Teignbridge - Empowering the Community

Teignbridge District Councils portal is driven by a vision of community owned knowledge and opinion, involving and empowering citizens to take control of the publication and management of their information on the community website. GOSS Enterprise Content Management is helping the Council to transform the vision into reality.

www.teignbridge.info is the portal site for the community, updated by the community, delivering valuable information to local residents and visitors to the Teignbridge, South Devon area. The portal site was set up and developed through the Teignbridge Community Planning Alliance, now known as Teignbridge Strategic Partnership (TSP), a partnership of diverse organisations and agencies with a common over-arching objective - to improve the quality of citizens lives.

TSP includes some of the following organisations:

• Teignmouth Art Society
• East Teignbridge Community Transport
• Police Diversity "Community Awareness"
• Teignbridge Association of Local Councils (TALC)
• Teignbridge District Council as the principal local information and service provider representative

'Realistic and sustainable solutions'

The partnership has produced a Community Strategy for the Teignbridge area, based on local resident's priorities: the partnership states it "will work towards a future which will involve and motivate all citizens, so that Teignbridge will be a vibrant place in the present and will be better for future generations".

One of the main objectives of the Teignbridge.info portal is to deliver better quality services, and to resolve the issues of providing a single effective web presence supporting all the organisations that deliver public services to Teignbridge's 50 towns and parishes.

Working in partnership with GOSS, Teignbridge have developed a realistic and sustainable solution, which promotes the involvement of all individuals and communities, acknowledges and celebrates diversity, and focuses on actions and outcomes rather than words. This includes encouraging people and their communities to help themselves, rather than imposing a top-down solution.

Long-term vision, bespoke solutions

So how have they achieved this? The Teignbridge. Info portal offers not for profit organisations, Parish Councils, clubs, and groups a free web presence within the Teignbridge. Info website, which can be updated easily by each individual organisation. This project is called the Community Web Hosting Project.

The Community Web Hosting projects long-term vision includes the delivery of bespoke information to target both individuals and locations. This is underpinned by Teignbridge's extranet and intranet. According to the district council, this includes:

• Development of a coherent web hosting service with appropriate security provision;
• System design, software procurement/development;
• Content development within partner organisations;
• Support to Towns and Parishes wishing to develop a web presence;
• Support to voluntary sector (organisations) involved in a local web presence.

The Teignbridge Community Portal also provides a greater level of openness, accessibility and accountability than ever before. This includes acknowledging issues that revolve around and celebrate diversity. In essence it belongs to the community and it is constantly updated with the latest information, as well as links to other relevant community and service provider websites.

GOSS: Easy to use, minimal training required

Judith Price, Head of ICT at Teignbridge District council describes the GOSS content management system as being so easy to use that training is accelerated enormously.

"Primarily the content management system itself has allowed people with little or no IT skills to put information on the site very easily"

Speed and reliability are cited as the essence of the system; the editing functionality is quick, allowing selections to be made from the homepage, which in turn can take site visitors directly to the source of the article or piece of content. The system also provides task lists and role specific shortcuts to increase the speed of access. The additional benefits provided by GOSS include:

• Flexible layout
• Easy site access and usability
• Minimal training
• Customisable site with the ability to add designs, logos and styles
• Ability to add text and pictures with ease
• Incorporation of one click menu systems
• The provision of a full search path
• An integrated spell checker
• Content and media formats are contained within one resource library, and so it only takes one alteration to the portal for it to take effect right across the site.

The Teignbridge Community Portal just shows how information can be shared to benefit and empower the community as a whole, while also meeting Government guidelines and statutory obligations.

To contact GOSS for further information or an online demonstration please call +44(0) 1752 517 350 or email sales@gossinteractive.com