Digital design & build

Overview

Getting local councillors to share best practice can only raise standards and improve our local government services. The current practice of emailing documents around serves only to feed information on a push basis rather than creating knowledge libraries and catalogues that others can select, comment and learn from.

London Councils, the umbrella group of the 33 London boroughs took the lead in investing in a cross London initiative to improve communication amongst councillors. Providing forums, workspaces, calendar functions and profiling tools the London Councils’ community intranet website takes the lead in sharing and disseminating.

Challenge

Develop a community web space that provides easy access to shared information in order to improve cross council knowledge and improve services for Londoners.

What we did

• Show a live community

  The community is its members. Clearly explaining why people should participate and make use of the community was naturally a priority. The website itself was also a tool for councillors allowing them to upload and share documents, best practice approaches and upcoming events.

• Encouraging councillors to participate

  Providing the tools is not enough. We built in ‘social-proof’ throughout the site to show site users how many people were part of the communities, participating in the forums and debates. This ‘social proof’ shows the living and vibrant nature of the community. Additionally we created the concept of a revolving virtual mayor – a monthly-rotating individual from each of the London councils who promotes and moderates participation.

• An appropriate technical solution

  The solution is built in Drupal – an open source platform that allows London Councils to build on the developed framework solution as new features are required over the coming months.

Value

"Panlogic worked with us in developing a London Councillor web space which was attractive, easy to use and functional. Their experience and knowledge of social media was essential in building tools and technical solutions that met our objectives and gave us new ideas. The delivery deadlines were tight but their rigorous project management and attention to detail has delivered a site that is now being used across the London boroughs. We would certainly be happy to work with them again"Project Manager
London Councils

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