Background

Falkirk Council is a unitary authority which provides all local government services for the Falkirk Council area. Covering 112 square miles, it has a population of around 145,000 and whilst its headquarters are located in Falkirk, there are many service points throughout the area. The Council has in the region of 7,000 employees making it one of the largest employers in the area and has a general fund revenue budget of £253 million in 2005/2006.

The Council’s aim is to improve the quality of life for local people by working with all communities, sectors and groups to deliver high quality services which are accessible, accountable, responsive and provide value for money.

The development of a number of web based information systems as part of the realisation of this, led to Socitm being commissioned to prepare a report on the best way forward. It became clear, following their recommendations that the procurement of an appropriate Content Management System would be essential if their business objectives were going to be met.

It was seen that accessibility requirements were likely to become more stringent and that other standards such as Open Scotland Information Age Framework (OSIAF) Guidelines, eGIF and others could also require further significant attention in the future.

After a detailed tender and evaluation process Contensis ECMS, was selected, together with the services of the Contensis professional services team to work in partnership with the Falkirk team to ensure a successful implementation.

A partnership approach

As if to highlight the value both of our organisations placed upon this partnership approach, the project initiation meeting took place at the prestigious Falkirk Stadium complex, a joint venture partnership between Falkirk Football Club and Falkirk council.

Three key projects were identified:

• eFalkirk - the Community Portal
• iFalkirk - Falkirk Council's website
• Falkirk Council’s Intranet site

Since the key tangible aspect that bound these projects together was the eFalkirk Community Portal, it was decided that initial work would focus on this and a clear project plan was developed with appropriate delivery milestones.

Search beyond the site

As the project progressed, the Falkirk team identified that they were also looking to implement a sophisticated search solution to fulfil their need for eFalkirk to be a single point of access for information and services throughout the Falkirk Council area. The Contensis Enterprise Search Platform (ESP) was compared to other leading enterprise search solutions and selected since it delivered their requirements precisely, within the most cost-effective licensing model.

This search facility now represents the only place on the internet where Falkirk-specific information can be searched for. The inbuilt search spider gathers results not only from the Contensis-driven community portal but also Forth Valley NHS, Scottish Enterprise, Central Scotland Police etc., etc.

How this works in practise is well illustrated by the example of a mother who might for instance search under the keyword ‘baby’ on the portal and receive intelligent results from the local NHS Trust on maternity and the council itself on benefits.

For more please look at: Contensis ESP Overview|

What's next?

The portal implementation project built an excellent working partnership between our two organisations with launch being both on time and on budget. This has led to our ongoing involvement, with our professional services team being engaged to deliver ‘look and feel’ as well as other aspects of the new Falkirk Council site. Now that the Falkirk team are up to speed with Contensis they are getting far more heavily involved and have decided to develop completely new content for this in order to deliver an outstanding presence. The new site is on target to go live on schedule, late summer 2006.

Currently we are engaged in the migration of the “My Future in Falkirk” site which is happening ahead of schedule and the Falkirk team have acquired our survey module which allows them to create complex online surveys with great speed and ease. The first survey apparently recouped the module cost in one hit!

For more please take a look at: Contensis survey module