# Presentation: 210391

## Challenges of Creating the NCI’s Web Site, Cancer.gov

- Gisele Sarosy, M.D., Daryl McGrath, Deb Price, and Michael Arluk
- Cancer Information Products & Systems,
- National Cancer Institute
- National Institutes of Health
- Dept. of Health and Human Services

## The Challenge for Cancer.gov

- Present a unified NCI Internet presence

**Notes:**
Like in many other government organizations, the growth of the Internet within NCI was rather organic, as each group embraced the web at their own pace and in their own way.

As the Internet became more prominent in society, though, and agency web sites more high profile, the need to integrate and unify the NCI’s web offerings became more widely recognized.

## Solution, Part 1

- Integrate NCI’s institutional, cancer information, and clinical trials web sites
- www.nci.nih.gov
- CancerNet
- cancerTrials

**Notes:**
The NCI had three very high profile sites, our CancerNet cancer information web site, our clinical trials web site called cancerTrials, and the NCI’s homepage, nci.nih.gov.

The best chance to form a cohesive NCI internet presence was to combine these high profile sites, hopefully setting a precedent that the rest of the institute would follow. 

So that’s what the Institute decided to do.

## Solution, Part 2

- Create commonalities that all institutional website owners will want to use.
- Look and feel
- Technical infrastructure
- Management processes

**Notes:**
The second part of our solution is a more long-term process, as we continue to refine the Cancer.gov look and offer services to those NCI web site owners who want to become part of the overall site.

So, full integration of the NCI’s web sites will be accomplished by establishing best practices for design and information architecture and offering technical and management services superior to what’s individually achievable. 

## Key Challenges

- Integrating a portal site, nci.nih.gov, with content sites, CancerNet and cancerTrials
- Working with multiple content owners
- Administering changes and improvements
- Searching across multiple sites

**Notes:**
Many, challenges presented themselves throughout the development of Cancer.gov, but largely they can be grouped into four categories, which we’ll briefly touch on today.

Probably the biggest challenge was how to integrate a site that basically served as a directory with content rich sites that included large databases of information.

We also had to tackle the tasks of dealing with multiple content owners from different parts of the Institute, searching across the NCI’s vast webspace, and administering all the changes that needed to be made throughout both the transition process and the day-to-day operation of the site.

## Integration . . .

**Notes:**
So these are the sites that the Institute needed to integrate.
On your left is the old NCI homepage, and on the right is the CancerNet web site. The cancerTrials web site similarly used a menu structure to steer visitors to its content areas.

these sites did employ a similar means navigation, that is using menu pages to drive visitors to the content they needed. This type of navigation has become fairly universal and the NCI’s Usability.gov web site provides a wealth of information on the usability principle underpinning this form of navigation.

To integrate the sites, the NCI chose to stick with what was working, and the redesigned Cancer.gov also uses the menu structure, which we’ll see in just a few minutes. As the first cut on menu’s though, the Cancer.gov developers opted to group all of the NCI’s web content into six wide portal areas:
Cancer Information
Clinical Trials
Statistics
Research Programs
Research Funding
About the NCI

## Working with Multiple Owners . . .

- Create an Internet-accessible admin interface
- Provide accounts to content owners
- Owners control their own content
- Content owners need no programming skills
- All changes automatically proceed through the appropriate approval process
- Content changes do not affect page appearance

**Notes:**
To tackle the problems of working with multiple content owners, Cancer.gov’s technical staff created an easy-to-use, web-based administrative interface that content owners could use to manage their content.

This admin interface allows users to make any changes needed in near real-time. Further, content owners need no programming skills to modify their web pages, not even elemental HTML skills. The interface allows them to enter changes textually and then the admin system does the rest for them.

To ensure speedy processing of changes, the admin system automatically generates messages to those responsible for approving changes, in many cases the content owner or their immediate supervisor.

Aside from those changes implemented, content changes do not alter the appearance of the web site. 

## Searching Across Sites . . .

- Main Search
- Searches all NCI web sites or a subset of sites
- Standards subsets include sites gathered within Cancer.gov portal areas
- Separate search form for large databases, e.g., clinical trials
- Open standards-based architecture is not vendor-specific

**Notes:**
Not being a tech guy, I’m going to do my best here to summarize the challenges associated with search. Let me just say that it took a lot of programmers and a lot of content folks sitting in windowless rooms for hours upon hours over the course of several months.

The previous search engine on nci.nih.gov searched across much of the NCI’s webspace, but the results were often difficult to use. To help alleviate this problem, the Cancer.gov team developed the capability to search subsets of the NCI webspace, with the standard subsets being the portal areas. 

Because of the specialized nature of many of the NCI’s large databases, the search mechanisms for those databases were kept separate, but the search interfaces were group together so that users could quickly pick what kind of search they wanted to conduct.

To facilitate future enhancements and integration with other systems, Cancer.gov’s developers employed an open standards architecture that does not require reliance on any one vendor. 

## Searching Across Sites . . .

- Best Bets
- Editorially selected results
- Appear at head of search results list
- Keyword controlled, with synonym matching

**Notes:**
The best thing Cancer.gov staff did for search, though, was to create Best Bets.

Best Bets are editorially selected results for many standard search terms. Currently, we have about 3,000 search terms in our Best Bets database, including synonyms.

When a user searches on a term for which there are best bets, those pages that are tied to that search term are presented at the head of results list, along with a short description of the page that we think will be meaningful to the searcher. The exhaustive list of keyword-related search results follows the Best Bets items.

## Cancer.gov’s Admin Interface

- Administering changes and improvements

**Notes:**
The administrative interface for Cancer.gov content owners allows Cancer.gov staff to efficiently address the last challenge, that of administering changes and improvements to the site. 

Deb will visit the admin interface during her tour of the site. 

## Cancer.gov

- Your guided tour begins here . . .
- http://cancer.gov/

**Notes:**
Take it away Deb!

## NCI Cancer.gov Contacts

- E-mail: cancer.gov_staff@mail.nih.gov
- Phone: 301-496-9096
- Gisele Sarosy, MD, Acting Associate Director, CIPS(gsarosy@mail.nih.gov)
- Daryl McGrath, Marketing Specialist(dmcgrath@mail.nih.gov)
- Deb Price, Writer-Editor (priced@mail.nih.gov)
- Michael Arluk, Chief, Information Management Branch, CIPS(marluk@mail.nih.gov)

**Notes:**
Before I turn over the podium to Deb, I wanted to give you our contact information. 

While we can’t answer all the questions you might have, we know the people who can.