• Overview
• Ownership
• Departmental responsibilities
• Web team/BUCS responsibilities
• Users' responsibilities

Overview

The ultimate responsibility for university's website rests with the Department of Marketing & Communications; its Director answers to the Vice-Chancellor for its function. Responsibility for day-to-day maintenance of departmental/school pages lies with the department/school. Responsibility for the technical function of the web servers lies with Network and Systems. Staff Development are responsible for training using our Content management System. Ensuring compliance with standards lies with the Web Coordinator with help from Network and Systems. Marketing & Communications also maintains some top-level pages directly.

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Ownership

1. The University top-level pages are managed by the Web Co-ordinator, to whom all complaints and enquiries about these should be addressed; in his absence, contact the Director of Marketing and Communications.
2. Each School Director and Head of department is responsible for designating a web publisher to oversee the departmental/school site and liaise with the Web Co-ordinator.
3. Web pages for the Students' Union and for affiliated societies and clubs are the responsibility of  the Students' Union.
4. Student society/club pages/homepages must either display or link (via 'disclaimer') to the following text: 'These pages are the responsibility of xxxx. The views here do not necessarily represent official views of the university'.

 

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School and Departmental responsibilities

1. Schools and departments are responsible day-to-day for their own sites. They must ensure content is current, relevant, accurate and meets guidelines for: visual content; University web usability standards; legal requirements; writing style; and essential content requirements. Departmental administrators should read and abide by policy documents setting these standards; they should ensure that if external people are commissioned to develop web pages, relevant policy documents are made available to them.
   
2. Where departments/school do not comply with these standards, the Web Coordinator may ask them to do so. If they fail then to make necessary changes, the Web Coordinator can make them directly. In cases where serious breaches of the legal requirements are found, the Web Coordinator may correct these without consulting beforehand, although notification of changes will be made.
   
3. To enable this, departments/schools should be aware that the Director of Marketing and Communications and the Web Co-ordinator have the ability to change the text and images of any page.
   
4. Enough staff should be nominated as departmental web publishers so that the service can continue despite illnesses, holiday and departures. The nominated staff should be allowed sufficient time to carry out their duties.
   
5. Web Publishers should notify the Web Co-ordinator when departmental Web Publishers no longer need access to edit pages. Web Pubishers should inform the Web Co-ordinator of any complaints received regarding information published on any University web server.

 

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Web Coordinator Responsibilities

1. The Web Coordinator  will help to arrange training for departmental/school Web Publishers and will be on-hand to help with enquiries. It is not part of the Web Coordinators duties to maintain departmental/school pages, and the Web Coordinator will only do so for short periods in emergencies. Should the Web Coordinator need to maintain a Department's/schools site because the Department/School has not made sufficient provision for maintaining its own pages, it may charge the department/school for the service. Before it does this it will consult with the department/faculty and alert them to the situation and give appropriate notice.
2. The Web Coordinator is responsible for ensuring that standards are set for usability and accessibility and that the pages it is directly responsible for meet these standards. The Web Coordinator will inform university web publishers of changes to web services, legislation and guidelines.
3. The Web Coordinator has the responsibility for acting on complaints about illegal or offensive material on the site. He may issue a request for the material to be removed or changed, or may remove this material himself. In the case of persistent misuse, it may ask networks to suspend computing accounts. Users will be warned that they may be held legally liable for all content on personal home pages, wikis and blogs.
4. Network and Systems has responsibility for ensuring that the technical system that it puts into place to run the web pages is adhered to. Network and Systems is not responsible for supporting the running of non-static content or web applications systems for departments or users, and only provides an environment to host these and limited assistance. If any systems are to the detriment of other sites, for example affecting the performance of a server, Network and Systems may act to remedy the situation if the owners do not respond appropriately. Action could include disabling the system. Owners will be notified of actions taken.

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Users' responsibilities (in other words those posting content who are not web maintainers)

1. Enquiries and complaints to the Web Coordinator should be made in a courteous manner

2. Standards of legality and decency should be adhered to when uploading content, as set out in the policy on legal aspects of content, and also guidelines issued for using the Noticeboard, wikis and blogs.