1 . Standard

Information on GNWT websites will be organized using a common taxonomy.

2 . Rationale

Information architecture involves organizing and labelling content, designing a navigation system, and enabling search functions to allow users to complete tasks and find the information and services they need.

Information architecture provides the following benefits:

• Makes it easier for users to find content through the use of consistent terminology, navigational features and content structure.
• Makes it easier to plan and develop content by providing guidelines for various types of content.
• Allows us to develop more sophisticated website features in support of various types of content.
• Facilitates developing new websites and new content, or merging/moving websites and content.

3 . Guidelines

Flagship and Departmental Sites

• Each department will have a website. The content on the departmental website is the responsibility of the department. Departmental sites contain most of the web content.
• The flagship site (www.gov.nt.ca) is the point of entry for GNWT web content. The primary purpose of the flagship site is to help users navigate to departmental content, and to host content and features that are corporate in nature.

Type

• Website content must be classified as one and only one of the following types:
  • Service (French: Service)
  • Resource (French: Ressource)
  • News (French: Nouvelles)
  • Information (French: Reseignements)
• Services are the “core content” of the GNWT website. Any content that assists the user in completing a task is considered to be Service Content. See the Service Content standard for more information about authoring service content.
• Resources are documents, manuals, guides, brochures, videos, forms and other publications that a user might be looking for. They could be downloadable or viewable online. They typically have a fixed publication date.
• News content includes the official publications of the GNWT, including press releases, media advisories and so on.
• Information covers everything else, such as information about the government (e.g. the budget), or about a subject in which the government is expert (e.g. bear safety). Landing pages and institutional content (“About Us”) are considered to be “Information”. There are no particular guidelines for informational content.
• The metadata field “dc.type” is to be used to tag content with the appropriate type. The metadata value is identical to the content types given above (Service, Resource, etc…).

Topics and Themes

• Website content must also be classified under one or more topics. Topics describe the subject matter of the content. Topics provide a basis for navigation and improving search results.
• Topics are developed collaboratively, with the Informatics Shared Service Centre coordinating changes to the list of topics.
• Every topic must be assigned to a theme. The themes are fixed and not specific to the GNWT.
• Topics should be user-centric, meaning they should be based on users’ understanding of government, which is not necessarily the same as how programs are viewed internally.
• The metadata field “dc.subject” is to be used to tag content with the appropriate topic(s).

Content Directories

• Service, Resource and News content must be organized through specialized directories that assist users in finding the content they are looking for.
• Service content is organized in a Service Directory, titled “Programs and Services”. Service Directories are organized by Theme and Topic. Both the flagship site and departmental sites must have a Service Directory. The flagship Service Directory contains all service content, whereas departmental Service Directories contain just the service content on the particular site.
• Resource content is organized in a Resource Directory, titled “Resources”, which allows users to search and filter the resources to find what they are looking for. Users should be able to filter by Topic, resource type (form, manual, policy, etc…) and publication date.
• Due to its unstructured nature, Information-type content is not organized through a directory. For this reason, it’s not advisable to have large quantities of information, as it is difficult for users to find and for administrators to maintain.

Metatags

• The taxonomy of HTML content should be encoded in the form of metatags.
• Standard naming conventions are used for metatags, based on Dublin Core Metadata, as given in the following table:

  Field Name	Content	Example Value (English)
  dcterms.title	The title of the page. Can be same as <title> but should not include organization.	Children’s Lawyer
  dcterms.description	The description of the contents of the page.	The Children's Lawyer represents children involved with Child and Family services, as well as those who are involved in custody and access court cases.
  dcterms.creator	The department (or equivalent) that created (or owns) the page.	Department of Justice
  dcterms.publisher	The government (or equivalent) that created (and owns) the site.	Government of the Northwest Territories
  dcterms.type	The type of content. Only one type is allowed.	Service
  dcterms.subject	The topic of the content. Multiple topics are allowed and should be separated by a comma.	Life events

• French language content use the same metadata field names but with French language values.
• The page titles (the text in the <title> tags) should be kept short: either the name of the site on the landing page, or the top-level heading on body pages.