Oxford City One Site

The Oxford City Council (OCC) website has been updated to merge its existing website, staff intranet and extranets. This melding of the data is part of the council's plans to streamline its services and avoid duplication.

BOCC worked with OCC to develop a plan for the project, including:

• Design
• Restructuring
• Development
• Content migration
• Configuration management

The public website was used as the basis for the changes. Additional extranet and staff-only functions and data had to be migrated to the website and security modified to suit the new arrangements and integration with Active Directory.

The site changeover was achieved with minimal downtime, through the use of BOCC's disaster recovery (DR) expertise and facilities.

Website and databases hosted by BOCC.

December 2006

Localisation

BOCC has extended the existing community area functionality on Oxford City Council's (OCC) website. Website users can now filter content based on the local area.

Website users can search by map or postcode to find their local area committee and specially created web pages detailing:

• Local service information
• Ward and councillor details
• Committee meetings
• Area details

with a facility to quickly return to the area pages. This is helping to raise the profile of area committees to businesses and residents.

Website and databases hosted by BOCC.

December 2006

Word Processor to Web

Administrators upload Microsoft Word documents to the Union Learn website, which are converted to web pages and PDFs on the fly. Following the successful design and development of the website, the source templates were updated to reflect the new organisation's branding and BOCC has updated the conversion utility to obtain a best match for the generated web pages.

The converter uses a module developed by BOCC to create:

• single web page, with or without contents list
• paginated web pages
• Adobe portable document format (PDF) version

The method is also used on the Trades Union Congress (TUC), Shelter and Oxford City Council, NHS Employers websites and NCH Intranet, all developed by BOCC.

December 2006

User-Centric Design

BOCC worked with A2 Housing Group to develop a new design for their corporate website. The design is now approved and is to be implemented using a new content management system.

A2 Housing Group was formed in February 2005 as a result of a merger between Airways Housing Group and Apex Housing Group creating one of the largest Housing Groups in the South East. A2 has a growing stock of over 14,000 homes including; affordable rent, New Build HomeBuy (shared ownership), key worker housing, student accommodation, sheltered and supported housing, build for sale, private rented and other commercial interests.

At the time of the merger, A2 Housing Group created a new website to reflect the organisation, but wanted to progress this with a more modern, user-friendly design and to also make the website more interactive.

BOCC worked with A2 Housing Group to develop a site structure, functional specification and then a page design, to include all the important usability and accessibility considerations which contemporary websites should treat as standard.

BOCC is now working with A2 Housing Group to implement the new design and structure.

November 2006