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East Lindsey District Council
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>> site information
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The Organization
East Lindsey District Council is located in Lincolnshire, England and serves more than 130,500 residents and more than 7 million tourists annually who visit the areas coastal and inland resorts.
The Challenge
Over the years, residents and tourists have increasingly come to rely on the East Lindsey District Council public-facing Web site for access to important information like food safety, paying council tax, disposing of trash, and finding hotels and beach chalets. However, the process for disseminating and managing information via the Web had resulted in a number of operating inefficiencies and bottlenecks for the council including lengthy publishing cycles and increased Web maintenance costs. With only one Webmaster and a conglomerate of disorganized and inconsistent Web pages built in ASP, the site lacked key elements including consistency in design and page format, relevant, up-to-date content and full text searching capabilities. These limitations made it exceedingly difficult for East Lindsey District Council to effectively communicate with its online community and continue their commitment of providing quality service via the Web.
The Solution
When East Lindsey District Council embarked on a Modernizing Government Program with the objective of improving services and making programs more accessible, reliable and convenient to use, they recognized that a Web content management solution backed by a shared knowledge repository would be an essential component of this initiative. Engaging the help of PaperThin partner, CIBER UK, East Lindsey District Council reviewed many content management systems before short-listing four solutions which included APLAWS, Microsoft Content Management System 2001, POPI from Abacus e-media and PaperThin’s CommonSpot™ Content Server. CommonSpot was the CMS of choice for a number of reasons, including its rich feature-set, affordable price, flexible customization capabilities, value, support offerings, template-driven architecture and its ability to integrate with the Council’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.
Taking a phased-approach to implementation, the development team, consisting of both consultants from CIBER UK and a Webmaster from East Lindsey District Council deployed CommonSpot across both an Internet and intranet site, consisting of three different views – a public view, a council employee view and a CRM view. Within the 600+ pages of the new site, a number of CommonSpot features were utilized, including custom metadata, content personalization, custom elements and content syndication.
In order to satisfy the goal of creating one shared knowledge repository with appropriate access permissions, developers deployed CommonSpot’s content personalization and metadata functionality. Three different views of the site all contain content that is intended for specific audiences. Both a public and employee view share the same design, graphical layout and navigation, but the employee view contains additional ‘restricted content’, accessible only to Council staff as authenticated users. A CRM view displays the same pages of the site within an iframe within the Council’s CRM system, but with simplified navigation and fewer graphics in order to save space and improve readability.
CommonSpot’s ability to easily integrate with external applications has allowed tight integration with the Council’s CRM system. Customer Service Agents (CSAs) not only have the benefit of access to all site content when dealing with information queries, but they can also access specific intranet only web pages (Call Guides) which assist them in handling various types of service requests. In addition, specific query pages have been built which link to CRM functions. For example, when taking a request to deal with a missed collection, the CSA can use the customer address to confirm which day collections are actually scheduled at that location.
In addition to integration with the council’s CRM system, both the Council’s building planning and document management systems have been linked to the Web site, further widening access to information online and allowing the Council to comply with statutory requirements such as the Freedom of Information Act. The use of CommonSpot has also enabled the Council to start moving a wide variety of information and data from locations such as individual staff PC’s onto the Web site where it can now be easily shared and updated. Ultimately, as customers obtain answers to information queries for themselves via the Web site, this will allow the Council officers more time to undertake their specialist roles and provide an improved and more efficient level of service.
CIBER UK extended CommonSpot to provide syndicated content in the industry standard XML/RSS format. By offering content in this manner, local news, events, job and service information can now be published for consumption by other Web sites. This enables Easy Lindsey District Council to reach beyond its local community to a wider audience. An example of this can be seen at LincUp Gateway (http://www.lincup.net), which joins the sites and electronic services delivered by several Lincolnshire District Councils, including East Lindsey District Council. This single-joined up view of the sites enables public services to be found more effectively by location regardless of who provides the service.
Compliance with regulatory requirements like the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) and The UK eGovernment Metadata Standard (eGMS) was vital in the development of the new site. Using CommonSpot’s custom metadata feature, the site conforms to these requirements that were designed to ensure consistent use of metadata across public sector organizations.
"CommonSpot has allowed us to develop a well structured and integrated Web site that can be easily maintained. This is of tremendous benefit to our customers while at the same time provides Council staff with valuable support tools for providing services quickly and efficiently," noted Adrian McCormick, Customer Services Manager, East Lindsey District Council.
CommonSpot’s intuitive interface made it easy for non-technical employees to quickly begin authoring content on the new site. Initially, East Lindsey District Council attended PaperThin’s CommonSpot for Contributors training class delivered by PaperThin at CIBER UK’s London offices. This two-day training provided IT employees with the basics for content creation, site management and site support. Subsequently, CIBER UK developed and delivered training courses for content contributors across the entire council staff. At present, 50 users within the Council are responsible for managing site content, and this number is expected to grow to potentially 400.
The Return
Since implementing CommonSpot, East Lindsey District Council has experienced immediate ROI. Improved customer service and access to valuable information has allowed the Council to achieve its goal of The Modernizing Government initiative. Unlike the conventional process which relies on a single Webmaster for site updates, employees can now post content more quickly and easily, increasing both the quality and timeliness of information and eliminating the need to hold information in offline or online formats. The ability to post content in real time has been particularly beneficial to the Council where the requirements for changes to content can peak on a seasonal basis or even when events such as local elections take place.
Site Information
URL: http://www.e-lindsey.gov.uk
Platform: Windows 2000/NT
Site Type: Internet
Implementation Partner(s): Ciber
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