An electronic policy integrated approach for software development (EPISoDe): a case study

Abstract

Official websites of an organisation is a gateway to inform the public about its profiles, products or services, and other related information for the interested parties. Nevertheless such websites are sometimes not updated, do not provide required information or the worst case they are abandoned despite the fact that software developers have fulfilled the requirements of the users, and the systems have been deployed successfully. Hence, such websites require a dynamic web design that can delegate responsibility to each staff in ensuring the contents are always updated either to be shared among the staff or the public. This paper proposes an approach called EPISoDe that directly integrates organisations' policies as part of functional requirements in software development in this case we focus on website design and its implementation of higher learning institutions. We have deployed the proposed EPISoDe approach in a prototype called DyWeMS that provides an engine of a dynamic web design. We evaluated the approach on an official website of a school in a higher learning institution using DyWeMS dynamic engine. It implies that an organisational official website has the potential to be a one-stop information and knowledge centre that reflects organisations' history and legacy using the proposed EPISoDe approach that promotes delegation of responsibilities among the staff with the support of dynamic web design.