Lincolnshire County Council Communities

Building Communities

Lincolnshire is at the forefront in the development of web sites which address the needs of specific communities. The Council’s work with Abacus, to date, has seen the launch of easy to use, no cost sites for parish councils, and an innovative site for Polish migrants. Peter Barton, Head of Web & Information Services at the Council: “Using the underlying, comprehensive and powerful nature of Abacus’ Webstructure content management system as the engine, even relatively small sites can have exactly the same professional appearance and quality of search and navigation as would normally only be expected on much larger sites.”

The parishes initiative

All the web sites are built to a similar format, but parishes are offered different colours and templates for their pages and critically, can add their own sections and navigation, enabling them to retain their individuality. The ability of non-technical users – as is the case with many parish councils – to maintain their web sites has been achieved with the development, by Abacus, of an innovative new user-interface to the Webstructure product. After an hour’s training (or less), carried out by Lincolnshire CC, users are able to edit and add text, create polls, trigger email alerts, and crucially, resize and insert images, regardless of their previous level of computer experience.

Supporting the Polish community

This community web site contains a wealth of information in Polish on local issues including housing, education, how to find a job, health services and welfare benefits.

Using a simplified interface to Webstructure, two members of the local Polish community (neither of whom had any previous web site experience) are able to quickly and easily maintain and publish information, including graphics, in their native language, directly onto the site for access by the Polish community living in Lincolnshire.