Users are able to download general guidance on topics such as the School Census, Early Years Census, and school performance from this area. They can also upload and transfer data in bulk via the site’s secure area which is a key feature for schools. The Webstructure.NET combination pages have increased the readability and usability of ‘information heavy’ pages which is one of the key features of the product.

Abacus e-Media has enjoyed a successful relationship with LCC, having worked with them since 2006. This is a re-launch of the original site which launched back in 2008. The early feedback from LCC and their user base has been very encouraging and we are very proud of the new solution now serving the schools in the locality.

James Thomas, Principle Information Officer at LCCDX, said:

“We’ve been using our LCC Data Exchange website to communicate with schools and other key partner organisations for several years and it’s been a real success. Schools can access information, guidance and support whenever they need it. The website also provides a secure method of exchanging reports and data between us and our partners.

We decided to invest further in the website as a result of staffing reductions in the wake of the recent significant public sector funding cuts. With fewer staff to support our client base we needed a website with greater functionality in order to continue delivering a quality service. So recently we upgraded to Webstructure.NET.

“Abacus helped us with the website design, project plan, user testing and migration to live. The whole process went well, and I feel that Abacus was very flexible when it came to changes in our schedule and minor revisions. We are now up and running with our new site, and initial feedback has been positive. We continue to deliver a user-friendly, attractive website that is well-received and widely used by schools, colleges, early years providers and other children’s services across Lincolnshire.”

 

Website overview from the LCC Data Exchange team

For more information on Webstructure.NET or to arrange a demo please contact us on 020 7766 9810 or email us at info@abacusemedia.com

The site, designed and developed by Abacus e-Media and built on its Webstructure.NET content management system, has scored well, with testers successfully completing all seven tasks relevant to county councils. It achieved the highest possible overall reviewer rating of ‘very good’.

The site was highlighted as one of the top 20 best practice examples.

“The layout of the section home pages features clear ‘note’ style panels with attractive images – good design values but without sacrificing clarity. On the right of every section there is a ‘top tasks’ mini-selection for that area: this is best practice, but all too few sites implement it…

“…it was one of the best this year for its clarity, usability, and focus on top tasks, helping people and allowing people to find help and ask for help. These should be the guiding lights for all council websites; they should be, but they aren’t yet. Well done to Lincolnshire for leading the way.”

SOCITM Better Connected 2012 Report

That’s not all…

Other Webstructure.NET clients who scored well include Isle Anglesey County Council, moving up from two stars to three; North Kesteven District Council, gaining an extra star to take them to three and West Lindsey District Council who move from a two to a three star rating.

Conwy CBC and Gywnedd CC also moved from two to three stars. Both these websites are running on Abacus software.

Well done to all the teams who have worked so hard to ensure the content on their sites is accurate, up-to-date and easy to read.

Tweet

The Digital 100 ranks agencies on their UK fee income from digital activities for the most recent complete year of audited accounts available to them. The list also highlights the top marketing agencies, top design and build agencies and top technical agencies as well as rankings of the agencies in the regions.

To have made our position in the top 50 against the industry's finest is a fantastic achievement in what has been a very challenging year for the UK economy and in particular for the markets we specialize in (media and public sector).

We have been busier than ever in 2011, having completed a management buyout from our former parent company Bond International; the acquisition of a marketing consultancy and subscription fulfillment specialist (Alliance Media); and the development of a new innovative cloud-based technology (ADvance) in the audience development space which will provide Abacus with an opportunity to continue to grow the business and continue to invest in web technology and content management solutions.

If you would like more information about Audience Development or CMS, please get in touch with us on 020 77669810 or email info@abacusemedia.com

This year’s event was at the Spinnaker Tower, Gunwharf Quays, Portsmouth, and is a must for all web designers / developers.

The night featured a larger collection of awesome speakers: Bruce Lawson, Dan Rubin, Mike Kus, Martin Beeby, Naomi Atkinson, Relly Annett-Baker, Seb Lee-Delisle and our very own Darren Waddell.

Videos of all the talks will be coming soon!

Over the past eight months the two businesses have worked closely on the development of Abacus’ ADvance audience development system.

Ian Eckert said:

“Working so closely with Alliance has allowed us to make rapid progress on ADvance. We’ve now got a system that breaks the mould in terms of customer data management and fulfilment, allowing publishers to really leverage commercial and product development opportunities across their online and offline audiences. We will now be able to start rolling the platform out to the Alliance customer-base.”

The ADvance platform allows B2B and consumer publishers to sell and manage their print and online subscriptions, registrations and events in a single system with integrated print fulfilment and online access control. The system also incorporates powerful Business Intelligence tools that give marketers the opportunity to generate campaigns, and to mine and segment audience data from whatever source.

