Edinburgh invests £210,000 in new 'super-site'

"This will be a major step forward for the council and those that use our website," said Andrew Unsworth, Edinburgh's head of e-government.

 

Local government IT leadership group The Society for IT Management (Socitm) has recently called for councils to defend their website budgets as the best way to meet expected austerity budgets but preserve services – and it's advice the Scottish capital seems to have taken. 

 

It has invested some £210,000 to create the new website is justified as it will facilitate "significantly lower" annual costs for both IT infrastructure (software licences, support and hosting), help streamline organisation of its other sites – possibly as many as 200 – plus provide much easier ways for users to make payments, request information and ask for help.

 

“We see the website as crucial in improving our customer services and we intend to achieve additional savings by encouraging contact from our customers via the web instead of mail, telephone or face to face,” Unsworth promised.

 

Consolidation of sites will recoup £19,000 straight away with as much as five times that possible per annum in addition going forward.

 

Edinburgh will use software from supplier Jadu to run the new super-site, which it says has clearer design and navigation, easier and faster access to the most popular tasks and improved site search options for the public.