The future of public sector information and services on the internet will increasingly be shaped by a handful of major ‘supersites’ combining central and local government services, delegates heard at this month’s Building Perfect Council Websites event (
http://www.headstar-events.com/councilwebsites09/ ).
As well as the main online public service portal Directgov, the business services web portal Businesslink.gov.uk; the National Health Service portal NHS Choices; and the local government arm of Directgov, Local Directgov, will interact in ever more complex ways with individual council websites.
Sharing and re-use of data and alignment of standards will be key to this process, creating greater integration between local authority sites and the national portals, delegates heard.
Jonathon Carr-Brown from the National Health Service’s primary website NHS Choices (
http://www.nhs.uk/ ),
said his site is keen to expand its collaboration with council social services departments and other relevant departments, introducing a “pushing and pulling of data” between the partners.
Sharon Cooper from Directgov – the UK government’s website – said that the site is working on enabling more of its information to be used directly by local government sites, and is integrating links to local service information through its search facility. “Everything about the way the web will develop in future is about local,” Cooper said.
Alasdair Mangham, senior responsible officer for Local Directgov (
http://www.localdirect.gov.uk/ ),
said the service is essentially a database of links which guides users to the relevant page on their local authority’s website. But the application can also be used as a communication tool between councils, he said. “It isn’t just held by central government – you can take advantage of the application and use it in different tiers of local government, enabling the systems to navigate between district authorities and county authorities, or even between neighbouring boroughs”, Mangham said.
The event was co-hosted by E-Government Bulletin publisher Headstar and the Society of IT Management (Socitm). An ‘aggregator’ website containing slideshows, Twitter feeds, bookmarks, Flickr pictures and blogs posts from the conference can be found at:
http://www.pcw09.co.uk/