Abacus’ Managing Director Steve Feigen said:

“We are delighted the Alliance team is now part of our business. Increasingly our clients have been asking us to help integrate their online activities and access management with their circulation and customer data. This acquisition allows us to continue our rapid development in this area and to offer both companies’ clients a full range of services.”

Speaking for Alliance, director Charles Arthur added:

“Alliance and our customers have already benefited significantly from our partnership with Abacus. Now that we are part of the same organisation these advantages can only increase.”

Further information:

• Abacus e-Media is a leading digital developer, offering consultancy, design, technical implementation, content management platforms and hosting to the media sector. The company has offices in London and Portsmouth.
• Alliance Media provides circulation marketing consultancy, database and direct marketing and subscription fulfilment services for print and online magazines.

For more information, please contact:

Ian Eckert
Abacus e-Media, 14–16 Regent Street, London SW1 4PH

T: 0207 766 9810 E: ian.eckert@abacusemedia.com

In the IT category, Government Website of the Year – which is awarded to the Government website project that can demonstrate a high degree of innovation and usability in providing its website service to citizens and/or local authorities and businesses – was awarded to Lincolnshire County Council, which was designed and built by Abacus e-Media running on the Webstructure.NET platform.

The event, presented by former newspaper editor and TV presenter Eve Pollard, recognised the good work of communications departments across local and central government.

The comments included that the council:

“has cost effectively refreshed the look and design of its site and included map-based tools to make finding local services easier.”

The new Lincolnshire site, which launched last year, was re-designed by Abacus and is powered by our content management system – Webstructure.NET. Our brief was to help the council in its goal of channel-shifting customers towards the web, and the success of this has been recognised with the award.

This was achieved in a number of ways which include an improved navigation and search against a backdrop of a radical new design, our SPIN technology which allows the council to update and introduce content to the site much quicker and the faceted search powered by Lucene SOLR.

Have a look at our case study to find out more about our work for Lincolnshire County Council.

Congratulations also go to Lincs to the Past who were commended for the IT Project Innovation Award – fingers crossed for a win next year.

The Lincolnshire County Council site has been shortlisted for the Government Website of the Year, which is awarded to the Government website project that can demonstrate a high degree of innovation and usability in providing its website service to citizens and/or local authorities and businesses.

The Lincs to the Past website has been shortlisted for the IT Project Innovation Award, which is awarded to the Local Authority or Central Government Department that has delivered an IT project within budget and to specification, that furthers the progress of e-government and improves communication channels between government and the citizen.

These nominations follow the success of the Connections 4 Young People site (designed and built by Abacus for LCC), which won the Good Communication Award for IT Project Innovation in 2009.

We feel this recognition demonstrates the strength of our work with Lincolnshire County Council, who have been an innovative client.

The award will be held in Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium on 14th July 2011.

Awards site – http://www.communicator.gcawards.co.uk/

Have a look at our recent white papers and cost cutting calculator to see just how much councils could save by channel shifting to the web. Of course many factors play a part in the success of a site, navigation, layout, design, content etc; but without ‘search’ to reduce the clicks necessary to get to the point of need, users may not be able to find any of this.

Before Lincolnshire re-launched the site they used to have a separate search for each of their databases. The new site using SOLR can search across all of these databases to pull in the results, meaning your site isn’t cluttered with search boxes. Not only that SOLR can filter the results by date and category, give related terms, pull in maps and links to documents, and display all these results in one place.

The Lincolnshire County Council site makes great use of SOLR and its features. SOLR can pull in ‘recommended links’ which are selected by the web managers and displayed in a separate box above the full search results.

Widgets are another feature used by Lincolnshire. An example of a widget in use is on the ‘Discover Libraries’ section; within this section you can search by postcode (which the site will remember once set) to find your nearest library. These features help cut down the amount of clicks needed for the user to find the information they want.

Have a look at the Lincolnshire site to see all of this in action. If you would like to know more about SOLR and ways we can help you meet your cost saving targets please contact us on 0207 766 9810.

The Lincs to the Past site will be aimed at both dedicated researchers and casual browsers, with a timeline of available records going all the way back over 2,000 years. Residents of Lincolnshire will be able to browse through their ancestors’ lives and piece together their family tree.

The site will be easy to use with a timeline to browse through the past and a filtered search powered by SOLR. Searching for items will be quick and easy with records, photographs and actual objects being shown as high quality images.

We are looking forward to the launch of this unique site and if you would like to know more about the technologies driving this solution – Webstructure.NET and SOLR – please contact us on 0207 766 9810

The web team at the council have been following with interest the development of our new product, Webstructure.NET, and has decided to upgrade!

Much of the drive for the new version of Webstructure came from a need to provide a simple way for our clients to customise their websites quickly and efficiently. For example when a county has heavy snow fall and need to update their site with local news and school closures, the new, more flexible system allows them to do this quickly and easily with the ability to embed geo-location maps and local information web services. Of course another decisive factor is the continued support in Webstructure.NET for multi-lingual capabilities.

