MEDIA RELEASE

5 December 2005

Ministry launches new website

The Ministry of Women’s Affairs today formally launched a new-look website with many new feaures and resources.

The site – www.mwa.govt.nz – has been built with assistance from the State Services Commission (SSC) and is the first site by another government agency to use the open source code and content management system SSC is making freely available to the whole state sector.

“We were delighted to be the first government agency to use the Government Web Guidelines compliant version of the content management system Plone which SSC has had developed by 3months.com,” said Ministry Chief Executive Shenagh Gleisner. “As a small government policy agency it was great to have the support of the Commission and to contribute to something which should be of great benefit to other public sector organisations.”

The site contains much new content, including features that users of the previous Ministry site said would be useful.

“The top two items requested were ‘information on women in New Zealand’ and ‘research / statistics on women in New Zealand’,” said Shenagh. “When we were building the new site, we tried to reflect that interest with a new Women in New Zealand section. It includes a great timeline which gives an overview of the history of women in New Zealand, and brief information presented under the headings people tend to ask for - such as Pacific women, or women with disabilities.

“For statistical information on all women in New Zealand we link to the excellent and up-to-date information on women on the Statistics New Zealand site and other government sites. This is part of trying to take a whole-of-government approach – if another part of government has produced the information and already has it available on the web, we link to it rather than recreate it on our site.”

Shenagh also thanked stakeholders such as the National Council of Women, PACIFICA, the Māori Women’s Welfare League and Rural Women New Zealand that had helped with user feedback.

ENDS

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