Acceptance criteria for Plone products?

[Michael Dunstan-2]

Hi all,

I'm looking at a project for RNZFB (http://www.rnzfb.org.nz) to  
improve their support for online publications within their own  
website. This is looking very similar to some of the mini publication  
types in PloneHelpCenter. With a greater emphasis on accessibility.

RNZFB also see this as useful for other organisations to adopt.  
Particularly government agencies already using Plone.

Does anyone know if there are any particular criteria that need to be  
meet for government agencies adopting third party Plone products? For  
example, is there a minimum version of Plone/CMF/Zope/Python that  
would need to be supported?

Thoughts?

--
Michael Dunstan - http://www.elyt.com/michael


_______________________________________________
NZZUG mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.thevirtual.co.nz/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nzzug

[Darryl Dixon - Winterhouse Consulting-2]

Hi Michael,

The State Services Commission has an 'official' or 'endorsed' version of
Plone that is available, however if I recall correctly it is a heavily
customised version of Plone 2.0.x (as in, they've modified ~20,000 lines
of Plone core code). My recollection on that count might be wrong, but I'm
pretty sure that's the case.

>From a different angle, I can tell you that the Business Registries branch
sites of the MED that use Plone (www.companies.govt.nz,
www.companies.gov.nu, www.crownminerals.govt.nz, www.rsm.govt.nz), are all
on Plone 2.1.x, customised by way of 3rd-party bespoke Products (from
yours truly).

Frankly, I'd target Plone 2.1.x for add-on Products, as Plone 2.0 is
pretty dead in the community, anyway...
Some general guidelines that I know the SSC are keen on (...not to put
words in their mouths... ;)
* Tables are verboten - don't use tables for layout
* All pages should validate (in other words, make sure your page templates
are valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional, for Plone 2.1.x)
* Make sure you use all the usual attributes for Title, Alt, etc on <A>
and <IMG> tags et al
* Keep the XHTML clean and put all style etc in the CSS sheets
* The pages *MUST* work with javascript disabled.

There's a whole bunch more, but those encompass the guts of it. I'm too
lazy right now to dig up their web guidelines document, but it's probably
available on http://www.e.govt.nz


many regards,
Darryl Dixon
Winterhouse Consulting Ltd
http://www.winterhouseconsulting.com

> Hi all,
>
> I'm looking at a project for RNZFB (http://www.rnzfb.org.nz) to
> improve their support for online publications within their own
> website. This is looking very similar to some of the mini publication
> types in PloneHelpCenter. With a greater emphasis on accessibility.
>
> RNZFB also see this as useful for other organisations to adopt.
> Particularly government agencies already using Plone.
>
> Does anyone know if there are any particular criteria that need to be
> meet for government agencies adopting third party Plone products? For
> example, is there a minimum version of Plone/CMF/Zope/Python that
> would need to be supported?
>
> Thoughts?
>
> --
> Michael Dunstan - http://www.elyt.com/michael
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> NZZUG mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.thevirtual.co.nz/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nzzug
>

_______________________________________________
NZZUG mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.thevirtual.co.nz/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nzzug

[Shaun Hills]

> Does anyone know if there are any particular criteria that need to be  
> meet for government agencies adopting third party Plone products? For  
> example, is there a minimum version of Plone/CMF/Zope/Python that  
> would need to be supported?

I work for the UK National Health Service, and we have to consider this
for our websites.

There's currently no technology-specific guidance (in the UK) that I'm
aware of. This is probably a good thing - it's difficult to do this and
keep the guidance up to date. The SSC custom version of Plone sounds
like a good example, still on 2.0.x. In practice, what happens is that
organisations will "scratch their own itch" if the mandated technical
solution doesn't have the features they need. We see this all the time
in an organisation the size of the NHS (~1.3M employees).

Notwithstanding the above, there is an initiative called
"Transformational Government" - Google it - which aims to bring in some
standardisation. So maybe over time what I've said above will become
less true. I don't know that TG will say anything about Zope/Plone
though :-)

What the UK *does* have right now is quite a lot of output-based
guidance e.g. pages must be accessible. This is a legal requirement
under disability legislation.

In practice, our team aim for WCAG-AA and XHTML 1.0 Strict. We use
whatever we need to do this (currently Plone 2.5.x, plus some misc apps
in PHP, Django etc).

As a side note, I'd be very interested to hear more about Zope/Plone use
in NZ Govt. As I mentioned, I'm working with it quite a lot in the UK
public sector.

cheers

Shaun

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email]
[mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Michael Dunstan
Sent: 10 July 2007 04:12
To: New Zealand Zope Users Group
Subject: [NZZUG] Acceptance criteria for Plone products?