Webstructure.NET leverages components that have been created for our media sector clients and at the same time maintains the all important compliance with e-government standards which is one of the key attractions of the system for our public sector clients. Lincolnshire County Council recently launched their site on the new platform with great success – the change has been well received by both residents and employees.

As well as the upgrade to Webstructure.NET, Abacus will also be working on a new design for the council focusing on improvements around the information architecture and specifically, site usability, which can be the difference when assessing a successful channel-shifting strategy. This is a really exciting project for both Abacus and Anglesey and we will keep you updated with the progress.

Jody Willis, Head of Design, runs through some key areas on the site.

“Listening to your customers is the best idea” said Peter Barton, Head of Web at Lincolnshire County Council (LCC). The council’s web team and the designers at Abacus took comments and ideas from internal and external consultation and, mixing them with some of their own, produced what one tweet described as “probably the best local government web site in the world”.

Peter Barton went on to say “We’ve received many compliments about our new site and less than a handful of people have commented adversely about the change. That’s very unusual when you make such radical changes to such a well used site”

Abacus worked with LCC to design the new ‘game-changing’ site, incorporating the features wanted by the county and visitors alike.

New features include drop down navigation, improved search, a better and more descriptive A-Z, visitor login for improved access to regularly used information, better use of maps and much more.

For more details on these features see ‘Whats new on the LCC site’.

The web team at LCC are very pleased with the new Webstructure.NET software and what it has enabled them to do.

Jean Trahearn, The Council’s Web Manager said.
“Webstructure.NET is a revolutionary CMS system. It has enabled us the flexibility we need as a local authority to provide a website that is not only eye-catching but functional as well. The wide range of innovative features it provides means the site will be invaluable to us and the people of Lincolnshire.“

This is a key development for Abacus too.

Stephen Cave, Project Director for the LCC relaunch said:
“It’s our first major public sector site on our new Webstructure.NET platform and we are very proud of this achievement. We have completed an intensive R&D programme to meet LCC’s deadline and succeeded in developing a highly flexible and intuitive CMS for the public sector which introduces many of the publishing techniques we have successfully deployed into the private sector”.

For more information about Webstructure.NET read our product overview and features.

A last word from Barton. “Developing a rich and fully functioning web site is a proven, cost-effective method of providing access to the information customers want. Rich, fully functioning and easy to navigate were our objectives. Abacus designers and developers ensured we met those objectives”

For more information about cost savings and our approach to a shared platform for Local Government councils, see our resources section ‘Our focus’ which contains two white papers on the subject of ‘Channel shifting’ and ‘Shared services’; there is also a cost-saving calculator to illustrate how the Webstructure.NET CMS platform helps drive down costs and drives up efficiency and productivity.

To see Peter Barton’s full comments please read New Website – Updated design offers improved website.

We have witnessed the boom and bust cycles of the last two governments and worked tirelessly with our clients to meet their changing needs, and we will continue to do so in light of the austerity measures and public spending cuts being imposed by the new coalition government.

We now see two clear themes emerging – channel shifting and a drive for shared services – so we have produced a number of resources which you can access below, to help you understand the issues and the challenges local governments are now faced with. There are two white papers outlining the key issues using case studies at Lincolnshire County Council to demonstrate practical solutions to meet these objectives.

The cost cutting calculator should provide local government FDs with a quick application to calculate clear savings to be made by investing sensibly in digital services and consolidating your output.

Natasha Kitson, Workforce Development Team Manager, Devon County Council: “We had wanted to use more of the Recruit facilities, particularly work flow, in order to work more efficiently, but were concerned that with several thousand managers to train, this would have been a very time-consuming task, being such a large authority covering a substantial geographical area. However it was clear when we first saw the new user interface in v5 that it would greatly reduce the need for in-depth training as it is more intuitive with additional on-line help facilities. We believed that our managers could be largely self-taught.”

This new Ajax- driven user interface supports the fast and easy devolution of many processes from HR to the relevant department manager. Recruit has the flexible workflow module to enable processes to be undertaken throughout an organisation whilst ensuring that all the necessary checks are made and each step is authorised.  

Devon County Council is currently putting the software through an intensive testing period, with the plan to pilot workflow and enable additional facilities in August. Natasha Kitson and her colleagues are already aware that workflows vary significantly within the different Council Directorates and that this will require time to put in place. However by December 2010, the Council hopes to have Recruit v5 fully implemented for two Directorates: Corporate Resources, Environment, Economy and Culture, and also within the Libraries department of Adult Community Services. 

Natasha Kitson: “With the previous version of Recruit, we simply used it for job advertising. With the arrival of Recruit v 5 we are intending to use it to manage the majority of the recruitment process including advert requests and approvals, advertising, short listing, taking up references, job offers and contracts.”

