CMS Case Study - West Oxfordshire District Council

Overview

West Oxfordshire is a predominantly rural district council covering 714 km² with a population of 96,000. The district is spread across a large number of relatively small settlements, totalling 83 parishes.

http://www.westoxon.gov.uk/

Objectives 

BOCC has been working with the Council since 2002, in partnership with their ICT team to continue to develop, build and upgrade the range of online services provided via their website. BOCC was originally commissioned to redevelop and redesign the existing website to enhance the range of online services that could be provided. This required integration with a number of existing back-office and third-party systems and the provision of a new content management system (CMS).

Solution

BOCC worked with the ICT team to develop the new website presence and bring a number of web services online for the Council. BOCC produced and created the visual design, structure and functional modules for the Councils' website. BOCC attended a number of 'surgery' consultancy meetings to discuss ideas and formulise a solution for their needs. The technical specification document was then produced, outlining all of the areas for development, which was approved by the Council.

Enhancements and new modules have been continually added to the CMS. Features of the website now include:

• Site content is updated using the BOCC CMS;
• The website was visually redesigned and developed to ensure that it meets with double-A conformance for the W3C web accessibility initiative (WAI);
• My West Oxfordshire - a dynamic, geographical information system (GIS) driven local information system that it integrated with CadCorp Geonosis GIS software;
• Online e-Forms integrating with existing back-office systems and services - including data replication into WODC's customer relationship management (CRM) system and passes the user seamlessly through to the online payments system where appropriate;
• A-Z of Services search and browse that is integrated with the existing Cintra web service to provide both WODC and Countywide results;
• Publications library matching the FOI schema;
• FAQs search and browse facility;
• Democracy area to include Council Meeting Diary and Find Your Councillor facilities;
• Web benefits calculator supplied by OvalTech has been set-up and integration of an automatic online calculator for benefits;
• Email alerts facility for users to register their interests against selected pages throughout the website;
• Development of a secure online payments facility integrating with existing back-office financial systems - Anite PARIS. Allows for the payment of a varying number of WODC services, including council tax, business rates and miscellaneous payments.

Technologies

The system utilises:

• Microsoft™ SQL Server 2005
• Adobe® ColdFusion®
• Replication of data, which then integrates with WODC back-office systems
• Secure replication of data to and from internal systems via a virtual private network (VPN)
• Hosting on fully managed dedicated web servers at BOCC
• Provision of Disaster Recovery Facilities
• SSL (Secure Server Certificate)
• Extensible HyperText Markup Language 1.0
• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) 2.0 compliant