Hi. A coworker of mine sent this to me and I was thrilled to see discussion of this problem, since I've been stuck in this same sort of place (which is where????) for over four years.
My first experience as a web designer was as a contractor for a large state agency. I was there for about three years and over time the situation as far as our autonomy / ability to get stuff done got better AND worse.
On the one hand, we managed to evolve into a fairly autonomous team where each member had a job. There were three web designers / programmers, one content reviewer / agency liaison, a group supervisor (who also did lots of liaison and content work), and then there was a boss, somewhere out there, who only got consulted when we had problems or something major. We did a lot of work with individual departments within the agency as well as people in the state counties/regions.
The worst problems we faced were that 1) we had no one "upstairs" who really had a clue how to fully utilize us, which was bad in terms of getting priority in budget, 2) we had hardly any connection to IT, so it would take MONTHS to get simple stuff done, and 3) the site ended up being really high maintenance because we had so much material coming in from the departments we'd buttered up to work with us.
These three problems came together in a pretty nasty way right around the time I managed to get a new job. Basically the boss got an idea that we should go to a content management system so we could handle all the maintenance and content that was coming in. This is not a good thing to attempt when you don't have a lot of $$$, when you have very limited staffing as far as people who *directly* support you. Our agency had IT people for the whole agency, but we didn't really have our own IT people or if we did it changed like every week and they were forever playing catch up. In the end, the contract on the content management system got bogged down in red tape (complicated grants, funding, etc.), the administration sort of forgot about us, and finally most of us jumped ship becuase we were all sick of it.
I landed with another gov't group, an IT department within a technical research division at a large university that's basically all technology, engineering, etc. Our group works a lot better than the one at the state ever did, but for the web site, they're still not ready. Basically they have me (working in the IT group which mostly does Java programming, plus our intranet) doing the whole web site myself, working with someone in another dept., the head of communications. We in turn work with various department/laboratory heads. She has her boss, I have mine. It's been good and bad but lately bad because the other woman, my partner, has had to go to half-time and it leaves me in the lurch, since she routes all content. The other bad thing is that 90% of our web site being eliminated due to 9/11 security concerns.
I think I just sant the heck out of gov't jobs, steady as they are, but then I think there are nasty problems and dumb work set-ups everywhere.
Wiebke
Slashdot Mirror
Hi. A coworker of mine sent this to me and I was thrilled to see discussion of this problem, since I've been stuck in this same sort of place (which is where????) for over four years. My first experience as a web designer was as a contractor for a large state agency. I was there for about three years and over time the situation as far as our autonomy / ability to get stuff done got better AND worse. On the one hand, we managed to evolve into a fairly autonomous team where each member had a job. There were three web designers / programmers, one content reviewer / agency liaison, a group supervisor (who also did lots of liaison and content work), and then there was a boss, somewhere out there, who only got consulted when we had problems or something major. We did a lot of work with individual departments within the agency as well as people in the state counties/regions. The worst problems we faced were that 1) we had no one "upstairs" who really had a clue how to fully utilize us, which was bad in terms of getting priority in budget, 2) we had hardly any connection to IT, so it would take MONTHS to get simple stuff done, and 3) the site ended up being really high maintenance because we had so much material coming in from the departments we'd buttered up to work with us. These three problems came together in a pretty nasty way right around the time I managed to get a new job. Basically the boss got an idea that we should go to a content management system so we could handle all the maintenance and content that was coming in. This is not a good thing to attempt when you don't have a lot of $$$, when you have very limited staffing as far as people who *directly* support you. Our agency had IT people for the whole agency, but we didn't really have our own IT people or if we did it changed like every week and they were forever playing catch up. In the end, the contract on the content management system got bogged down in red tape (complicated grants, funding, etc.), the administration sort of forgot about us, and finally most of us jumped ship becuase we were all sick of it. I landed with another gov't group, an IT department within a technical research division at a large university that's basically all technology, engineering, etc. Our group works a lot better than the one at the state ever did, but for the web site, they're still not ready. Basically they have me (working in the IT group which mostly does Java programming, plus our intranet) doing the whole web site myself, working with someone in another dept., the head of communications. We in turn work with various department/laboratory heads. She has her boss, I have mine. It's been good and bad but lately bad because the other woman, my partner, has had to go to half-time and it leaves me in the lurch, since she routes all content. The other bad thing is that 90% of our web site being eliminated due to 9/11 security concerns. I think I just sant the heck out of gov't jobs, steady as they are, but then I think there are nasty problems and dumb work set-ups everywhere. Wiebke