2010 WriteMark |
Friday 3 September 2010 |
New Zealand Plain English Awards |
|
Candi Harrison
Candi Harrison was Department Web Manager at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development from 1995 to 2005. During her leadership, HUD won numerous web awards, including the first Digital Government Award presented by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and by Accenture for outstanding use of the Internet to serve citizens (2000); the E-Gov Trailblazer Award for HUD’s free web clinics for HUD partners (2001); and the E-Gov Pioneer Award for HUD's ground-breaking government information kiosks (1999). HUD’s web operations were cited as ‘best practices’ in numerous studies and reviews.
In 2000, Candi founded the Web Content Managers Forum as a vehicle for government web content managers — federal, state, and local — to exchange best practices and lessons learned. She also led the forum until late 2005. This group now has more than 2,000 members across the country. In 2004, Candi co-chaired the US Government’s Web Content Standards Working Group, recommending policies and best practices for federal public websites to meet the requirements of the E-Gov Act of 2002. She co-chaired the Federal Web Managers Council, the interagency governing group for web management in the US Federal Government, from its inception in 2004 until late 2005. Candi organised and led workshops in Washington DC and across the country to train government web managers on federal web policies and best practices. She helped create the website Webcontent.gov as a resource for government web content managers.
Candi retired in October 2005, after 24 years of federal government service. Since then, she has taught courses and workshops on web management and communications for the General Services Administration’s Web Manager University, Government Educator, and others. In 2010, she served as a judge for the Clearmark Plain Language Awards. Her highly praised blog, Candi On Content (candioncontent.blogspot.com), chronicles her experiences and ideas to improve the way the US Government communicates with its citizens.
From 1974 to1980, Candi was a member of student services staffs at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA and Rider University in Lawrenceville, NJ. She holds a Bachelors Degree in English Education and a Masters Degree in Higher Education Administration, both from Indiana University. Candi lives in Tucson, Arizona.