Devon County Council's Recruitment Services team acts as a not for profit trading unit. In June 2010, they were advertising approximately 250 job vacancies at any one time using Recruit.  Approximately, 50% of these were handled on behalf of external not-for-profit organisations for which Devon County Council handles the recruitment.  It is intended that a full online recruitment service will be offered to external organisations and schools that once established for Devon County Council's own vacancies.

So far, Natasha has only received positive interest and feedback from managers and external customers. Everyone involved so far is excited about the potential savings to be made and is looking forward to coming on board.

London Office

Abacus e-Media
14-16 Regent Street
London
SW1Y 4PH

Tel: +44 (0)20 7766 9810
Fax: +44 (0)20 7766 9811
 
Directions

Portsmouth Office

 
Abacus e-Media
4 Boyd Building
The Admirals
Gunwharf Quays
Portsmouth
PO1 3AG

Tel: +44 (0)23 92 893 600
Fax: +44 (0)23 92 295 9188

Directions

Our Client Support Contact details have not changed:

Tel: +44 (0)845 130 4110

Email: support@abacusemedia.com

 

We look forward to welcoming you to our new offices some time soon.

This annual event - which is supported by SOCITM and e-government bulletin, focused on the latest ways to create easy to use, compelling and engaging web sites.

Abacus e-Media exhibited at this year’s event where we unveiled Webstructure.NET, the new version of our flagship CMS for the public sector.

We also held two round table discussions, one of which was in partnership with Peter Barton from Lincolnshire County Council.

These were the two discussion topics at Abacus’s round table:

Web platforms and content management systems: opportunities to exploit developments from the media sector? Stephen Cave, Director, Abacus e-Media
In addition to working with the public sector, Abacus e-Media is the market leading provider of content management systems to UK business to business publishing companies. These include United Business Media, EMAP, Macmillan and Thomson Reuters. A core theme - particularly at the moment - amongst media owners is how the platform can provide maximum flexibility to allow them to make speedy changes to their websites without incurring development costs. This round table discussion will look at how the public sector can capitalise on and exploit the flexibilities demanded by the media sector, what benefits could be achieved and how these changes can be realised at minimum cost.

Driving down total cost of ownership:  the regional partnership approach
Peter Barton, Head of Web & Information Governance, Lincolnshire County Council/Stephen Cave, Director, Abacus e-Media
Lincolnshire County Council is working with Abacus e-Media on an innovative project which will make the functionality of the Council's main website available to its partners - at greatly reduced cost. The Council's partners will be able to benefit from powerful, flexible web sites which would normally be completely out of the reach of these smaller organisations. This round table discussion, led by Peter Barton who is the driving force behind the project, will look at the issues involved, the hurdles to be overcome and the benefits which can be realised by all parties. Abacus e-Media will discuss the architecture of the solution which is not only capable of driving multiple sites - as required by Lincolnshire - but which can also deliver individually-branded sites for its partners.

The round table discussions were a great success with lively discussions and interesting issues being raised.

Here is Peter Barton’s blog with his thoughts on the event and the talks that were given:
http://uklgweb.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/the-age-of-the-git-citizen/

Also see our pictures from the day:
http://twitpic.com/25hhmr

Thanks again to all those who came, we hope to see you again next year!

This demonstrates that there is clear support for cloud computing solutions across local government as they size up the cost savings achievable by using Recruit to manage the end-to-end recruitment process, in a managed services environment.

If you would like more information about Recruit v5 or to arrange a demonstration, please contact us on info@abacusemedia.com or call 020 7766 9810

The site achieved a 3 star rating with such excellent comments as "Sophisticated, multi-faceted, interactive and user-focused".  Described as "engaging and comprehensive", the web site which was designed by Abacus e-Media and is based on the company's Webstructure content management platform, was also commended for its use of innovative touches such as the "Ask Alex" help avatar, a Twitter feed and podcasts.  The conclusion of the reviewers, who look at design, appearance, functionality and accessibility was that on the whole "it is a superb site."

Not to be outdone, both West Lindsey and North Kesteven District Councils also featured in the survey, achieving 2 star ratings for the sites, also designed and implemented by Abacus e-Media.

Abacus e-Media has been working with the DfT since 2002, and designed the original Webstructure-based intranet five years ago. A core aim for the DfT is to exploit and to modernise their intranet and use the latest technology to offer users interactive features such as blogging, forums, polls and events calendars.

The new Webstructure.NET system, due to go live in spring 2010, will be built using Abacus e-Media’s innovative user interface framework which supports flexible design and allows additional custom components to be quickly and easily ‘plugged’ into the intranet. This approach will enable DfT staff to make significant changes to the intranet whenever they wish, without having to seek assistance from Abacus.

Look out for the release of this innovative new version of Webstructure in Spring 2010

You may have noticed that we have updated our site to use our corporate typeface. We are using Erik Spiekermann’s FF Meta.

