Shropshire shares experience of new website development
Shropshire Council officers have been telling colleagues the secrets of their success when developing new websites and digital systems.
Members of the council’s digital services and innovations team spoke at a national seminar called ‘Building Perfect Council Websites’ hosted by Socitm (Society for IT Management) on Thursday 11 July 2013.
Shropshire Council’s chief executive, Clive Wright, also spoke about how embracing new technology could cut costs and make it easier to redesign services around the needs of the customer instead of being constrained to an old system.
He told delegates to look past the technical details and concentrate on putting the customer first by cutting bureaucratic waste where possible.
Clive said:
“The whole aim of improving our digital systems is to make things easier for the customer. Councils and other large organisations can often fall into the trap of getting caught up in the technology instead of concentrating on how it can improve the lives of their customers, or in a council’s case, its residents.
“One example I highlighted was how Shropshire has vastly improved the speed at which we repair the potholes in our roads by actually cutting out technology. Road crews just find the potholes and fix them now instead of having to go through layers of computer systems.
“It’s about concentrating less on coming up with smarter ways of putting people in queues, and more on actually reducing the queue in the first place.”
Shropshire Council’s digital services and innovations team has been praised across the IT sector for its work developing the council’s new website and digital platforms – a project that has been chronicled by team members at http://shropshire.gov.uk/projectwip/
Councillor Keith Barrow, leader of the council, said:
“We are very proud of the work being done by our digital services and innovations team and it’s testament to the reputation they are building that they are being asked to share their knowledge at events like this.”
