imtsportal.htm

Project V is a Web site for Integrated Management and Treatment Services (IMTS), a small consultant group of which I am one of three partners. We do consulting with criminal justice agencies, and have been involved in projects such as: general prison design and staffing; prison design and programming for prisons for sexually violent predators; the design of prison therapeutic communities (in the United Kingdom and Australia -- nothing like this exists in the US); sex offender management and treatment training; emergency response preparation training; emergency incident investigation; and litigation expert witness testimony. Our original mission statement was:

The Development, Implementation and
Management of high Quality and
Affordable Security, Treatment and
Data Collection Services

As the years have gone by, we have become more selective of the types of work we do and the jobs we take. At present we seem to be restricting ourselves to the areas of sex offender management and treatment training (we do not do direct sex offender management or treatment, but help others develop management systems and treatment programs), and emergency response planning. We are about to enter a large contract with the State of Michigan (the Governor's Office and Michigan Department of Corrections) to help develop a sex offender management plan for the entire state.

I met with my partners on Tuesday, October 25 to address Conceptual Design and Content Analysis issues for our Web site, as well as issues of Site Structure and Interface, and Page Structure, Developmental, and Web Promotion and Maintenance Issues.

Mission Redefinition:
We started by changing our mission statement to reflect the types of work we have been doing the past several years, and anticipate doing in the future. The statement is now more narrow and specific, and will allow us to better represent what we do on our Web site as well as measure performance outcomes as they relate to our mission. Our new mission statement is:

To Provide Quality Sex Offender Management, Consultation and Training Services,
Emergency Response Planning and Training,
Sexual Harassment Training,
and Expert Witness Testimony.

Mid to upper level criminal justice agency managers and administrators seeking assistance with program development and delivery.
Line staff (such as probation/parole agents, victim-witness counselors, judges, assistant prosecutors, restorative justice counselors, etc.) who received our training and want more information on training related topics, or have additional information to share.

Note: The audiences in both 1. and 2. above, consists of both males and females between the ages of twenty-five and sixty-five; earn between $40,000 - 120,000/year; have at least a Bachelor's Degree; utilize current computer hardware technology equipped with Microsoft Windows platforms and Internet Explorer; have easy access to the WWW through high speed connections; are on a LAN as well as a WAN; and have considerable experience using their computers and the WWW. Because of the job constraints these audiences have only a limited time to serf the Web and must quickly find what they want. The funds are always available for our services once they have been given a high enough priority (which seems to be always when it comes to sex offenders).
Other audiences such as church groups, almost exclusively women volunteers over forty, usually using dated computer hardware equipped with some form of Microsoft platform and internet Explorer. This audience has time to serf the WWW but is not very sophisticated in their approaches, are easily confused and frustrated by complex navigation schemes, and never have much money to purchase services. Members of this audience must always deal with a supervisor or some sort of committee or board before securing our services, and the supervisor is usually a male who does not share the audience members concern for such things as sexual abuse. Most of the work we do for this audience only entails billing business expenses (mileage, meals), with our time being charged off as community service. However, working with this audience gives us exposure, helps us build reputation, and occasionally leads to more lucrative contacts.

We completed the following content analysis commensurate with the purposes we want the IMTS Web site to serve:

Corporate Identity Formation: An IMTS logo exists and can easily be used to build the Web site. Text background descriptions of the three IMTS partners have been developed in Microsoft Word (MW), and digital photos of the partners and various training classes and consulting situations are available for modification in FireWorks (FW) and use in DreamWeaver (DW). Descriptions of our past projects also exist in MW and will need to be imported to DW for use in meeting this objective as well as the marketing objective, described below . So far, it appears no new text will need to be developed to meet this objective, other than brief, specific, statements on the portal outlining what we do, and indicating we do not provide direct sex offender treatment. However, we want the portal page to be seen by users as being 'contemporary in a mature way'. By this we mean we want to include things such as seasonal (Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer) graphics that change as the seasons change; to accomplish this we need various seasonal (photos of trees, snow, lakes, etc.) and seasonally-thematic (photos of sailboats, fishing, skiing, etc.) graphics: some of these exist and others will have to be developed and edited.
Marketing: Consulting products are not tangible so there is nothing "solid" to be able to describe and display. What we do is conduct an array of training programs, and give advice. Our training programs have titles (Adult Sex Offender Management, Juvenile Sex offender Management, Sexual Harassment Prevention, etc.), and outlines on MW that will be used for description. Our training programs involve the use of many hand-outs (some of considerable length, but all are on MW and readily available for editing in FW); each of our hand-outs has a title page with graphics, and a table of contents, that can be placed on a page for our clients to view. I anticipate designing the hand-outs page(s) something like the product page at Lynda Books, where the displayed title page is a link to an outline page for that particular hand-out, and directions on how to secure copies of our hand-outs (and, of course, how to purchase our training).

