Wolverhampton City Council

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Wolverhampton City Council

As part of its drive towards e-Government, Wolverhampton City Council wanted to further develop its existing web presence to support the increasing local and government initiatives. Key to the development was the ability to carry out secure transactions, retain full control over the site and reduce operational costs. Using Microsoft technologies, Fujitsu worked with the council to develop a new content management system, and in addition ensured the transfer of skills from Fujitsu to council staff. Almost 240,000 Wolverhampton citizens will now benefit from an improved service.

The Challenge

Wolverhampton City Council had a well established web site covering the entire range of Council services that was being manually updated by a small, central team. However, it was becoming increasingly difficult to manage and maintain as more and more information was added - a trend that was forecast to increase significantly as various local and government initiatives, including the Modernising Government and e-Government programmes, were delivered.

In addition, the Council wanted to host the web site internally, so that it could:

• Carry out secure transactions
• Develop a fully transactional web site over which it had complete control
• Reduce operational costs.

Finally, in order that the Council s employees and the communities that it serves could access the most up-to-date information, there was also a need to establish a set of publishing and operational controls to allow the responsibility for controlling site content to be devolved to the relevant service areas within the Council

The Solution

Wolverhampton City Council began discussions with Fujitsu to scope the development of a robust, scalable and flexible platform that could control the publishing and management of information on the Council s web sites and support its drive towards e-Government.

As the Council had already made a strategic commitment to developing new systems using Microsoft .NET technology, to simplify the building of e-Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF) compliant systems, Microsoft Content Management Server and Commerce Server were selected as the preferred technology with which to build a distributed Content Management System.

However, the Council recognised that its staff did not have all of the skills required to implement a solution based on such a new product set without some assistance.

Consequently, it was decided that Council staff would work in a transfer of skills environment with Fujitsu in to develop the design of the Content Management System and then test it in a proof of concept environment. By using Microsoft Content Server, the new system enables content to be rapidly created using online forms, into which existing information can be cut and pasted, so no knowledge of HTML coding or programming is required. Instead, an authorised user can simply logon to the page that needs updating and begin editing. However, to maintain data integrity, the system also includes a workflow facility to ensure that any changes are editorially approved.

Operating on Windows 2000 Server and with SQL Server as the back-end database, the system has also been developed to take advantage of the fully integrated functionality with Microsoft Commerce Server, which is used to serve and track the site data and will eventually enable personalised information to be delivered to users in a My Wolverhampton style.

The Content Management system is due to go fully live in July 2003 and it will be available over the Intranet to all employees of the Council who have access over the Council s network (over 3,500 people by 2005). It will also deliver a vastly improved and more responsive Internet service to the 237,000 people living in Wolverhampton. Carol Blakemore, Senior Account Manager, Wolverhampton City Council, comments, The Content Management System designed by Fujitsu puts responsibility for the publication of data back into the hands of those who understand and own the content. This means that our staff and the public get access to highly relevant and accurate information much faster, typically within 24-48 hours, so that they can make much more informed decisions.

The Benefits

The Content Management System is an essential part of Wolverhampton City Council s strategy for the electronic delivery of services and it will enable it to:

• improve efficiency by devolving authority for managing content to the relevant departments and removing the centralised publishing bottleneck.
• increase productivity with the consistent look and feel of the site making it easier to navigate and find relevant information.
• reduce information overload by using Microsoft Commerce Server s sophisticated personalisation tools to deliver targeted information.
• enhance knowledge sharing with the ability to store more comprehensive information, which can be regularly updated, on the Council s Intranet system.

Carol Blakemore says, The new Content Management System will enable better quality information to be made available faster, both internally and externally, and so assist the Council in providing an even better service to the citizens of Wolverhampton.

And, because the system has the necessary scalability and flexibility to evolve in line with our future information needs, it is the main building block at the centre of the Council s e-Government strategy. Ultimately, it will enable the web site to progress from delivering purely static content to a point where it incorporates the e-forms and transactional processing capabilities needed to achieve the Council s targets for e-delivery and other initiatives.

The Implementation

Having helped to establish the hardware and software requirements for the Content Management System, Fujitsu provided the transfer of skills environment over a period of 37 days between June and October 2002. During this time, the Council s skill levels relating to the new Microsoft product set increased enormously as the proof of concept model was established. Council staff subsequently continued the scripting and incorporation of metadata for eGMS (e-Government Metadata Standard) compliance and the project progressed through to a pilot stage, which was later revised to include Content Management Server 2002, incorporating .NET technology. Work is also currently ongoing to structure the site to meet the APLAWS standards for local government web site categories and metadata.

Because the Council s IT systems have traditionally been mainframe based we started with a relatively low level of skills in the latest web development techniques and Microsoft products, so the project involved a radical amount of skills transfer, explains Carol Blakemore.

Fujitsu s experience with a wide range of customers, knowledge of web site design, understanding of Microsoft technology and extensive skills base were all critical in enabling us to scale an extremely steep learning curve and develop the new system in very short timescales. This knowledge will also greatly assist the Council in moving forward with the entire e-Government agenda.

Fujitsu s involvement also gave us a great deal of flexibility. Our general approach was basically to get in and get your hands dirty and Fujitsu was very flexible in dealing with any new problems or requirements and was fully committed to get us up and running.

The Expertise

Fujitsu has a well-established relationship with Wolverhampton City Council, including a frame agreement for the provision of a wide range of technical and management skills that has been in place for two years.

Carol Blakemore confirms, Fujitsu s size and its relationships with other leading IT companies, like Microsoft, are a real comfort factor. If the people you are dealing with don t know something then they will invariably know someone who does, because there is such a huge skills base that they can tap in to.