Web Policy Statement 

Central Connecticut State University
Policy for the Development and Maintenance of the
University Web Site

In the summer of 2001, the CCSU President and Quality Council charged a team to develop policies and procedures for the proper administration of the CCSU website.

The web pages supported by the University must provide an unambiguous picture of the University consistent with its mission and vision.   In order to maintain a web site that serves the University well, the Web Improvement Project team made the following recommendations in response to its charge.  Approved by the President, these policies become effective immediately upon publication.

  I.        Web Administration 

The CCSU web site is administered by the Associate Vice President for Marketing & Communications and the Manager of Internet Services working in close consultation with the CCSU Web Policy Committee, on which they serve, ex officio.

The Associate Vice President for Marketing & Communications is responsible for developing concepts and content for the public levels[1] of the website, ensuring the reliability of information, consistency of design and navigation, and general organization of the CCSU web site.

The Manager of Internet Services provides technical advice, training, and assistance to CCSU web site users and manages the site on a day-to-day basis.  The Manager of Internet Services works with the Associate Vice President for Marketing & Communications  to provide the technical support required to maintain the public levels of the CCSU web site.

The Web Co-Op position provides development services to both of the above positions as well as additional university staff.

The Associate Vice President for Marketing and Communications will:

                                 ·            Ensure compliance of all public level web pages with web policies

                                 ·            Monitor the CCSU web site for organization and conformity to these guidelines

                                 ·            Coordinate with the Manager of Internet Services to address, proactively and reactively, technical problems (including appropriate links) training issues and policy violations

The Web Policy Committee represents the various interests of the University in the establishment and implementation of web policy.  This group will work in liaison with other campus groups and committees concerned with the development of the CCSU web as a vital tool for the campus community.

Committee Responsibilities:

                                 ·            development and oversight of CCSU Web Policy & Guidelines

                                 ·            long-range planning for CCSU web site

                                 ·            organization of CCSU Web site's overall structure

                                 ·            resolution of matters of dispute regarding the web site

Committee Membership:

                                 ·            Associate Vice President, Marketing & Communications

                                 ·            CIO

                                 ·            Manager of Internet Services

                                 ·            A faculty representative from each school in the University, appointed by the respective academic dean

                                 ·            Library representative appointed by the library director

                                 ·            Two administrative representatives appointed by the President

Faculty and administrative office representatives serve 2-year staggered terms.

   II.        Legal and Ethical Policy Requirements

All on-line material must conform to applicable state and federal laws and University policies, including copyright and other intellectual property laws, license agreements, contracts, and the ITS Computer Use Policy. Where appropriate, material must be protected from inappropriate access.   It is the responsibility of the Associate Vice President for Marketing & Communications to ensure that such requirements are met.

CCSU web pages should promote activity consistent with the mission of the University. The Web Committee reserves the right to remove any pages or activities that generate network traffic to a degree that deprives other users of their legitimate use of these resources, or impedes the efficient operation of the network. Use of CCSU's Web resources to promote a commercial venture is specifically prohibited. Users should not post images or audio of people without their consent or use information about individuals who do not want the information posted.

 III.         Location of Information

The official entry point to the CCSU web site is through the url: http://www.CCSU.edu/.  All departments/groups contributing to CCSU's web site are encouraged to use this url as the public web page address of their pages. 

Each department will be provided with a public web page.  The public level does not include departmental and student organizations that choose to maintain their own web pages.  Departments choosing to run their own web servers are entirely responsible for all hardware, software, maintenance, backup, and technical support. Server owners must commit to maintaining their web site to keep it reliably on-line.  Such servers are also subject to ITS requirements regarding network security.

 IV.        Content

All information on the CCSU web site should be accurate, timely, and consistently available.

Departmentally Developed and Maintained Web sites[2]

All academic departments and duly recognized University organizations may create and maintain web pages on the CCSU web server. Departments should not post material copyrighted by other individuals or entities without explicit permission from copyright holder. To assure accuracy in the presentation of information about other aspects of the University, web page creators are encouraged to link to existing pages.  Every page on the CCSU web site must have a designated individual who has overall responsibility for all content and links from the page(s). This person may designate a file administrator who will be the technical contact for the page(s).

Departmental/organizational home pages must clearly display:

1.  

   1. University name or logo

   2. department/organization name

   3. link to page containing academic department/organization contact information, US mail address of department/organization, phone & fax numbers, and e-mail address(es)

   4. link to CCSU web site (http://www.ccsu.edu)

   5. date of last update

   6. department/organization webmaster contact (via e-mail)

Departments or organizations may have links to related personal web pages (faculty, staff, or students). It is at the discretion of the department’s/organization’s designee to approve any links. It is the responsibility of the department’s or organization’s web site designee to ensure the removal of any material determined to be inappropriate or in violation of any of the requirements stated above.

Administrative Office Web Sites

Administrative office web sites represent official communications of the University.  All administrative office sites located within the first 3 levels of the web site (CCSU home page, pages directly linked from that page, or pages directly linked from those pages) will be prepared with the guidance of the office of Marketing & Communications as authorized by the CCSU Web Policy Committee, and must be approved by the Associate Vice President for Marketing & Communications before being linked to the CCSU Web site.  Maintenance of an administrative office site resides with the individual office and its web administrator.

Administrative offices whose pages are linked beyond the third level, as noted earlier, have wider latitude for design and display of content but should still work in consultation with the Associate Vice President for Marketing & Communications.  Insofar as it is feasible to do so, such pages should also contain the six items suggested for departmental pages above.

   V.        Personal Web Sites

As a privilege of their affiliation with the University, CCSU faculty, staff, and students may create and maintain personal web sites on the University’s server. Individuals are solely responsible for their sites’ content and adherence to legal and ethical policy requirements stated in this document and all other University policies. In the spirit of collegiality, the University strongly encourages individuals to follow the guidelines developed in this document.

VI.            VI.    Web Addressing

Each academic department will have a standardized public information page maintained by the office of Marketing & Communications.  This web page will contain general and discipline-specific information from the University catalog and other sources specific for that department.  The web addressing for these sites shall be www.ccsu.edu/deptname.  These sites will be linked from the Academic departments page (www.ccsu.edu/academic_departments.html) and from the drop down list on the main page.  These urls/pages will be the ones listed in all official university publications.  

Each academic department will also be able to make available a departmentally maintained web site, which can be accessed directly by url and will be linked from the standardized page maintained by the office of Marketing & Communications.  These sites may have a url of www.deptname.ccsu.edu.  Some departmental sites will need to be re-addressed to meet the policy standards.  

Administrative departments will follow the format of www.ccsu.edu/deptname.  This may require the relocation of some departmental web sites from their servers to the main University web server.  Specialized functions requiring separate web servers (WebTravel software, Outlook Web Access, etc) will follow a naming convention of function.ccsu.edu.

 VII.       Removal

Web content that violates the law or poses a clear, immediate danger may be removed immediately. The University reserves the right to remove materials that violate the guidelines detailed in this policy statement and/or the ITS Computer Usage Policy and/or to disable links.

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[2]These are pages generated by the academic department and are distinct from the “public-level” academic department pages generated and maintained by Marketing & Communications.