An assessment checklist is used to determine the compliance of potential information to be included on HealthySA.  Information is checked against HealthySA’s publishing standards and other relevant web quality health criteria eg HONcode principles etc.

The checklist includes ‘required’ and, in some areas ‘desirable’ criteria. The criteria used is taken from the HONcode principles and addresses:

• quality of information – including clearance and review processes, qualifications of authors, accuracy, appropriateness for intended audience and documentation of the source
• authority, authentication and disclosure
• currency
• document formats
• navigation
• aesthetics/design
• accessibility
• innovation

Publishing standards

HealthySA aims to provide access to up-to-date, quality information for South Australian health consumers. As the information accessed through HealthySA comes from the sites of contributors, the overall quality of HealthySA depends on the information quality and presentation of these sites.

The publishing standards help to add credibility to HealthySA and the contributor sites. These standards cover both general site and resource specific issues. HealthySA aims to direct users quickly to useful information and will generally direct users to individual resources or web pages rather than web sites or segments of sites.  Accordingly the publishing standards are focused at a resource rather than site level.

The standards are aligned with the Guidelines for Commonwealth information published in electronic format, January 2000, available at http://www.agimo.gov.au/information/publishing/formats.

The standards fall into five areas:

• quality of information - qualifications of creators, accuracy, appropriateness for target audience, documentation of source material, clearance procedures
• authentication - clear and explicit statements of title, creator, publisher and date
• usability - navigation, information architecture, markup and presentation of information
• accessibility - catering for a range of user hardware and software and for people with disabilities
• metadata requirements (desirable)

Ideally HealthySA contributor sites will be excellent in all of these areas. In reality, sites and standards have been evolving and, particularly on large older sites, not all resources meet current standards. Hence, what we are looking for from contributors is a commitment to continuous site improvement in all the listed areas.

The types of resources selected for HealthySA are:

• homepages (representing whole sites)
• individual publications, including factsheets and brochures
• information about a health topic
• information about services
• broad level information about an organisation
• navigation pages, where these provide a useful entry point to part of a site.

Review process

HealthySA will regularly check the integrity of links. Content can be deleted at any time, should it not continue to meet the general selection guidelines. Requests for deleting links should be made to the HealthySA Coordinator.