Date published: 01.09.08 - not release date

Opening the "Gateway" to t-government

- Leicestershire partnership selects new e-portal solution to improve public access to local information
- Pilot delivered in two weeks

Bristol, UK, 13th June 2006 - The Leicester-Shire e-Government partnership has selected Cintra UK Ltd, a leading supplier of e-government software solutions, to supply their e-portal solution, The Leicestershire Gateway. The project will benefit members of the Leicester-Shire e-Government partnership which includes Leicestershire County Council, Leicester City Council and the seven district councils. The primary aims of the Gateway initiative are to provide the public with one-stop access to location-based information, a ‘joined-up’ A to Z services index and in the future, the ability to communicate or make web-based ‘transactions’ with local authorities and other public agencies such as voluntary sector services.

As well as creating a Leicestershire portal, by making use of web services technology, the project allows each of the partners to integrate the Gateway functionality within their own site. This enables all of the partner web-sites to benefit from the technology but at the same time to maintain their own identity.

ICT Project Manager for Leicestershire County Council, Angela Taylor, comments on the initiative, “Our vision is that e-government in Leicester and across the county will provide the opportunity for our citizens to access appropriate jointly-delivered services and information where and when they want it, in the form they prefer. The Leicestershire Gateway project will assist Leicestershire County Council and its partners to share and reduce overall costs, by offering the public a “one-stop”, self-service access to information about services provided by any of the county’s local authorities, no matter who provides it.”

Using the Cintra Gateway, a member of the public simply puts in his or her postcode or place name to identify their location, and the gateway will provide a series of relevant web links from the nearest or most applicable partner site. Alternatively, the user can also click on a location via an on-screen map.

Taylor continues, “We chose the Cintra solution because it could meet all our requirements within a single solution. Within two weeks they have delivered a pilot project based on Charnwood Borough Council. Cintra’s Gateway solution met the GIS (Geographic Information System) functional requirements and this, along with its SearchLight meta-tagging technology that complies with the IPSV 2.0 standard, met all our requirements. This was critical to fulfilling not only our portal specification, but also our e-government obligations such as providing regular Local Direct Gov links. We were further impressed by “live” demonstrations of the Gateway and the success of a similar solution that Cintra had installed for Oxfordshire County Council.”

The project is also set to save all the councils significant amounts of person-hours on manually updating individual websites according to IPSV 2.0 standards and also because of its self-service elements. For example, it is expected to lower the number of telephone enquiries or face-to-face contact required to respond to information requests.

Taylor explains, “Previously each partner had to update its own thesaurus and taxonomy database manually for each web-site. This can be a painfully slow labour-intensive process that can be both inaccurate and inconsistent. Using Cintra’s “SearchLight”, the underlying technology behind Gateway, this procedure is completely automated, the software classifies new content to the IPSV standard as soon as it is created. This also fulfils local authority obligations to provide Local Direct Gov links on an on-going basis.

Taylor concludes, “This has been a project where everybody wins - the public has a far more efficient resource for accessing information, and all the local government parties can share the benefits of lower costs, meeting e-government and t-government targets by sharing information across all web-sites and in the future by introducing the facilities to enable transactions over the web”.

Summary of benefits:

The Cintra Gateway enables Leicestershire County Council and its partners to realise the following benefits to citizens:

·Convenient, 24 hour access to local authority, public agencies and community-based information from a single point of access

·Powerful searching (inc. free text searches plus a comprehensive A-Z from a single site) all within one site, and incorporating deep links to the relevant local authority sector website where appropriate

·Automatically identifies citizen’s location and returns the most relevant results

·Results ranked by relevance and location

·‘Find my Nearest’ capabilities

·Meet recognised accessibility and usability standards where possible

And provides the following benefits to local government authorities:

·Achieves efficiency savings and improved service delivery

·More accurate search results

·Shared and easy access to key information

·Less resources required with fewer enquiries via telephone and face-to-face, by directing users to self-service web-based information

·Automatic indexing of partner data based on IPSV 2.0

·Automatic generation of A-Z of Services with indexing based on the ESD Toolkit

·Fulfil Priority Service Outcomes as defined by the ODPM:

a.R3 One-stop access and deep linking to joined-up A-Z information

b.G2 Empowering and supporting local organisations

c.G23 Adoption of recognised guidelines for usability of website design
Opening the “Gateway” to t-government

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Editor’s notes:

About Cintra:

Established in 2000, Cintra UK has developed into one of the leading software providers of e-Government solutions. Its board has vast experience of working within the LG sector. Recent activities have included ODPM (Office of Deputy Prime Minister) funded projects, local authority partnership working and involvement on e-government working parties for major National Project initiatives.
Cintra provides solutions to customers whose agenda is driven by the e-government requirements and the need to deliver priority service outcomes in a way that benefits the authority and citizen alike. Cintra has developed world-leading e-portal solutions and is able to offer solutions that use the most modern but also most cost-effective technologies. Cintra is based in Bristol.

Press Contact:

Jane Moores
TTA Communications
Tel: 01454 318722.
E-mail: jmoores@ttauk.com

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