Cheshire Councils Case Study
Overview
Chester City Council and Crewe and Nantwich Borough
Council deployed Immediacy CMS as part of a joint ICT venture to
improve website accessibility and online information. As part
of this the councils needed to ensure their sites met e-government
targets and the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act
(DDA).
Background
Chester City Council and Crewe & Nantwich Borough Council
entered into a formal Joint ICT Partnership arrangement around five
years ago with the intention of achieving a consistency of approach
and fostering joint working between the two authorities. The
potential for cost savings where both were using or planning to use
the same systems was also a major factor in this arrangement.
In early 2003 the authorities decided to assess their website
investments and recognised the potential to improve their online
services. This decision was driven by the need to meet
e-government targets and the requirements of the Disability
Discrimination Act 1995 but also to improve the quality and
quantity of online information available about the services being
provided.
The Solution
The councils recognised the need to deploy content management
technology to enable more people to manage content and to create
more user friendly sites. They needed a solid content management
platform from which they could base all future website
developments. The solution needed to be cost effective to
provide value to local taxpayers and easy to use to ensure high end
user adoption rates. The councils also required a content
management system that could scale effectively to serve their
interests in both the short and long terms.
Why Immediacy?
Immediacy CMS was purchased by the Partnership
in 2003 following an extensive assessment period which saw four
leading content management systems being considered and tested in
detail over a period of several months by a team of officers from
both councils.
Immediacy was chosen because it clearly
out-performed its rivals in terms of functionality and ease of use.
The software’s intuitive look and feel appealed to the councils as
it meant they could roll the solution out to both technical and
non-technical users. In addition the councils agreed that the
Immediacy .NET platform would endure well over time thus maximizing
the return on their investments. Both sides agreed that it was the
best possible option to strengthen the partnership between the two
authorities.
The councils also purchased Immediacy’s
premium Formbuilder plug-in. This plug-in allows non-technical
website administrators to easily build data input
forms. Forms can be configured to automatically generate
an email response or log the input into a database for later
downloading or processing. The plug-in was chosen to help the
Councils increase the efficiency and speed with which information
gathering forms were created and posted on the websites.
Results
The new Immediacy CMS websites were launched
in October 2004 – since that time both the Chester and Crewe &
Nantwich sites have achieved consistently good user feedback and
both continue to rank highly in the monthly league tables for local
authority websites (Nos. 73 and 56 respectively in December 2006).
“Support for the product has been excellent
from all levels of the company – our Web Programmers have reported
very prompt and first class service from the Immediacy Support
Team; and refreshingly also from senior staff within the company
whose usual role probably does not include getting directly
involved in systems support. The solution helped us meet DDA and
e-government deadlines and users have praised us on how easy it is
to find the information they need on the site,” said Christopher M
Moulton, Web Manager, Crewe and Nantwich Borough Council.
The councils have recently upgraded to Immediacy CMS 5.2 and
have found the accessibility checker in the latest version to be an
extremely useful tool and are expecting it to be of enormous
benefit in enabling then to fully achieve and maintain the
Government’s AA accessibility target.
Immediacy CMS has now been installed at the
Cheshire councils for over three years and both remain committed to
using the content management system in the long term.
http://www.chester.gov.uk/ |
http://www.crewe-nantwich.gov.uk/