WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT _ MAINTENANCE

							                 GUIDELINES




                     FOR




WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT & MAINTENANCE




    NATIONAL INFORMATICS CENTRE, MEGHALAYA
              MCIT, GOVT. OF INDIA.
                           GUIDELINES FOR

    WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT, HOSTING AND MAINTENANCE

[A] BACKGROUND

During the last State High Level e-Governance meeting held under the
Chairmanship of the Chief Secretary, it emphasizes the use of Web
Technology to disseminate the information across the world and to
enhance the citizen-IT interface. Also, it recognizes the need of using
Web Potential in bridging the gap between the Government and the
Citizen. Therefore, it has been highlighted that wherever citizen
interface is involved, Web enabled applications will be developed. All
public domain information like official gazette notifications, acts, rules,
regulations, circulars, policies and programme documents would be
digitized and made available for electronic access on Web. The NIC has
developed, hosted and maintaining the official website of the State at
URL http://meghalaya.nic.in. The websites of other departments are
also connected to this website. All Government tenders, employment
news, public domain information and notices issued by Government for
general public shall be published on this website. The process of
developing organization specific websites has also started and a
number Departments, Boards and Corporation and district authorities
have made their web presence. But, this entire effort needs to
streamlined and integrated into a well knit web for the State
Government. That gives impetus to the preparation of a guide lines for
the Website Development, Hosting and Maintenance for various State
Government Departments, Boards and Corporations.

[B] ISSUES AND CONCERNS RELATING TO WEBSITES AND
PORTALS

The Websites have been acknowledged as a medium of information
dissemination, marketing, image building and to act as single window
for myriad needs of global community about various products and
services being offered by various organizations. Horizontal and vertical
Portals have become answers to these requirements and are becoming
popular day by day across the globe. But to make effective use of the
Web potential, a number of issues need to be addressed properly to
make the best use of the net potential and to attain a competitive
advantage for the State of Meghalaya.
[C] General Guidelines on publishing Government Information

  1. Why to publish your data on the web

  With the growing popularity and reach of the Internet to more and
  more people day by day, it has become an easy, fast and effective
  way of reaching out to the people. Every government organization
  or department which has to deal with lot of people or which has to
  disseminate information to masses should opt for putting all the
  relevant information on the web. Few basic advantages of putting
  the information on web are as follows:

          ·   Easy and fast access to the information.
          ·   Global reaches.
          ·   Increase in popularity.
          ·   Less rush in the offices.
          ·   Increased efficiency in replying to the public queries.
          ·   Cost efficiency.
          ·   More attractive way to advertise itself.
          ·   Increased public awareness

    A few of the categories of the web sites are as follows:

          ·   Government department/ Ministry.
          ·   Educational and research institutes.
          ·   Boards and Corporations.
          ·   Events e.g. festivals and Melas etc.
          ·   Autonomous bodies.
          ·   Magazines and news papers.
          ·   Entertainment sites.
          ·   Commercial Portals (Horizontal/Vertical)

  2. What to publish

  First point to note here is that only the information which is not
  confidential or which will not cause any harm to the organization if
  made public should be published. Few basic things which every
  department can put on the web are:

     About Us - General information about the organization, its brief
     history, area of operation, few general photographs of the
     organization, Its addresses and location etc.
Organization Structure – If any organization/Dept., which
does not have a highly confidential structure, wishes, it can put
its organization structure with the names and designations of all
its officers and their responsibilities in a hierarchical manner.

Main objectives and responsibilities – Under this topic the
objective of the organization, working of the organization, their
activities in detail, Experience in the field and major
achievements can be put. The services that a organization
provides.