The even more eagle-eyed or technically curious of you might have noticed that this is done with HTML, not Flash replacement.

This has been achieved by using the @font-face CSS command, that allows us to specify a web font in the font stack. Just the same as always, but now we don’t have to hope that the end user has the font on their machine. Web fonts can be downloaded and rendered by the browser. But type foundries have not released licensed fonts, like Meta, before. If you put a normal Web Font onto your server as a downloadable file, then anybody can easily re-use it – fine for free fonts – but not OK for licensed fonts.

However, thanks to the folks at TypeKit we can now get around that problem. Type foundries such as FontFont have allowed their fonts to be served through some clever JavaScript that makes it nigh on impossible for the font file to be used on any other, but the licensed site.

So we thought we’d give it a go on our site (so far just the headings and sub-headings) and see how it performs.

If you can’t see it try a shift-refresh, or you may be using a browser that does not support the @font-face, such as Firefox 3.0 or lower or Google Chrome.

Find out more about how TypeKit works.

Recruit, our total recruitment management system, has been implemented by some of the UK’s largest public sector employers, including Derbyshire County Council, Devon County Council, Suffolk County Council and Leicester City Council.

RBT (Rotherham) gave the first presentation. They talked about the approach they took to implement Recruit.  This included automatic login from the intranet, interfaces with their HR system and encouraging online applications.  They now have 97% of applications being made online.

This year’s external speaker was from the UK Border Agency. The presentation and follow up questions covered the Points Based System, Sponsorship and the obligations of employers.

Following lunch Abacus gave the first public demonstration of Recruit v5. The usability improvements and streamlining of the workflow went down very well with everybody. There will also be numerous improvements to the web site, including links to social networking sites, which will make it even easier for job seekers to apply for jobs and get jobs highlighted in different places.

The day finished with an open session for everyone to ask Abacus questions./P>

Recruit v5 is due for offical release in Spring 2010.

For more information please contact info@abacusemedia.com or call 020 7297 5200.

This weekend (22nd Nov 2009) we will be handing over our Regent Street offices to the MooTools developers, who will be hosting a hackathon (Geek talk for developing in a small amount of time). Developers from all over Europe will be attending  and they will be busy working away at MooTools 2.0, the search engine, and the awesome MooShell.

Find out more information about the event. Follow the event live http://twitter.com/mootools

We use MooTools on a lot of our websites. MooTools is a leading JavaScript framework used extensively around the world.

The project was started in November 2008 and went live in March 2009.  Regarded as an important aspect of the Council's overall aim to achieve efficiencies and service improvements through the use of technology, Recruit has resulted in a 20% reduction in the cost of HR and payroll services and substantially reduced paper transactions.

A key requirement for Rotherham was that managers should be able to 'self serve' without needing the HR department to be involved with every single step of the recruitment process and, despite initial resistance, this has been achieved with considerable success.

97% of all applications to the Council are now received online and the Council is saving one week in the recruitment process for all applicants.

 

C4YP, which was re-launched in March after going through an extensive consultation and redevelopment by Abacus e-Media, picked up the award during this month’s ceremony at the Emirates Stadium in London.

Judges comments: "..This is an innovative high impact Website, which directly addresses the type of social issues not normally associated with Council Websites. Focussed on the teenage community, C4YP provides relevant information and services to the young citizens of Lincolnshire in a form and language they understand. The project has created an innovative communication channel which effectively addresses many of the needs and wants of the teenage community..."

C4YP was shortlisted along with four other local authorities in the IT Project Innovation category but scooped the award for its efforts towards effective communication and innovation.

The awards, which have been running for five years, aim to promote and encourage the public sectors efforts towards effective communication with its citizens.

 

www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/election

Building on its reputation for being one of the most innovative County Councils in the country, Lincolnshire CC has launched real-time election web coverage (designed and implemented by Abacus e-Media). The service, which is believed to be the first one of its kind introduced by a council, has already excited considerable interest amongst a number of other organisations. It uses a virtual representation of a council chamber to illustrate the seats which are up for election, provides interactive mapping to allow easy navigation to the districts and candidates and also uses dynamic graphics to analyse the data. Because the system is driven from live data all aspects of the service are always up to the minute.

The service was used for the first time for the elections held in 2005 and more recently on the 4^th June 2009. As the results became known throughout the night LCC Web Team members updated the system thus giving anyone following the elections a real-time view of the votes as they came in. 

Peter Barton, Head of Web & Information Governance at Lincolnshire County Council:  “The system provided by Abacus enables us to capture the results from the election and make them 'visible' on the web site in real time.

“At the same time, we also used Twitter to send the results to subscribers to this service, with a 140 character Tweet telling them who had won the seat in which area.”

The new web site and Twitter feeds are part of Lincolnshire County Council’s ongoing strategy to use the latest technology to improve communications with its residents.

