We are proud people/geeks/nerds here in IT Development and would like to share with the world what we actually do on a day to day basis, as Chris Jones stated in a previous post (why bother blogging):
"We’re trying to expose the brilliant work that our IT development teams do, previously shrouded in mystery like some military Black Ops team."
It's been nearly 3 months since Project WIP launched and we have blogged about open source, site releases and accessibility. But you may be wondering about the actual products we've been busy conceiving, designing and building.
Well to put your minds at rest I will give you a little taster of some of the products that the IT Development teams have made in-house; taking into account all those other things that we have been banging on about.
Shropshire Newsroom
The newsroom was created to separate news from the website and provide a ‘one stop’ shop for all news. It is powered by WordPress and links into Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
Since the newsroom went live back in March we have had over 9,900 visits, over 39,000 page views and over 7,800 unique visitors. With good old Twitter sending over 5% of visitors our way.
Geoff Coleman; Birmingham Journalist had this to say about it:
"@shropcouncil Just had a look at your newsroom-great stuff."
Waste Collection Finder
This service allows our customers to look up when their bin days are. It uses data from the national land and property gazetteer (NLPG) and our waste supplier Veolia’s collection schedules.
On average the Waste Collection Finder recieves 60 pageviews a day however, on Wednesday 27th April 2012 before the bank holiday we had over 1350 page views and on Thursday 28th April 2011 we had over 1200 page views.
Since the launch we have had nearly 2000 calendar searches performed (excluding staff).
Martin Taylor-Smith, Shropshire Council cabinet member for Service Transformation and Organisational Development, said:
“The online waste collection day finder demonstrates our commitment to using IT to deliver essential public services more cost-effectively and intelligently. I‘d like to congratulate the in-house web development team who have done a fantastic job on this and encourage the public to use the new collection day finder.”
Project WIP
Of course our beloved Project WIP website.
The aim is to
- Engage with our customers
- Offer ways for our customers to submit feedback, share ideas and to get involved with the project
- Document our progress and share our ideas and findings throughout the multitude of projects that contribute to our website
- Promote the work of the many project teams involved in our website
Project WIP was designed and built by Shropshire Council ICT Development Services. It is maintained by a group of people who work on Shropshire.gov.uk in varying roles.
From the 1st March 2011 we have had over 900 visits over 2900 page views and over 500 unique visitors.
We have over 150 followers on Twitter and we have had plenty of positive and useful feedback (Thanks to everyone so far!).
Paul Annett (@Nicepaul) from Alpha Gov says:
"The clean, modern, uncluttered layout of http://shropshire.gov.uk/ should be an example to all local government websites."
@AndyWoodall says:
"Got to compliment your web team, your site is very clear, uncluttered and easy to read, other authorities could learn from it!"
@tomskitomski says:
Loving @ProjectWIP , specially the autocompletegoodness on shropshire.gov.uk Simple win. http://tinyurl.com/6ybdxsn
New Projects
Connecting Shropshire
We know how frustrating it can be to have a slow or non-existent internet connection, so we are looking at ways we can work with our communities, businesses and internet service providers to get Shropshire connected. To help the campaign we are trying to gain interest through twitter and facebook to support the rural broadband project.
Coming Soon
Online Bus Timetables
We are currently working on a system to simplify the way you find bus time within Shropshire online.
Events Portal
Have you ever wondered "What shall we do this weekend?". Well with the help of our events portal we hope that you will be able to find a list of events that are happening all over Shropshire from festivals to book reading clubs. Watch this space!