HTML-based Web sites often require menial, repetitive maintenance tasks (checking pages for consistency, making the same changes in several different places, etc.), while XML eliminates most of them through its single-source, multiple output design. An agency staff member stated, “Its pretty straightforward to make conversions in XML documents quicker (than traditional methods) and more standardized so that there’s less wasted resources.”

With HTML, cost efficiencies are inversely tied to the size of the Web site. It can be very cost-efficient to maintain a small site in HTML; but as the site grows, those efficiencies decrease with more pages and duplications of content to manage. With XML, the opposite occurs. Since the multiple pages of a Web site are generated by a very small number of XSL files, the number of files to manage stays constant as the occurrence of individual Web pages increases. For instance, an XML-based site with 20 XSL files may produce 100, 1,000, or 10,000 HTML Web pages. Regardless of the number of Web pages, the content still comes from single-source XML files, and those 20 XSL files produce all the pages. It’s a much easier management structure. (See Figure 5.)

Figure 5. Return on Investment for CTG in Converting to an XML-based Web site

As an IT manager from a large state agency clearly stated, “In terms of us actually doing the management of it [the Web site], I don’t see any problems. I can’t see where it’s going to do anything but save us time and resources, which mean money.” Likewise an individual serving as a technical liaison agreed on this benefit and linked it to XML’s single source capability: “I think just the notion that you’re creating that single source, which is incredibly important, you’re saving so much—you’re saving time, you’re saving money.”

It is also important that with XML, staff time is not consumed by menial, repetitious tasks, but rather in work that will make the Web site more timely, accurate, and cost-efficient. A program staff member who works closely with the IT unit summarized it this way: “Well, the most important benefits I think would actually be sort of secondary benefits ... freeing up the Web unit from spending all their time creating HTML pages and altering HTML and tweaking stuff for people ... Having them freed up to do the more involved projects that we’d rather have them working on, would be a benefit for everybody.”