U.S. Department of Defense CPMS
DoD Civilian Personnel Management Service
http://www.cpms.osd.mil
CPMS is a recognized leader and provider of choice in Federal Human Resources Management providing innovative support and solutions to all customers, including DoD Components, Civilian Personnel Policy, and all CPMS employees.
challenge
The DoD/CPMS website is large and serves 13 divisions with 27,000 + html web pages, 10,000+ documents, and thousands of images managed without a content management system. Requests for website changes were managed via email, memos and meetings. Only two resource employees in Information Services Division (ISD) and a few other select employees, who were brave enough to use Front Page, managed the entire site while accomplishing all of their main job responsibilities.DoD/CPMS were looking for a way to manage their various websites. Each of DoD/CPMS’s 13 divisions has its own unique section of the website and a desire to add, update and change content frequently. The challenge was to find a Content Management System (CMS) that was robust enough to effectively handle their volumes of content, yet user-friendly enough to allow the DoD/CPMS non-technical staff to manage the content. They knew they had to find something that could be deployed quickly and easily. All of their content would have to be efficiently converted into the CMS. It had to be a system that they could learn and support. It also had to have enough flexibility to allow for them to integrate it with all of the current database applications they were using on their multiple websites and web servers. As a government agency, security, audit trails and workflows were critical components of this project.
process
ISD required a robust, efficient and straightforward CMS. Not only did the system have to handle all of their technical requirements, they felt it was critical to find a vendor who would become a partner who would be there for support after the software was installed and the training was complete.
After reviewing several solutions and talking with other vendors, they decided to have us implement the BASE-10 Content Management Suite. BASE-10 addressed all the requirements for security, scalability, ease-of-use and workflow processes, while being reasonably priced. BASE-10 is developed on the Microsoft .Net framework and is fully supported by a team of seasoned developers.
solution
Base-10 Content Management Suite:- Installed BASE-10 on load-balanced web servers located at DoD/CPMS.
- Converted all content on the websites from the live site into BASE-10. This included all documents, links to documents, content, images and HTML web pages being converted into the databases that run the BASE-10 CMS.
- Created multiple workflow processes that support DoD/ CPMS internal processes, policies and procedures.
- Conducted hands on training for all division. Generated excitment within dvisions about using BASE-10 and starting an internal user support group to encourage sharing best practices around content management.
- Implemented an entire redesign of the website, (including templates for each division) into the BASE-10 CMS within a four month period. This included time to allow non-technical staff within each division to use BASE-10 to clean up and reorganize content.
results
ISD Division Chief, DoD/CPMS, “I’ve seen a lot of software in my years of experience working in IT within the Government. BASE-10 is great but the true value comes with the added layer of service that Interactive Ink brings to the table. The ideas you had during the training to help to make sure that there is a cohesiveness with our users and has really made all the difference.”
The BASE-10 content management solution allows DoD/CPMS to control their websites without the expense, bottleneck, or dependency of working with an outsourced provider, or reliance on ISD technical staff. Division web managers are fully engaged and excited, both with the system ease-of-use and the improved new functionality that allows them to accomplish things that were too time-consuming or difficult before.
CPMS Division content manager said,
“I love it! I can actually go in and make changes quickly and easily to my division’s web pages. I can see the preview right away and so I know that when I publish to the live website it will look like it should. I’m able to go in and change tables and make formatting changes quickly and easily! “
Interactive Ink and the developers of BASE-10 are committed to ongoing customer service and satisfaction. Says the IDS Division Chief,
“BASE-10 is amazing at implementing our suggestions into new features. We had some items that were important to the success of our implementation and we were amazed to see how quickly they became part of the feature set of BASE-10. They really mean it when they say that they listen to the users of their product.”