Tuesday 6 January 2009
The Big Oxford Computer Co. Ltd.
The Trading Standards Institute (TSI) is the leading professional body representing Trading Standards professionals in the UK and overseas - in local authorities, the business and consumer sectors and in central government.
http://www.tsi.org.uk/
BOCC developed the TSI's flagship product 'TS Interlink' - a secure news, document and mail system extranet for trading standards officers (TSO's) - in 2003. TSOs view up to date and recently issued documents by the TSI, including RAPEX, Safety Notices and Product Recalls. The system also includes collaboration tools like TS Mail and syndication services like TS Broadcast.
TSI wanted to provide enhanced services to members' using web services to syndicate safety alerts to member and local authority websites.
BOCC created the web services connector to allow secure, authenticated syndication of consumer product recalls and safety warnings directly to local authority websites.
Three ways of syndicating the TSI information were developed:
TSI has estimated that the 200-plus councils with responsibility for trading standards would need an extra 68,000 officer hours per year if they had to create and upload all the content needed individually.
Computer Weekly highlighted the Trading Standards Institute content syndication service for safety alerts as a 'Smart Project'.
The system utilises: