Enable

The role of the Local Authority in the Connected Community is that of steward rather than owner.  The Local Authority’s web properties and systems should provide the right features to enable the people of the community: citizens, businesses, and staff, to do what they need and to connect to each other for civic activity. This entails providing tools that allow staff, citizens and community groups to help themselves, such as collaboration tools, platform access, open data, APIs and other facilities.

Continuous feedback and improvement

Planning for products and services to be continued to be developed after they have been released.

Any system deployed by the Local Authority should have a plan for coping with the changing expectations of users and technical environment. The continuous development and improvement of any system should built into its maintenance processes and should be documented as part of any project. The continuous improvement plan should include:

• how feedback will be gathered
• how it will be reviewed and actions prioritised
• what resources are required

Checking for these considerations should also be included in the project
review process.

Open data and data format standards

Allowing other organisations and individuals to work with council data and systems to derive more value.

The reasons that block the opening of data should be identified, understood and addressed. At present these blocks are thought to be:

• lack of visibility of benefit
• concern over misuse of data
• lack of data release/control mechanisms

A channel for communication between the users of the data and the data managers/guardians should be set up by encouraging and supporting the forming of a community group of developers, data journalists and engaged citizens and businesses. Conferences and open days should be organised to catalyse the communications

Separation of data presentation, processing and storage

A tiered architecture for the web systems to allow for integration and future change

All Local Authority systems that provide web based user interfaces (to any users, whether customers or staff) must allow for those interfaces to be redesigned, changed and managed using suitable mechanisms.

The ability for changes to be made to the presentation of interfaces (including static information pages) should not be limited to specific parts of the interface and should not be implemented solely through point and click editing tools.

It should be possible to replace the presentation elements (usually HTML and CSS) of a web interface or page via an API or through editing files.

Service oriented architecture

Adopt a service oriented architecture that allows a number of interdependent systems to work together now and in the future.

In order to connect the various web systems that are provided by the Local Authority, its partners and other organisations and individuals, a flexible and accessible mechanism must be implemented. A service oriented architecture (SOA) should be adopted to allow interconnection between the numerous systems without requiring direct and tight coupling of the systems.

A messaging system to communicate events and data such as a lightweight enterprise service bus (ESB) should be used to connect the systems (via the necessary security devices and mechanisms) using the standard protocols that are most convenient and appropriate to each system e.g. REST, WSDL, JSON, SOAP, etc.

Architecture and Infrastructure

The design of the technology layers that support the web systems to work together

It is important for all the various web systems that a Local Authority needs now and in the future to be able to work together coherently – to interoperate.  This requires that consideration be given to the design of the interoperation mechanisms, how they share data, how they notify each other about events and where security boundaries can be applied.

The use of a service-oriented architecture and the separation of the storage of content (of all types) from the tools used to create it and the presentation of that content, is necessary to ensure that interoperability with other systems is made simple and future innovation paths are left open.

Service improvement is part of the service

Service improvement (with involvement from the community) must be an integral part of service provision. All transactions should offer citizens the opportunity to use commenting and feedback to suggest service improvements as part of the process. Analytics and metrics should be used as part of an in depth user experience strategy to find and fix points that cause high dropouts. Services need to be provided via as many channels as appropriate and an engaging practical website will bring more people towards the self service end of the spectrum.

Access the power of local innovators, developers and social entrepreneurs

The Local Authority must engage with those who can themselves generate more involvement. The local communities of social entrepreneurs, web specialists and technology innovators are already imbued with the will and wish to be involved.

Enabling these groups with support, tools, and even contracts will result in higher returns as the work they do will enable others. The Local Authority must spend time and effort to reach out and find these groups through physical and social media.

Enable communities

Tools and advice for local groups and communities to form and interact online should be provided. They should be easy to use and provide a low barrier to entry for new entities. This would open up new opportunities for involvement with community groups.  Even where these groups are already interacting online via systems such as Facebook or twitter, the activity should be encouraged and made visible via the Local Authority’s sites. There should be no attempts to standardise or control these platforms but templates and aggregation services could be provided.

Innovation

Local Authorities must figure out innovative ways of creating and improving services, and involve citizens and partners in doing so.

All organisations want to be innovative, but not all understand how innovation relates to them or the potential it holds. Perhaps the most important aspect of this with regards to Local Authorities is cooperation – figuring out flexible yet productive ways to create things with other people.

Lessons can be learned from the open source software movement, and other open innovation practices, in terms of how to engage, how to communicate, how to respond, how to reward, how to ensure quality and how to nurture a network of self-selecting collaborators in pursuit of a common goal.