Positive Feedback:

Here is just a selection of the feedback that LCC received on their election service.

From the Council

“A fantastic service last night - a triumph for the web team. I was out at Boston then Skegness and in both locations the technology went down a storm. In Boston, in particular, candidates and others at the Counting Centre were coming up to our officers and interrogating the web information and all were very impressed with the timeliness and presentation. And I was twittering away like a trooper So do pass on my congratulations to all involved. ”
Marcus Coleman, Assistant Chief Executive, Lincolnshire County Council

“Just wanted to express my thanks to you and your team for an excellent election web. It was really first class and everyone at the count was most impressed.”
Cllr Singleton, Lincolnshire County Council

“We are getting some fantastic feedback about the web service you and your team provided last night. Will you please pass on my personal thanks to all your staff that were involved.”
Debbie Cook, Head of Democratic Services, Lincolnshire County Council

“Writing both as a Director and as a citizen, may I thank you all for the excellent election results service on the Web and Twitter.It was noticeable too that it received accolades and references on both Radio Lincolnshire and BBC News 24. It seems to me that this was customer service at its best and you can be proud of your achievements.”
Richard Wills, Executive Director, Lincolnshire County Council

“Last night, I followed @lincsccelect on twitter and have to say that they gave great coverage.  The innovative use of the micro blogging site coupled with extensive and professional website meant that as I was out of the County I could have all the information at my fingertips.  Indeed the coverage was so good, I was relaying the information back to the county! I would like to extend my thanks to the team.”
Cllr Kristan Smith, West Lindsey DC

And from the public

“We were up all night looking at results pages on council web sites across the country and yours was one of the best.”
BBC Election results team

“Election results & presentation - really good part of the website, very clear and informative”
Mr James

“Wonderfully informative presentation of live data. Well done.”
Mr Dalby

“I just wanted to congratulate you on the outstanding county council election maps and graphics on your site tonight. I voted in the Sleaford ward today and actually followed the link from The Daily Telegraph election blog - which mentioned the graphics, saying they put Peter Snow to shame! Clear, concise, and easy to use but at the same time detailed and informative. Excellent job.”
Mr Hough
 
“EXCELLENT election results page you have here! Best one I’ve seen in the country, well done to your web team”
Mr Bembridge 

“Best results website I have yet seen. Congratulations on breaking new ground.”
Julie 

“I have no interest in the Lincolnshire results living, as I do, in Berkshire, but a Daily Telegraph blog writer (Matthew Moore - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/local-elections/5447195/Local-elections-2009-results-live-blog.html) was sufficiently impressed by your local election site to mention it in his blog - which is why I am here. Having seen your site for myself, I can see why he was impressed. What a wonderfully clean, graphic way to present the information. I particularly liked the way you presented the new Council with all the new councillors sitting in their party colours and tagged by ward and councillor name. I also liked the clear presentation of information relating to individual wards on the interactive map. A superb effort by all concerned.”
Mr Murphy 

“Very good and easy to follow. It was good to be able to get up and find my local result immediately. Thank you”
Ms  Richardson

“Election web-site better than the B.B.C VERY GOOD”
Mr Wright 

“Excellent site - must be one of the best CC sites in the country - well done! ( and I’m in Lancashire)”
Mr Smith

“Comments on: Results for the County Council Election 4th June 2009. A great results site, very well laid out.”
Mrs Geddes

“An excellent service. Many thanks to the team who have obviously worked through the night.”
Mr Richardson

“Excellent coverage of local election results. I was particularly impressed with the individual breakdown of votes.”
Mr Angood 

“I was on the web site from 5 am onwards - it was an easy and excellent way of keeping up to date. Well done to all concerned.”
Judith Davids 

The award is given to the Local Authority or Central Government Department that has delivered an IT project that furthers the progress of e-government and which has delivered an improvement in communication channels between the government and the citizen.

In this 11th annual SOCITM survey, Lincolnshire CC was rated as ‘excellent’ for usability, as well as being highlighted as one of the most usable of local authority sites in the country. It was ranked 8th in the listing of shire counties. The Council has again achieved transactional status and has been commended for its use of ‘Plain English’ (utilising the widely recognised Internet Crystal Mark standard) for the textual content of the site. This is the first time that the work of the Council has been recognised in this particular category.

The success and usefulness of the Council’s site to local residents and businesses is endorsed by an excellent repeat visit rate of 74.8% - placing Lincolnshire County Council's web site amongst the highest in the UK.

The SOCITM report also looked at councils’ use of new technology. Lincolnshire CC was ranked 5th overall for its use of Web 2.0 technology which is used, predominantly, to encourage interaction with site visitors and the establishment of like-minded communities.
Another of Abacus e-Media’s clients, West Lindsey District Council, was ranked in the ‘excellent’ category for shire districts and also awarded ‘excellent’ status for the usefulness of its web site content.
Lincolnshire County Council, North Kesteven District Council and West Lindsey District Council were all awarded Transactional status this year.

