The speed-trap deal, which is worth in excess of £1 million over five years, is part of a wider £27 million contract awarded to Xansa, the outsourcing and technology company, and will see speed-trap providing the on-line analytics and usability requirements for the award-winning Directgov [1], where citizens can access public services all in one place, the Department of Health [2]'s corporate web service and the Department for Education and Skills [3] (DfES).

Commenting upon the announcement Kevin McLean, Acting Chief Information Officer, Technology Group, DfES said:
'The DfES has been using speed-trap on its websites since 2002 and via this contract, speed-trap's technology has been extended to the others. Our aim is to provide cost-effective, high-quality public sector online services so that people can quickly connect with what they need.
Speed-trap's technology is part of this work, as it allows us to measure the quality of service and user experience we are delivering to visitors to our sites'.

Nigel Filby, commercial director for e-government at Xansa said 'we required the best possible analytics facility to include as an integral part of our overall solution in the provision of fully managed web and content management services for the three government units, speed-trap was the only player in town that could meet our stringent criteria - no one else came even close'.

Announcing the business, Bill Brindle, speed-trap's CEO and Chairman, said:
'Modern e-government initiatives only deliver the improvements in services and savings if they are used by the public, and that only happens if the sites are easy to use, effective and fast. By selecting speed-trap to provide a comprehensive monitoring solution, the teams building and running Government websites are armed with accurate and detailed information upon which they can base their development plans and site designs.'

Elaborating, Malcolm Duckett, speed-trap's VP of Marketing said: 'One of the key reasons [they] chose our solutions was that unlike other solutions, such as those based on web server logs or other traditional web tagging methods, our technology can be deployed quickly and simply to track the use of many types of on-line application with a minimum of effort.

Moreover, the unique client-side Dynamic Collection used by our solutions provides more detailed and valuable data which enables those responsible for websites, be they public or private sector, to make informed decisions based upon accurate and meaningful data about the behaviour of their web visitors and their site, i.e. enabling them to recognise and respond to emerging or changing needs or behaviours - the end result being a more effective and intuitive site'.

Related links to this article:
Directgov [4]
Department of Health [5]
Department for Education and Skills [6]
speed-trap [7]

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e-Government National Awards highlights the UK's best.
The winners of the e-Government National Awards 2006 [8] are this year's best of the best. 12 winners an 6 'highly commended' organisations were chosen from from among 89 finalists in 11 categories. The Awards recognise and praise the best strategies, achievements, teams and individuals in UK e-Government.

> The e-Government National Awards winners are listed at this link [9]
> Minister praises vision in Government IT at National Awards [10]

Platinum sponsor is KPMG [11], and also a sponsor are SunGard [12] and O2 [13].

The Awards are supported by the Cabinet Office e-Government Unit [14], the Office of Government Commerce [15], the Society of Information Technology Management (Socitm) [16], and SOLACE (Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers) [17].