Subscribe to the Free Print Edition!
Celebrating 25 Years

GCN Home > 05/19/08 issue

Better Web pages in sight

2008 GCN Technology Leadership Award winner Sheila Campbell leads agency Webmasters toward better online services

By Trudy Walsh

One night, Sheila Campbell was meeting at the Library of Congress with about 20 members of the Web Managers Advisory Council. Campbell, co-chairwoman of the council and team leader of USA.gov and Web Best Practices at the General Services Administration, got into a deep discussion with council member Kate Donohue, a Web content specialist at the Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
MORE ON THIS TOPIC: 2008 Technology Leadership Awards home page
Campbell and Donohue were so immersed in their conversation that they didn’t notice when everybody else turned off the lights and left. The two were locked in, and Campbell had to call another council member on her cell phone to get them out.

That’s typical of the passion Campbell has for her work, said her boss, Beverly Godwin, director of USA.gov and Web Best Practices.

Campbell has been a catalyst in transforming a small, anonymous group of government Web managers into the largest community of practice of its kind, the Web Content Managers Forum. In October 2001, when Campbell joined GSA, the forum consisted of a dozen Web managers. Now it has 1,300 members representing every federal agency and a growing number of state and local agencies.

“Sheila has really helped nurture and grow the community of federal Web managers,” Godwin said. They used to be isolated, trying to learn on their own. But with the development of the council and forum, Godwin said, Web managers realized that “there’s someone like me in another agency trying to do the same things. It was almost like a support group.”

“We can call on each other for anything,” Campbell said. “The next time there’s a Hurricane Katrina, I have the cell numbers for all the Web managers at each Cabinet agency, and I know I can call them at a moment’s notice.”

Campbell also is in charge of Web Manager University, which provided low-cost, practical training last year to about 3,500 students from more than 75 federal agencies and 25 state and local agencies.

More news on related topics: IT Management, Web Strategies, Workflow / Collaboration



GCN Popup