDS, as an initiative started several RA terms ago.
Here's a summary of current plans. Brian Livingston will take this over, and so likely will do most of the future posting on this topic on behalf of the government.
Comments are welcome, here: http://forums.slcds.info/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2046
1. The format and structure is pretty much set, by good work from Arria and her team. We don't plan to change it too much.
2. Arria Perrault kindly is continuing to work as a volunteer in porting over material, even though her own term as PIO expires and she has moved on to being a noble senator. in our RA. All that, in addition to doing most of the work to set up the content! We're lucky to have her.
3. The persistent place for citizen *input* and conversations, as well as official government announcements, will continue to be *here* on the forum boards:
http://forums.slcds.info
The Forums also are a statutory official resource, managed by the CDS SC, not replaced by the Portal. The Portal, managed by the CDS executive branch, will be our official front page and repository for other information and announcements ... and our primary face to the world. Thus, by the time we're done with the launch, I expect it will replace the current resource at http://slcds.info, the volunteer work long generously provided by Gwyneth Llewellyn and her colleagues.
4. We might like to continue to use that domain for all CDS official business; depends on the host agreeing and appropriate safeguards being in place. To be discussed. Related thread: http://forums.slcds.info/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1925
5. I expect most CDS announcements in the future to be channeled through Brian and his team, in whatever way they arrange. In that way, our event notices can be effective and hit hit multiple resources -- the portal, the CDS web-based calendar, the CDS SL group 'bluescreen' announcements, etc. Maybe it's automatable :) Ask Brian. Still, there will be some continuing self-help posting on the Portal. For example, the RA has a new dedicated space for maintaining the official copies of our laws, replacing the old wiki generiously donated by Aliasi Stonebender. So Publius Crabgrass, our new RA Archivist, will have posting permissions there. Do we need access for NGOs, and others too? Please direct views on this to Brian (CIO) or Rose (marketing & events), or here: http://forums.slcds.info/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2046
6. The RA did explicitly approve a small expense per month to pay for Alexicon to host (in RL) the portal for now. We'll continue this for a month or two and then re-examine. Thanks again, Alexi. (Would that normally require pre-approval by RA? No, but when the Chancellor was paying himself, it seemed like a good idea to get RA assent .. which we did while I was LRA.) Alexi and Arria and I met on this over the weekend; Alexi agreed to set up new passwords for our executive branch team as of today; Brian will schedule a meeting within the next week or two, for those who wish to participate actively in portal development.
I expect everything to be up and running before the 4th anniversary of CDS,
** 20 September 2008 **
which also will mark the start of our Oktoberfest event this year. Maybe sooner, but that's the outside date. Then we can all lift improbably large, physics-violating steins to toast the team we are lucky to have doing this work for CDS.
Regards Jamie P