Rother District Council is one of five district and borough councils within the County of East Sussex. The District covers some 200 square miles. With the exception of Bexhill and the historic towns of Battle and Rye, the area is mainly rural and covers from Ticehurst through Bodiam and Northiam to reach the English Channel at Rye and Camber.
Rother District Council's website was designed to serve the community of Rother, and to also provide information to those who reside outside the District.
Keeping councillors up-to-date
The Council was producing and printing a magazine for councillors to update them on important news, meetings, training courses and parish events. The magazine had become too large, unwieldy and was proving extremely costly to produce a printed version each month. A solution was needed to save officer time and money.
A digital solution
It was decided that using the efficiencies presented by digital technology could enable the Council to create an online magazine (also known as an e-Zine) as the perfect solution. The Council looked at existing suppliers in that market and also approached their web partner, GOSS.
Daniel Collins, Senior Communications Officer, Rother District Council continues.
"We believed GOSS, even though the solution wasn't in their range, would be capable of producing a solution to match our need and our existing relationship would offer us flexibility and the best possible price."
"The new e-Zine GOSS created for the council looks professional. It is easy to create new editions and content is shared as the e-Zine runs on the existing Web Content Management solution GOSS iCM (intelligent Content Management). This also means that there was no need for re-training, additional contracts or hosting which saved more time and money."
Significant savings
Since the e-Zine went live in October 2010 (Rother District Council e-Zine) , the Council has been able to make substantial savings, including direct cost savings, time savings and environmental savings and the outcome has resulted in strong up-take from the target group of councillors.
The GOSS e-Zine solution saves the Council nearly £8,000 per year on printing plus officer time each month, totaling £10,000. In addition 12,000 sheets of paper per month have been saved. The response to the new online magazine has been strong, with over 400 people reading it on a regular basis.
And the savings will continue
As Rother District Council made a decision to deploy the GOSS e-Zine they can now create magazines for other target audiences with very minimal costs, and save yet more time and money.
Collins continues, "We plan to use the new format to roll out our other main internal publication for officers at the Council, such has been the success of the councillor's publication. This will make further efficiency, time, cost and environmental savings."
Robert McCarthy, CEO GOSS, adds, "At GOSS, we work hard with our clients to develop useful and practical tools, which will benefit their business whilst delivering an effective return on investment. Our close relationship with Rother District Council enabled us to develop a cost efficient solution to suit their needs."
