Why pose these questions? Your ICT function may deliver 99.9% service availability and deliver projects on time and on budget, but this is no longer enough. Unlocking the value of information by making it available to citizens, businesses, partners and employees just when they want it, in the format that they need it, and only what they need and no more, requires inspiration, imagination and innovation.

Current hot topics, such as partnership working, collaboration, localism, transparency and the ‘Big Society’ (however ill-defined), all imply information sharing. Little wonder that CIOs are thinking about data interchange standards, security and authentication, and secure channels such as the public service network. However, some things are much
more important than the technology.

Every council website has to carry an immense amount of information - everything from when the bins are emptied at a particular address to whether an elderly relative might be eligible for social care. For a customer, finding their way around a council website can be confusing - and eventually, they give up and phone or contact the council by other means. For the council that's a failure - the website has failed to deliver what it is meant to deliver.

We have the skills and the tools to help you achieve a website that delivers for your council - that is a website that gives real value in terms of the services it delivers to your customers and the savings it makes for the council. We cover all that is needed, summarised below:

For many councils, integrating the website with the back-office systems can be seen as complicated and expensive - in some cases giving rise to estimated costs of £1 million of more - but it doesn't need to be complicated or expensive.

For a step by step guide, click on the diagram to see more detail

Creating an effective website for your council is not easy - and certainly isn't something you can leave to the IT service, or to corporate communications section to deliver for you. Creating a website that delivers real value to the organisation, and real savings in cost takes a corporate effort and requires the following essential elements:

The coalition government believes transparency will reduce public sector expenditure and expose waste. Publishing public data is not new. The EU envisaged a digital economy built by re-using public sector data, and the previous government’s Power of Information report championed open data. Through access to data on the web, citizens are seizing control. How should managers respond?

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) uses Enterprise Architecture Principles as a key component of their IS/ICT strategy.

Managing and assuring information is becoming an increasingly critical part of business continuity. Does the Council of the Future focus pur planning not so much on the protection of the physical asset as the protection of the information asset?