The challenge for the design team at Abacus was how to improve the usability and overall user experience of what had become a somewhat outdated UI for a product which is widely regarded within the recruitment industry as being technically excellent and feature rich. A key criterion for the redesign was the need for a consistent visual language, and a simpler menu structure.

Abacus e-Media designer, Caroline Mckelvey commented:

“When I first saw Adapt I was completely new to recruitment software and felt overwhelmed by the amount of functionality. This made me the ideal new client test case! My first task was to go through user training so that I could fully understand the needs of the customer and appreciate how they would be using the software on a day-to-day basis.

“Once I fully understood what Adapt could do, I could then begin to develop a user-centric interface. I started by defining a menu structure based around the user’s tasks, and then built on the concept of a home page for each main area with the aim of giving focus to the tasks and allowing functionality to be split into easily manageable and navigable areas.”

The design team at Abacus worked closely with the technical team at Bond – meeting weekly – to ensure that all the ideas for the revised design could be incorporated into Adapt.

The final design has been extremely well received by Bond, their sales team and most importantly their customers. Tim Richards, managing director, Bond International Software:

“The new Adapt user interface is smart, modern, clean and very intuitive. It looks and feels like a website, so the user immediately feels confident exploring the pages as they have a familiar feel to them. Adapt was always a strong product, but now users have a much nicer environment in which to work, which in turn ensures that they use the full capabilities of the system and get the maximum benefit from it.”

About Bond International Software PLC

Abacus is a subsidiary of Bond International Software PLC, the world’s premier provider of staffing software to recruitment consultancies and corporations, with offices in the UK, Australia, Hong Kong, South Africa, the USA and Canada.

The new system went live on 22 August 2008, replacing a limited online service which simply offered candidates the opportunity to download and complete a PDF form from the Borough’s web site.

According to Garrey Blackwood, HR Manager, Front Line Services at Kingston

“Across the Borough, the Council strives to provide excellent services, and we wanted our recruitment services to be at the same high standard. The previous approach, using a PDF form, was often slow and frustrating for candidates, and it offered no back-office management or reporting functionality.”

Although a London-wide procurement initiative amongst local councils had recommended an alternative e-recruitment package, the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames were unconvinced. Garrey Blackwood: “The other product was cumbersome, seemed to be relatively under-developed and had virtually no back-end functionality. Recruit from Abacus, in contrast, had lots of functionality, was flexible and easy to use with a great look and feel, and good customer service”.

Recruit, which is linked to the Borough’s existing HR system, is being used by about six recruitment personnel at Kingston to handle some 250 jobs each year. However, following a period of bedding in and the necessary consulting, the benefits of Recruit could be extended to cover schools’ recruitment which would double the number of vacancies handled.

The Borough believes that it will achieve a number of clear benefits from its investment in Recruit, including increased efficiency, better management and reporting, the opportunity to reduce costs by taking response handling in-house (replacing the current outsourced operation). Garrey Blackwood:

“In addition, we will be able to free up our HR staff from some of the more routine, time-consuming tasks. And finally, I also believe that it will improve our image in the marketplace and potentially attract more candidates to the Borough.”

Connections for young people - redesign and development.

The redesign, undertaken by Abacus e-Media in partnership with the County Council's own web team over the course of the past 12 months, has placed the needs of the user at the forefront by introducing new functionality and improved content, as well as incorporating the many key agendas of Teenage Services including teenage pregnancy, sexual health and providing advice and guidance on careers and education.

Numerous consultations and focus groups took place in order to find out young peoples specific needs and wants and as such their suggestions have been the driving force all the way through the project.

As a result the new site is much more colourful, featuring better navigation designed specifically for the users, the content has also changed to fit in with the navigation, therefore making the site a lot less cluttered, and the ability to play video clips and hold polls has also been added.

Web Officer Michelle Keyte, has been involved in the project from the beginning and is happy with the outcome, she said "It's gone perfectly, from concept to consultation to production. The new site has met every expectation and feedback so far only confirms that."

It is hoped the new site will greatly improve the service offered to its users and extend the reach of information offered.

An invitation to tender for the supply of an e-recruitment solution resulted in several responses, but according to Steve Munn, Head of Human Resources & Organisational Development:

“Only two of the potential suppliers understood exactly what we were looking for. Many of the others tried to sell us a complete HR solution, which was irrelevant given that we already have SAP for this.”

The contract was awarded to Abacus e-Media based on the company’s proposed speed of implementation, pricing and their track record in the supply of recruitment solutions to local government.

The e-recruitment system for Oxfordshire County Council was a core element in the Council’s move to a shared services centre for all HR and support services. This had originally been put in place in 2006 with a major aim being the centralised recruitment of all the Council’s 20,000 staff. Since 2006, prior to the implementation of Recruit, the Council had used an in-house developed system which allowed candidates to apply online but had limited back office and reporting functionality.

