Social media integration

Integrating interaction with the council into citizens’ online lives.

The ability for users’ activity streams, their actions and participation, to be visible on their own social networks is critical in increasing citizen engagement.  At service should be provided that links with the single-sign-on and profile service and allows all Local Authority websites to publish (with user’s permission of course) activity to their Facebook, Twitter and other social media statuses.

This service must provide the users with the ability to approve each status update or set persistent permissions and so it will require user interfaces as well as APIs.

content subscription/notification

Letting users know about changes to the content they are interested in.

A service should be provided that allows users to subscribe to receive notifications of changes to any content that they have an interest in.  The service must allow the user to specify existing content (a page, or site section) including user generated content (such as a conversation), or a topic of interest where they will receive notifications of as new content of interest is created.

Not only should users be able to manage all of their subscriptions in a single place, but they should also be able to choose an appropriate method of notification from SMS, email, RSS, Facebook, Twitter and IM.