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All about FedNet …
What is FedNet?
FedNet is the Federation’s new extranet – a private web site for sharing information between National Societies, Geneva staff and field delegations. What is an extranet?
An extranet is, very simply, a web site for private information. It differs from an intranet in that, while an intranet serves only the internal computer network of an organisation, an extranet can be accessed over the Internet. Since the Internet is public, an extranet therefore needs some additional security measures – you have to provide a user name and password to get into it, and information may be encrypted as it passes between the extranet and your web browser.
How is this different from the public website?
The public website is meant for the general public, to give information about what the Federation does, and anyone in the world can read it. FedNet is meant for an internal audience, to provide a forum for accessing and sharing internal information that we do not want to share with the public, or that is inappropriate for the public.
What is the purpose of FedNet?
FedNet will have two main roles:
1. To provide access to key information - operations, programmes, contact details, photographs, documents, presentations, useful links etc - to all Secretariat and National Society personnel.
2. To provide an interactive forum for online collaboration, through initially, discussion forums, but other functions will be added in the future.
Why do we need FedNet?
Several extranets have been created in the last few years, in response to a demand from users. The main one is DMIS, the Disaster Management Information System, but other smaller ones include quickplaces. Access to these and also the Events calendar, Eventrix, and to financial and business systems all require different web addresses and different passwords. They all contain valuable information that help people carry out their humanitarian work effectively, but they don't interact - information was scattered over many systems, and much information was not available anywhere because it wasn’t relevant to these systems. They have all been managed in isolation and not as a general service. Most were only available in English.
The demand for these extranets show that the personnel working within Red Cross Red Crescent world want to make the most of the opportunities the Internet offers to share information.
Organizationally, it was time to bring all these services together, onto one platform, add tools and information that was missing, create these services in other languages, and to offer access to all delegates and all National Society personnel.
What information is on FedNet?
At launch, FedNet will contain phone and address lists, an online photograph library, information about programmes, departments, documents etc. It will also provide access to tools such as the Events calendar, and for the first time, offer discussion forums to users. Some information will be available to a restricted audience, such as access to financial systems or governance documents.
More features will be added according to demand - to suggest an idea, please email the fednet team or post your comments to our discussion forum.
Who will be able to use it?
FedNet is intended to be a Federation-wide communications tool. From the launch it will be accessible to all Federation staff in Geneva and in the delegations, plus some staff in National Societies. National Societies will then be able to add more of their own users according to their own interests. The security system is flexible enough that we can also create areas which can be accessed by, for example, donors, partner agencies or suppliers without giving them access to the rest of the site. Once the basic structure is in place and running smoothly we will develop FedNet as a tool for communication between National Societies, and between National Societies and the Secretariat. Since the National Society user community is potentially very large, this will happen progressively over the indefinite future. The technical platform is capable of managing hundreds of thousands of users.
Who manages FedNet content?
The basic management of the FedNet platform (design, navigation, styles, technical issues etc.) is done jointly by the Communications Department and Information System departments at the Secretariat in Geneva. Communications department oversees the whole project to ensure the general direction is appropriate.
The content of FedNet (information and documents) is managed directly by "editors" in each area. This ensures that the person responsible for creating a document operationally has the responsibility for managing that information directly in FedNet. They are responsible for the accuracy of each page, and ensuring that information posted is relevant and up-to-date.
The initial site has been set up by 40 editors representing all departments in Geneva. Editors are being identified in delegations and in National Societies, and training will be given in 2004 - this will give all delegations and National Societies the right to add, update and delete content.
To find out more about who the editors are, or how to become one, see the Editors section.
What about confidential information?
In general, the idea of FedNet is to open up access to information, not restrict it. However, certain information (such as financial systems, human resource databases and governance documents) need to remain confidential to a restricted audience. To manage this, access to Fednet will be controlled by user profiles that define who can read what. People who do not have access to a particular part of the site will simply not see it on their screen.
How secure is FedNet?
FedNet is hosted on a secure web server at the Secretariat in Geneva. To ensure that information is available only to Red Cross Red Crescent personnel, each user is given a unique user name and password to access FedNet - there are no anonymous users. This allows us to keep track of how accounts are used and tailor access appropriately.
To ensure that FedNet is secure when used over the public internet, standard encryption techniques are used for all pages (Internet Explorer users will notice the padlock icon on their browsers telling them the site is secure). A multi-lingual environment
FedNet as a whole will exist in the four official languages – English, French, Spanish and Arabic. The information in the system, however, will be in the languages in which it is produced – it will not be translated into other languages specifically for FedNet.
Will FedNet work in countries with poor Internet connection?
The system has been designed so that pages load quickly - this is essential for people working in countries where Internet access is slow or expensive. This is why you will see mostly text - we have added very few photographs and no fancy images that move - these can look good, but make a web page very "heavy" and slow to open.
As the Internet is an increasingly important tool for the work of the Federation, other initiatives are under way (e.g. the Connectivity Project) to make Internet access available in places where it is particularly difficult. However this is not part of the scope of the FedNet project.
What does "Powered by Synkron.web" mean?
FedNet runs on a technical platform - a web content management system - created by a Danish company called Synkron.web. It is a very powerful tool and is fairly easy to learn how to use. No knowledge of HTML is required. Web pages are managed over the Internet and no special software is needed.
How to contact us
Email the FedNet team at fednet@ifrc.org
Call Fred Fulton on +41 22 730 4358
Jeremy Mortimer
FedNet manager |
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