Oxfordshire County Council’s Recruit system went live in October 2007, and since then the number of online applications received has grown steadily to 86% in March 2008. About eight hundred users, including Council managers and schools, are able to access the system to keep track of the management of their vacancies and candidates.

Oxfordshire County Council now uses Recruit to manage the entire recruitment process from online advertising, applications, production and dispatch of letters, and shortlisting, right through to the production of contracts and management reporting. Since December 2007, the system has been used to manage 993 jobs.

Grainne Darnton, Recruitment Manager, Oxfordshire County Council:

“Recruit has contributed significantly towards streamlining our recruitment workflow. We now have significantly fewer people doing the same amount of recruitment work than before the installation of Recruit.

“Instead of having to distribute hard copies of applications to managers, they are now able to view the entire process online and better understand the stages we have to go through. In addition, we are able to use the data that applicants submit online for other purposes, such as mail merging, which saves time and duplication of effort.

“We have found Recruit to be a very cost effective recruitment management solution, which has also been easy to understand and easy to use.”

Partnership with 4DS (part of Channel 4) to market, sell and manage the advertising

The Council has appointed 4DS, Channel 4’s in-house specialist digital advertising company, to handle all aspects of its web-based advertising opportunities, including marketing and selling space, advertisement management and collection of the resultant revenue.

The Council’s recently launched new web site has been specifically designed by specialist local government web development agency, Abacus e-Media, to support a wide range of different types of online advertising, including MPU (mid page unit; typically an advertisement which sits within a news story), skyscrapers, banners and leader boards.

Peter Woodfine, Business Development Manager of Channel 4’s 4DS company, said: “Our contract with Lincolnshire is just the first step in what we believe could be a massive new medium for local and national organisations to advertise their products and services. Our initial research suggests that this untapped market has the potential to deliver significant national coverage. Lincolnshire will provide us with a test bed to assess the level of interest in advertising on local government sites, but initial reaction has been good.”

Although there has been considerable debate, most notably on a number of public sector online forums, about the rights and wrongs of advertising on council sites, Peter Barton, Head of Web and Information Services at Lincolnshire County Council, has no reservations:

“The argument that the public sector should not be seen to have commercial advertising on its web sites doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. We already carry advertising in our monthly newspaper. A council web site is no different and the revenue potential is enormous. For example, at Lincolnshire we receive over one million page views a month. When one considers there are nearly 470 local authorities throughout the country, the size of the audience becomes very attractive from an advertising point of view. Quite simply, it’s a no brainer.”

Lincolnshire County Council, in common with other local authorities, is seeking to reduce its annual costs. Introducing advertising onto the web site could, over time, provide a significant source of revenue for the County Council.

The site is already attracting national and world brands through Channel 4. A separate contract is being negotiated to offer this service to local organisations who wish to promote their products and services.

On the question of ensuring that the Council’s own brand and messages are not compromised, Peter Barton and his team are well prepared: “We have put in place a clearly defined acceptable use policy which details the procedures for controlling the content. Working with Abacus e-Media we have also been very careful to ensure our own branding is not diluted by the inclusion of advertising material, and there will be no degradation in the performance of the site caused by graphical format ads.”

LCC Connects, which is based on Abacus e-Media’s Webstructure product, won joint first place for its availability, and fourth for the speed of its web page downloads, when compared to other county council websites. Against the FTSE 100 sites, it ranked joint first again for availability, and second for speed.

The report was compiled by Site Confidence, the UK’s largest website and performance monitoring company.

The Good Communication Awards aim to promote and encourage the public sector’s efforts towards effective communication with its citizens and its workforce. On Thursday June 26th at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, London, the four award categories, Print, Public Relations, IT/E-Government and Telecoms, recognised the individuals and organisations that have demonstrated effectiveness and innovation.

Main awards are included for Local Authority of the Year, Strategic Communications Campaign, Local Government Communicator of the Year and Central Government Communicator of the Year.

Select Lincolnshire (www.selectlincolnshire.com) is part of a central government drive to ensure that UK farming has a sustainable future.  The new site, showcases the range and quality of Lincolnshire produce, and is a core project of the Lincolnshire Forum for Agriculture and Horticulture which brings together public and private sector partners, including the National Farmers Union.

Lincolnshire is the heartland of the UK's farming industry.   It is the largest potato, wheat, poultry and cereal producer in the country, and is responsible for growing 38% of all UK flower bulbs.

The new site features news, events, a meet the producers section and powerful search facilities.

The second site, www.lincsfoodandfarming.org.uk has also been created for the Lincolnshire Forum for Agriculture and Horticulture, and is designed to help visitors find out what is happening within the food and farming sectors in the county.  Local producers are encouraged to enter their details into the database to help consumers in the county to source local produce.