Basic Statistics – Basic statistics of the organization, showing
its previous years records can be put in a tabular or graphical
form.
Rules & Regulations/Acts/ Policies – The organization’s
rules, acts and its policies, which it wants to make public, can be
published.
Forms, Terms and Conditions, Procedures etc. – All the
procedures to allow in order getting some work done through the
department and related documents, the forms which people
need to fill in order to interact with the department/ organization
can be put on the web. This makes it convenient for he public to
download all the forms and procedures/ Terms and conditions
fitting at home and avoiding visits to the office. This information
should be put in a read only format so that the users can not
edit the documents after downloading.

Citizen Charter and Citizen Centric Services – Matters
related to citizen charters should be published in the website for
wide publicity of the citizen and also services provided to the
citizen should have a separate heading in the front page of the
Website.

Tenders – The organization/department can release all its
tender notices on the Internet using its own website. These
notices should also be put in read only format to avoid misuse.
News – Latest news/Circulars or press clippings released by the
organization can be put under this topic. This part has to be
updated on a regular basis to keep the latest information on the
web.
What’s New – The latest happenings in the organization can be
put on a regular basis. This can involve announcement of a new
scheme or a plan etc.
      Contact us – Any contact address of the organization including
      its postal address, E-mail address and telephone numbers can be
      given. Or alternatively an organization can put a predefined form
      on the web which people who browse the site would fill and the
      information filled there will automatically come to a predefined
      E-mail address which can be replied back. This makes a good
      interface between the public and the department/Organization.

3. Where to publish

NIC is the nodal agency for providing web services of both state and
central government organizations in the country and as its field offices
are located in various districts of our state, providing support upto
Block level, having the facilities to provide 24x7x 365 days services for
web hosting and publishing. These are the following points also which
are important for hosting and publishing of websites:

      · Security
        NIC provide Security to various Websites as is a very important
        issue as a less secure server can be hacked from outside and
        the websites hosted on the server can be disfigured or the
        contents can be changed by some mischievous elements
        causing harm to the organization.

      · Link Speed and server speed
        The server should be connected to the internet through a high
        bandwidth link. The NIC servers are of high performance server
        as per the international standards.

      · Updation time and updation limits
        Minimum time should be required to make any updations in the
        website. And unlimited updations should be allowed as the
        contents of the pages can be changed any time and any
        number of times.

      · Server capacity
        NIC is having the server capacity to host enormous amount of
        information without affecting its own performance.

      · Server Reliability
        NIC is having Servers which are operational 24 hours a day
        always. As frequent breakdowns on the server end makes the
        websites unavailable.
     · Facilities available on the server.
       NIC are having Servers which provide facilities to host vast
       variety of web applications e.g static pages, interactive pages,
       hit counters, feed back forms, streaming audio, streaming
       video, Java technology, ASP, JSP etc.

     · Support.
       NIC can provide local support which is a very important issue
       as it is not possible for all the Govt. departments and
       organizations to employ trained manpower and update and
       change their WebPages on a regular basis.

4. Responsibilities of the Department/Organization Concerned
The organization who has taken a decision to host a Website for itself
is responsible for a number of aspects of the WebPages development
and hosting process:

     i. Providing timely and relevant information to the website
          developer.
     ii. Be sure first hand regarding what in all it wants to publish
     iii. Regular interaction with the website developers regarding the
          requirements of the department.
     iv. Sorting and changing the presentation format of the data as
          per the guidelines given by the website developers.
     v. Assisting the website developers in entering and editing the
          data.

[D] Guide lines

1. Domain Name Conventions and Registration Authority

The domain names are the addresses on the web and certain set of
naming conventions have been evolved to identify the web site. The
Departments and District Authorities will get a web site address after
the domain name registration being done with NIC State Centre and
hosting of the site and maintain shall be done by NIC.

