In attendance:
Bob Shea, Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration and Chief Financial Officer
Tina McEntire, Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Management
Terri Shelton, Vice Chancellor for Research and Engagement
Donna Heath, Vice Chancellor for Information Technology Services and Chief Information Officer
Julia Jackson-Newsom, Associate Vice Chancellor for Strategy and Policy
Todd Sutton, Associate Vice Chancellor, ITS Chief Customer Success Officer
Chris Waters, University Webmaster
Craig Biles, University Mobile Application Architect
Kimberly Osborne, Director of Enterprise Communications
Topic: Overview of UNCG Web and Mobile Strategy
Topic: Web Redesign Project Update
Context: Functional workgroups across our campus have historically grown their client-facing services organically and independently. While this approach served the university well for many years, it also contributed to service sprawl, duplication of functionality, increased costs, and in many cases, a less than desirable end user experience. Until 2019, we did not have the enterprise technology governance framework in place that we needed to ensure collective focus on best institutional outcomes first and individual unit outcomes second.
In a June 2018 cross-campus student experience workshop, campus stakeholders expressed widespread frustration with the disjointed and ineffective UNCG web experience for prospective and current students. At that time, UNCG had nearly 300 distinct websites. All but www.uncg.edu were managed by different functional units across the campus. There were 34,109 broken links across these 300 sites from content that was stale and not required to be managed to any university standards. We had a legacy mobile application that was static and largely unused.
In the late fall of 2018, Information Technology Services presented a web and mobile strategy to Chancellor’s Council that outlined an approach for building a completely new university website and mobile application that would be integrated across business functions, presented with a consistent look/feel/message across sites and platforms, and governed appropriately by campus stakeholders to ensure updated, relevant content and the best end user experience possible.
The web and mobile strategy was approved by Chancellor’s Council. Modo Labs was selected as the mobile application platform and implementation of the new mobile app began in October of 2018. The new mobile app was released at new student orientation in June of 2019. Funding was allocated in May 2019 for the website redesign project. The next generation web RFP was posted in December 2019, Vision Point was selected as the vendor partner in March 2020, and the two-year enterprise re-design project kicked off in April 2020.
Functional workgroups across our campus have historically grown their client-facing services organically and independently. While this approach served the university well for many years, it also contributed to service sprawl, duplication of functionality, increased costs, and in many cases, a less than desirable end user experience. Until 2019, we did not have the enterprise technology governance framework in place that we needed to ensure collective focus on best institutional outcomes first and individual unit outcomes second.
In a June 2018 cross-campus student experience workshop, campus stakeholders expressed widespread frustration with the disjointed and ineffective UNCG web experience for prospective and current students. At that time, UNCG had nearly 300 distinct websites. All but www.uncg.edu were managed by different functional units across the campus. There were 34,109 broken links across these 300 sites from content that was stale and not required to be managed to any university standards. We had a legacy mobile application that was static and largely unused.
In the late fall of 2018, Information Technology Services presented a web and mobile strategy to Chancellor’s Council that outlined an approach for building a completely new university website and mobile application that would be integrated across business functions, presented with a consistent look/feel/message across sites and platforms, and governed appropriately by campus stakeholders to ensure updated, relevant content and the best end user experience possible.
The web and mobile strategy was approved by Chancellor’s Council. Modo Labs was selected as the mobile application platform and implementation of the new mobile app began in October of 2018. The new mobile app was released at new student orientation in June of 2019. Funding was allocated in May 2019 for the website redesign project. The next generation web RFP was posted in December 2019, Vision Point was selected as the vendor partner in March 2020, and the two-year enterprise re-design project kicked off in April 2020.