Emergency responses and the website

Before an emergency response

When Agriculture Victoria is considering an emergency response, the web team will review existing pages on the website that are relevant to the likely response. We will look at appropriateness, reading level and any accessility concerns that need addressing.

For each page we will:

• contact the page owner to let them know we’re reviewing their content
• along with the page owner, assess whether the content is up to date
• assess the reading level of the content on those pages and suggest improvements
• discuss with the page owner whether we are likely need new content relevant to the emergency situation.

During an emergency response

When an emergency event is declared, we will be added to the incident management team (IMT), working with the public information officer (PIO). One of the web team will be responsible for web updates related to the emergency situation. Our availability will scale with the IMT’s needs. This can include being on the roster out of hours and at weekends.

Our role will be to:

• add a sitewide safety alert banner if needed
• raise workflow tasks on behalf of the PIO as needed, in view of the PIO’s typically heavy workload
• advise on placement of new content about the situation
• advise on updating or adapting home page content
• publish new or amended content as needed, including reviewing text for reading level
• produce web performance statistics for the IMT’s scheduled situation reports.

After an emergency response

When an emergency response moves into a recovery phase, the public information function is usually stood down. Along with the return to business as usual, we will:

• audit pages related to the response, removing out-of-date material such as incident statistics
• remove any safety alert banner that may have been set up
• archive or unpublish any unneeded pages
• provide post-event feedback to the IMT.