How do parts of the Local Authority fit together?

Knowing who is responsible for what is a fundamental need of the community.

There should be a clear map showing lines of management through the authority and where democratic accountability is placed. This should include an indication of how engagement systems such as petitions tie in, which committees have oversight of which services, what powers are vested in which posts and the like. The democratic process including information on election frequency, ward boundaries etcetera will also need to be shown on the map.

What does the Local Authority provide?

Understanding what services are available is fundamental to the website.

But first there needs to be effective explanation of which services are provided by the Local Authority and how to find any run by others. This may mean having sign post pages on the Local Authority that point to the appropriate agency or allowing partner content to appear in search results.

Service channels on the the Local Authority website should be:

• easy to find
• accessible
• robust

Real-time Information

The power of real-time information to engage citizens is enormous.

It can potentially change the perception of the Local Authority’s data from that of a staid library to a busy TV news station. Some examples of real-time information are: conversations going on right now on the council platform, council-related topics elsewhere or information that is published in response to an emergency.

This shift in perception of the purpose of the Local Authority’s websites from being narrowly focused to a broader remit, engaged with the life of the community, will embed the Local Authority in citizens minds as being a relevant source for much real-time information. It will also act as a tool to help influence changes in citizens’ behaviour.

Standardisation vs expressiveness

There should be integration options that provide efficiency through standardisation, and others that prioritise expressiveness.

As well as a set of processes and templates for migrating or building websites on the common content management platforms, other integration mechanism must be provided that allow for websites to have more expressive designs.

Rather than having a set of integration rules for adopting and integrating other websites, guidance, tools and resources must be provided. This guidance should explain the rationale behind any design decisions and give practical support for website creators and the tools and resources should make it easier for any website creator to use them than to not.

Ambition

The vision outlined in this strategy must be ambitious enough to allow the Local Authority to successfully compete for the attention of its citizens.

This vision has to be ambitious enough to begin to close the widening gap between the user experience the commercial market is providing online and that provided by Local Authorities. It is an attempt to steer a population towards a more prosperous, more social, more creative, more empowered and, in all senses of the word, more healthy future.

However, there will be failures along the way and we must be sensitive to the role ambition plays in determining whether an initiative is well thought out enough to be adopted or whether it has little chance of succeeding no matter how much further resource is invested.