The Equal Access to Software and Information (EASI) initiative, housed at the Rochester Institute of Technology, has awarded the "Exceptional Design Award" for the District Office's web site, http://www.dist.maricopa.edu. EASI is a part of the Teaching, Learning & Technology Group, an affiliate of the American Association of Higher Education. This project was also partially supported by the National Science Foundation as well as the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative.

It was a national competition for universities and community colleges. The award was for pages that were both fully accessible while utilizing the best of design including graphics and other elements. Web sites were evaluated both on their general attractiveness and HTML design as well as their accessibility for people with Disabilities. The requirements were not just for the homepage. It also included pages one-level deeper chosen at random by the committee.

The Web Development Team has been extremely active in the number of projects undertaken, still under development and completed this last year. The team membership has changed dramatically over the year. Bobby Sample moved to an opportunity at Glendale, and Carol Myers (11/99) and Elliot Cherner (02/00) joined Denise Bruce as members of this team. Carol Clocksin is considered an official member of this team as a 49% early retiree. Carol Myers provides leadership to the Web Team as well as the Intel Server Team and the Quality Assurance Team.

Many Cold Fusion projects have been completed or are still under development. Cold Fusion allows the delivery of real time data to the web. An administrative function for Creative Pathways was completed. An application was developed for Phoenix Urban Systemic Initiative to collect information from K-12 teachers. The team supported Information Needs of Refugees and Immigrants (INRIM,) led by John Gray of ITS, as a community resource for design and support information. The ITS Status Reporting system was also completed which allowed report writing via a webpage. The district-wide job descriptions, redesign of Maricopa main pages and the Tutor Management System were completed.

A web portal for the Governing Board was developed in collaboration with Institutional Effectiveness. This portal provided report and statistical information to board members. Support continued for the Health Care Integrated Educational System that included a Continuing Education data entry program, until a replacement programmer is hired.

Several district-wide web sites were built including Diversity, Strategic Planning Task Force, Adjunct Faculty Association, Student Information Commission, and the Diversity Curriculum Project with the team providing assistance.

Development projects still underway include the Tutor Management System, helpdesk Asset Tracking, a furniture guide for Purchasing as well as a web interface for Faculty Professional Growth. A personal web page creator and an on-line ITS organizational chart will be on-line shortly after the start of the fiscal year.

Elliot Cherner assisted the e-mail team by creating a Perl program to clean and organize data for Y2K compliance.

During this year, Tom Bates replaced the District web services with Apache and PHP resulting in much improved stability and performance. This has affected our statistical reporting tool, WebTrends. Work is in progress to bring back this functionality.

Two new tools have been made available for district-wide use. Webboard is a discussion area that ties to several listservs for technical assistance. This will also be used by the Strategic Planning Task Force to share information in real time. A web color palette was developed that will assist Maricopa webmasters in choosing colors that are compatible with all systems.

More detailed information about the Web at Maricopa during the 1999-2000 fiscal year is available. The Web Development team has a website as well. Monthly status reports about the Web Development team are available on the ITS Status Report System.