2. Ownership Rights and Technical Control

The ownership remains with the organization/person having the
Administrative and Signatory rights. However, the Technical Contact
remains with the NIC as it is maintaining the Web Server on which the
Web site is hosted. It has generally been noticed that organizations
getting their domain name registered through third party service
provider do no know this aspect and the ownership remains with the
third party service provider. It is the privilege of the
Administrative/Billing rights holder to keep/maintain any content on
the web site and the other organization getting it registered through
some other service provider organization will have no control and
ownership right on the web site. It is therefore essential that the
ownership of the Web site should remain with the Government rather
than any third party through which the site has been registered. Since,
adequate technical manpower is not available in the State Government
Departments, Boards and Corporations; it is difficult to address this
issue independently by the State Government Organizations.
Accordingly, in order to address this issue properly, it is essential to
keep track of the Ownership Rights and Technical Control issue.
Therefore, the ownership of the official websites domain names shall
remain with the NIC. Further, the Technical Control shall remain with
NIC, as the case may be for hosting and maintaining the portal/web
site.

3. Content Development

The web content is entirely different from that of the print and audio-
visual media and needs special care for drafting. The web content can
serve multiple purposes and can be both brief as well as detailed. The
Website content should be develop to unable maximum public
interface and it should facilitate the citizen of the state in getting
information about various scheme, procedure, policies and rules &
regulation of the Government. For the content development, the site
maps for navigation of the site is the first and foremost requirement
and should be prepared in the first place.

The Head of the Organization shall approve the site map before
drafting the entire content of the Website.

The concerned officer of the Department as per the approved site map
should prepare the content pertaining to the links. The contents for the
Departments should be got approved from the concerned Secretary/
Head of the Organization before handing it over to the Website
designing agency for designing the website.


4. Layout Planning and Designing

The Designing agency shall prepare the Layout of the site and shall
design the entire web site as per site map duly approved by the Head
of the Organization. Secretariat for Information Technology shall
ensure the uniformity and standardization in the layout and shall
maintain a Library of Websites designed by various Departments,
Boards and Corporations. A uniform pattern will be maintained so as to
give an integrated look about State of Meghalaya. The Design shall
be approved by concerned HOD/Administrative Secretary and
the site shall be uploaded on the net after final approval.

5. Website Hosting of all the Departments of the State Government
shall be hosted on the servers maintained by NIC.

     The following shall be ensured while hosting:

     · Proper use of Meta Tags to attract a number of search engines,
       which searches for the Meta Tags;
     · Search engine Submissions for the Websites with major search
       engines;
     · Link Exchange with related sites;
     · Automatic Responder to the queries sending their mails to a
       particular POP to avoid delays in responding to the queries;

No other arrangement, whatsoever, shall be permitted for the State
Government Departments, Boards, Corporations and district
authorities. The websites/portals, which have been hosted on other
servers or through other vendors should be shifted on to the official
servers.

6. Updation and Maintenance

The responsibility in regard to the contents of the Website shall
be that of the Head of the Organisation and he will ensure
timely/periodic updation of the Website. The updation of the
official websites shall be done through the local NIC centre. The
departments shall identify one nodal officer who will be responsible for
authentication and updating of the contents in respect of their
organization.

7. Website Promotion and Marketing

Since, Web is a medium for promotion and marketing of various
products and services as well as for dissemination of the information,
proper marketing and promotion of these websites become extremely
important so as to reach the target audience. The responsibility of
marketing and promotion of these Websites shall be the responsibility
of the concerned department/organization. The organisations,
concerned, shall promote the site through paper advertisements and
the address of the website/portals shall be provided on the letterhead
of concerned Organization.

8. Legal Framework

Suitable legal framework for e-Commerce, secure transactions, digital
signatures etc, as per the prevailing Cyber Laws of the Centre
Government from time to time shall be adhered to by the State
Government Departments, Boards and Corporations. It will be the sole
responsibility of the Organisation concerned to ensure adherence to
the legal aspects. The Designing/Hosting Agency shall not be
responsible for any legal issues arising out of the violation of any of
the Cyber Laws or unauthorized use of the Web content or by way of
putting up any undesirable information not permitted under law.
Further, information shall be provided from time to time, apprise the
Departments, Boards and Corporations about the latest legal
framework adopted by the Centre/State Government.