Dorsetforyou.com

AUDIENCE & COMMUNITY Solution - to provide the county's tourists and 390,000 citizens with an effective central point of access to accessible local government information and services.

The Dorset For You partnership was created because research has shown that people are often unsure which tier of local government (county, district, borough, town or parish) provides which service.  This means they often have to visit several different websites to find the information they need, which can be a lengthy and confusing process.

Issues with the Dorset County Council website:

• Editors had too much opportunity to change the design and layout, leading to branding and design consistency issues
• Lack of approval processes
• Difficulties in managing the content
• Lack of ability to create global changes

Client Requirements

The ultimate vision of the partnership is to provide access to our services and information through a variety of channels, to give people who live and work in Dorset greater choices so that they will be able to contact us in ways they find convenient, depending on their lifestyle, location and needs. The aim was to:

• Provide improved search facilities throughout the sites
• Ensure that Government guidelines were met
• Provide a more interactive method for the public to access the services they require online
• Allow contributors from across each Council to supply information directly to the sites speeding up information flow, cutting costs and placing the ownership of the site content into the hands of the relevant people
• Provide enough access to the website to supply content, yet be restricted enough to ensure the design and content guidelines are followed

By implementing GOSS content management in partnership with Software AG, Dorset councils were provided with:

• An effective, interactive and informative website providing timely and comprehensive information to its target audience
• Implementation of a CMS allowing an unlimited number of appropriate staff and other contributors to easily create and maintain content throughout the website
• A scalable and flexible site, providing an open framework for future development
• A website which offers rapid tangible cost benefits by automating, processing and re-purposing information
• A website which will assist all councils to easily achieve their IEG targets, meet all Government guidelines and act as a leading example of electronic service delivery
• A website which will draw a wider audience by ensuring that information is up-to-date, informative and personalised

Please download the case study on the right hand side of this page.