Transforming Oxford's Digital Communications Programme

Effective and impactful communications with staff, students and the public are critical to digital transformation at Oxford. To achieve this, we need to transform our communications platforms and approach.

Transforming our platforms and content will improve the quality and effectiveness of our communications. It will also improve the experience for content creators, with easier to use tools and clearer processes.

The Transforming Oxford’s Digital Communications programme is delivering flexible, scalable and secure digital communications platforms and tools for internal and external audiences. This will ensure all our audiences – staff, students and external – can find information, access online services and keep up to date on what’s happening across the University, and ultimately support our academic mission.

Our new platforms

At the heart of this change are two new platforms for everyone at Oxford.

Oxford Fresco, our new web CMS platform, will be a stable, secure and flexible platform for the University, and the preferred platform for all Oxford's public-facing web content. It will allow every area of the University to publish easily and securely, with a flexible set of tools. Replacing existing solutions, such as Mosaic, and becoming the new platform for Oxweb, the University's main website, Oxford Fresco will create rich digital experiences for hundreds of creators across Oxford. More information can be found on the Oxford Fresco page here.

OxIntranet will provide a singular digital experience for all staff and students - bringing together content published across the University into a consolidated view. This will be underpinned by enhanced people data – allowing information to be targeted to the needs and interests of the individual based on where they are in the University. In the future we’ll also invest in our email and additional communications tools, making it easier for everyone at Oxford to find the information they need to study and work. More information can be found on the OxIntranet page.

Pilots

To help ensure the new Fresco and Ox-Intranet platforms meet the diverse needs of the University, we are piloting the initial platforms in the following areas throughout the Trinity term.  This will inform the wider roll-out from the start of the 2024/2025 academic year.

Making the change

Migration

Moving our content to the new platforms will be a large undertaking, and a new project is now live to ensure this critical activity receives the level of attention needed.  This includes:

• ensuring we have the right training and support modes in place
• developing a timeline and agreeing migration tranches
• clarifying who has responsibility for different aspects of migration

We are also investigating the feasibility of being able to offer some degree of automation alongside manual migration.

We expect the majority of migrations from current Mosaic sites and Oxweb to take place between September 2024 and the end of 2025.

This is an absolute priority for the programme team, and we will be in touch with current Mosaic site owners in June 2024.

Content

We are very pleased that we have now published a draft content strategy for the University.

The strategy outlines how we will publish, organise, manage and govern content - informing how we manage content across our platforms, both internally and externally.

This includes establishing principles for content, and ways of managing and refreshing it over time.  It also outlines how we plan to publish content across web and internal platforms, to ensure relevant information is available to internal and external audiences.

The strategy has been developed collaboratively with input from communications officers and other key stakeholders around the University, and the latest draft has received positive feedback.

The draft strategy is available here, and we would welcome any further feedback you may have.

Skills and capability

To enable the flexibility and scalability of the University’s communications platforms, we are working to build skills and capability across our teams, including the recruitment of a Web Experience Manager and an Intranet Manager, and to share best practices through the introduction of a community of practice.

Platform and content governance 

Ongoing, joined-up oversight and decision-making regarding the new platforms will ensure we continue to provide effective and supported communications platforms for the University.

Governance arrangements

Coordinating the Oxford Fresco and OxIntranet projects under one programme enables us to be joined-up so the delivery of these communications platforms is effectively managed and supported, with the right resources and content.

The Web CMS and Intranet projects each have a project board and there is an overall Programme Board.  These comprise representatives from across the University and, ultimately, the work falls under the remit of the Engagement & Dissemination Portfolio Group. The work has been made possible by the Digital Transformation Programme and works closely with related digital transformation projects such as the Student Hub project.  Representatives on each of the governance bodies are provided below.

More information

We are committed to providing regular updates about the programme and these pages will be updated on a regular basis with the latest information.

Email updates

We have been sending email updates to Communications Officers, current Mosaic and Oxweb site owners and other stakeholders since late 2023.  Previous communications are below for information.

May 2024

March 2024

February 2024

December 2023

Briefings

Since December 2023, we have provided a regular Teams drop-in session for current Mosaic users.  Copies of the slide packs and recordings of presentations are available on the Web CMS project page.

Additional questions

If you have any further questions, please use the links on the right hand side of this page to access our Frequently Asked Questions.

Contact

If you are unable to fid the information you want in our Frequently Asked Questions, please email us at transformingdigitalcommsprogramme@it.ox.ac.uk.