We also have a descriptive list (on MW) of our past consulting contracts that will be used to convey examples of the types of topics about which we have, and are able to, advise clients. We have and will display descriptive "testimonial" quotes from our former clients -- for this we need to get their permission to use them on our Web site. Minimal text will need to be developed describing our fee structure, and how to go about contacting us. We intend to list all of our names, street addresses (we work from our homes), and email addresses. We will also display photos of ourselves and need to take appropriate digital photos and edit them on FW -- I have a very good digital camera and will do this.
Information Provision: A resource page will be developed that categorizes topics by major headings, lists specific resources (both non-Web, and Web links), and displays appropriate URL addresses for all links. Since we anticipate this will eventually grow to be rather sizable, a resource subject search function will also be provided (if possible). To accomplish this we must start identifying the resources we wish to cite and describe. I need to also learn how to build a search function for our Web site.
Discussion Group: Sex offender management is an ever changing field, with new research always being conducted, and new theories and approaches being developed. Many of the people we train, particularly line staff such as parole and probation agents, have frequent questions generated by their encountering new situations and problems with sex offenders. We want the IMTS Web site to facilitate the exchange of information, experiences, and ideas, and want to provide question-and-answer, FAX, and perhaps chat rooms functions to facilitate those type of exchanges. This of course, will necessitate my having to determine the most appropriate functions for our site, and learning how to set-up such arrangements on our site.

The IMTS Web site audience is college educated and professional, and is used to accessing sites that are both hierarchical and Web-linked in nature; audiences that can handle moderately complex, nonlinear Web sites (see, Lynch & Horton, Web Style Guide, 2nd. edition: Yale, 2001). Since we don't intend to offer basic training via the Web site, the structure of our site will predominately be a mixture of the hierarchical, and Web-linked, with a de-emphasis on sequential pages such as found in basic training sites.

All the IMTS Web site pages will follow essentially the same structure to promote a sense of user comfort and familiarity. Typological design will use Ariel, Helvetica, sans-serif; and Times New Roman, Times, serif, to achieve a sturdy and clean-lined appearance. We want the user to leave the site with the feeling that we know what we are doing and can be relied on.

The portal page will have a "sturdy" look, be comfortable to navigate, and display photos of people working together (See: draft portal ). The portal page background will consists of blue fields and white space, and the typology colors will be red, black and various shades of blue. The color blue will predominate in the entire Web site; the reason for using blue is the conventional wisdom, which is bourn-out by my personal experience (think of the Ford, GM, Chrysler, and Cisco logos) and some research I encountered long ago but for which I am not now able to locate a reference, that blue is particularly attractive to males. In addition, most of the people we train are males as are many of the managers and administrative decision-makers. But we don't intend to leave the fair number of female clients out of the picture: we feel we can appeal to their gender-linked color preferences (basically, pastels) through the use of blue-tint pastels as well as the use of other pastels in many of the secondary linked pages.

All other pages will adhere to the following basic format to achieve redundancy and navigation simplicity:

Describes the IMTS philosophy for the management of sex offenders, and will outline the components of an effective sex offender management program. At this time it is difficult to say whether or not this will be a single page or multiple pages; a preliminary look at the material we already have developed for this page suggests that we may want to break this up into multiple pages rather than have a single page that scrolls vertically far too long.

Describes in detail each of the training programs we currently offer, indicate the length and cost of each program. An outline for each training program will be either included on this page or (more probably) linked to other pages.

Displays the cover page of each of our handouts, offer a short title-like description for each handout displayed, link each handout graphic to its related table of contents, and indicate the cost (if there are any) and means for ordering handouts. At present we have about twenty handouts, so this section of the Web site looks to be rather sizable.

Describes the IMTS philosophy for responding to emergencies, and will outline the components of an effective program for developing emergency response policies and procedures, and for training staff and conducting emergency response readiness drills. I anticipate this page will make extensive use of topic-specific anchor links.

Provides titles and short descriptions for a list of sex offender management and emergency response related resources, as well as Web links to any of the listed resource having a Web site.

We are not sure we can pull this off, but we want to host discussion groups related to our consultation services. There are two major problems with such a Web site based function (other than the basic one of coordination): First, some of the questions that will be asked will no doubt have to do with the specific treatment (as opposed to management) of specific sex offenders, and it is difficult to give advise when you don't know the sex offender; Second, because of the anonymity inherent in the Web, you can't always tell if your dealing with a colleague or somebody who is pulling your leg (such as an actual sex offender). However, I want to explore the possibility of offering a discussion group function and want to know the thoughts on this topic of Prof. Royer and my classmates.

Offers a short bio for each of the three partners, plus our email and U.S. mail addresses, and our telephone numbers.

Lists each partner's email and U.S. mail addresses and telephone number, and will also indicate which partner should be contacted to address specific topics, i.e., Dick is our psychologist and should be contacted for treatment related matters; Bob and I are administrators and should be contacted to arrange for training.

Typological Design: Ariel, Helvetica, sans-serif; and Times New Roman, Times, serif.

Colors:
1. Table and cell background: White and various shades of blue.
2. Typology: Black, blue, and red.
3. Links: Active (blue); Hover (Green); Visited (black).

Server: Yet to be determined. The server will not be the GVSU server. We will identify a comercial host service through catalog.com and register our domain name (see below) and purchase a Web hosting package.

We will issue emails to all our current and former clients announcing the launch of the IMTS Web site and its URL. In addition, we will explain our site, and present screen shots of the site (via PowerPoint), at the end of all future training sessions. We will also notify the Michigan Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (MiATSA) of our site's launch. All of our company correspondence, handouts, and brochures will feature a description of the IMTS Web site.

Meta-tags wil be: Sex Offender Management; Sex Offender Treatment; Sex Offeder Training; Emergency Response Training.

I will be the IMTS Web site Webmaster and will update the site on a monthly basis from my home computer.