To determine if your agency can benefit from using XML for Web site management, it helps to ask some simple questions:

• Does the content of your Web site come from multiple sources (program managers, public information officers, administration, etc.)?
• Does that content exist in multiple formats (e.g., Word files, HTML, database fields, PDF, etc.)?
• Are you creating and maintaining multiple HTML pages one-by-one, even if these tasks are somewhat streamlined within editors such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage?
• Does your Web site contain a large amount of text?
• Does your Web site contain publications of ten printed pages or more that are reformatted for the Web into individual HTML pages linked to one another in a paging sequence?
• Do you encounter difficulty in ensuring consistency of content and applying global modifications across your Web site?
• Are you delivering (or do you plan to deliver) to a variety of formats and platforms such as PDF, RTF, and mobile devices?
• Does your Web site meet federal and state accessibility requirements (such as Section 508) and can you easily maintain these requirements?

If you answer “Yes” to any of these questions, then XML is worth considering because it specifically addresses issues of single-source content management, automatically generated output, consistent information, and multiple delivery formats. The next section details the major benefits of XML that address these questions.