Hi all,

I'm looking at a project for RNZFB (http://www.rnzfb.org.nz) to  
improve their support for online publications within their own  
website. This is looking very similar to some of the mini publication  
types in PloneHelpCenter. With a greater emphasis on accessibility.

RNZFB also see this as useful for other organisations to adopt.  
Particularly government agencies already using Plone.

Does anyone know if there are any particular criteria that need to be  
meet for government agencies adopting third party Plone products? For  
example, is there a minimum version of Plone/CMF/Zope/Python that  
would need to be supported?

Thoughts?

--
Michael Dunstan - http://www.elyt.com/michael


_______________________________________________
NZZUG mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.thevirtual.co.nz/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nzzug


**********************************************************************
This message  may  contain  confidential  and  privileged information.
If you are not  the intended  recipient please  accept our  apologies.
Please do not disclose, copy or distribute  information in this e-mail
or take any  action in reliance on its  contents: to do so is strictly
prohibited and may be unlawful. Please inform us that this message has
gone  astray  before  deleting it.  Thank  you for  your co-operation.

NHSmail is used daily by over 100,000 staff in the NHS. Over a million
messages  are sent every day by the system.  To find  out why more and
more NHS personnel are  switching to  this NHS  Connecting  for Health
system please visit www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/nhsmail
**********************************************************************

_______________________________________________
NZZUG mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.thevirtual.co.nz/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nzzug

[Michael Dunstan-2]

On 7/10/07, Darryl Dixon -Winterhouse Consulting
<[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hi Michael,
>
> The State Services Commission has an 'official' or 'endorsed' version of
> Plone that is available, however if I recall correctly it is a heavily
> customised version of Plone 2.0.x (as in, they've modified ~20,000 lines
> of Plone core code). My recollection on that count might be wrong, but I'm
> pretty sure that's the case.
>
> >From a different angle, I can tell you that the Business Registries branch
> sites of the MED that use Plone (www.companies.govt.nz,
> www.companies.gov.nu, www.crownminerals.govt.nz, www.rsm.govt.nz), are all
> on Plone 2.1.x, customised by way of 3rd-party bespoke Products (from
> yours truly).
>
> Frankly, I'd target Plone 2.1.x for add-on Products, as Plone 2.0 is
> pretty dead in the community, anyway...

Thanks for the input Darryl.

> Some general guidelines that I know the SSC are keen on (...not to put
> words in their mouths... ;)
> * Tables are verboten - don't use tables for layout
> * All pages should validate (in other words, make sure your page templates
> are valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional, for Plone 2.1.x)
> * Make sure you use all the usual attributes for Title, Alt, etc on <A>
> and <IMG> tags et al
> * Keep the XHTML clean and put all style etc in the CSS sheets
> * The pages *MUST* work with javascript disabled.
>
> There's a whole bunch more, but those encompass the guts of it. I'm too
> lazy right now to dig up their web guidelines document, but it's probably
> available on http://www.e.govt.nz

Yeah, I'm pretty happy that much of the presentation requirements are
well documented and understood.


--
Michael Dunstan - http://www.elyt.com/michael
_______________________________________________
NZZUG mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.thevirtual.co.nz/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nzzug

[Michael Dunstan-2]

On 7/10/07, [hidden email] <[hidden email]> wrote:

> > Does anyone know if there are any particular criteria that need to be
> > meet for government agencies adopting third party Plone products? For
> > example, is there a minimum version of Plone/CMF/Zope/Python that
> > would need to be supported?
>
> I work for the UK National Health Service, and we have to consider this
> for our websites.
>
> There's currently no technology-specific guidance (in the UK) that I'm
> aware of. This is probably a good thing - it's difficult to do this and
> keep the guidance up to date. The SSC custom version of Plone sounds
> like a good example, still on 2.0.x. In practice, what happens is that
> organisations will "scratch their own itch" if the mandated technical
> solution doesn't have the features they need. We see this all the time
> in an organisation the size of the NHS (~1.3M employees).
>
> Notwithstanding the above, there is an initiative called
> "Transformational Government" - Google it - which aims to bring in some
> standardisation. So maybe over time what I've said above will become
> less true. I don't know that TG will say anything about Zope/Plone
> though :-)

Thanks for the feedback. While googling about I stumbled over
http://www.plonegov.org.

--
Michael Dunstan - http://www.elyt.com/michael
_______________________________________________
NZZUG mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.thevirtual.co.nz/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nzzug