CLG is funding 20 local authorities in England to evaluate innovative approaches to informing their citizens on local services, performance and civic opportunities. A summary of these projects is listed below, or follow the links in the menu on the left to find out more about the projects and how they were chosen.
January 2010: Download a report on the current status of an evaluation of projects piloting new approaches.
Barnet London Borough Council - Planning Consultation tool
Online consultation tool showing planning application info in more meaningful way. This will map planning applications and allow users to comment on and track permissions, and communicate with other users.
Birmingham City Council - Open City
‘Open City Plan’ online Community of Practice for production of new digital resources, to enable direct contribution by citizens into service planning and delivery. It will encourage 3rd sector to use social media tools to link to existing LSP datasets for the benefit of citizens. Will provide resources and mentoring, and produce at least 2 demo projects
Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council - Care services online tool
An online tool that will enable vulnerable people to access (either themselves or through a trained advocate) information on a range of care services and to share their experiences of using local services with others. Will include a service directory, service commentary (description and performance data), interactive maps, social network, blogs and personal profile.
Cambridgeshire County Council - Pinpoint project
Development of one stop shop website with specialist information from third sector organisations for use by parents and carers of disabled children, and a planning, monitoring and evaluation tool for those commissioning services for such families
Chiltern District Council - Dynamic maps
Joint two-tier project to upgrade existing map-based information from councils and other local organisations, by embedding dynamic map content directly into service-specific websites to make it easier to use and manipulate, including through subscription to alerts. The project will explore issues around reuse of map-based information, and learning will be made available to other LAs as a “recipe book” and tools / plug-ins, where licensing allows
Gateshead Metropolitan Borough Council - "It's Your Gateshead"
"It’s Your Gateshead" project will provide a single access point for information on local services, performance data and how to engage. Key elements will be:
Gloucestershire County Council - Community notice board
Community Notice Board for 18 LA areas to bring together detailed neighbourhood intelligence from the LSP’s successful local information system, with information from LSP Partners, partner blogs and online survey facilities – supported by paper-based versions of notice boards
Kent County Council - Pic & Mix project
Enabling LA information to be mashed by citizens and others, supported by online training, work with citizens to encourage use and with 3rd sector to encourage development of tools. Also Propose to work with local organisations to help them use the same platform to allow their own data to be reused
Lancashire County Council - supporting casualties of the recession
Find Your Way is a multi level/media One Stop shop for citizens suffering from the downturn – combining data monitoring of recession impacts with mosaic profiling to target the work of a district-focused Advice Service Provider Network and tailor information to specific groups, and to coordinate activity of partners.
Leeds City Council - Adult social care Infostore
Conversion of existing Adult Social Care InfoStore site for older and disabled people to web 2.0, allowing site managers to enter and manage their own info, enabling Geo tagging and citizen input, and allowing data feeds from other providers / reuse of data by others
Leicestershire County Council - Visualisation project
Making use of research information visualisation, geovisualisation and visual analytics to develop highly interactive graphics which make use of the masses of available data, allowing citizens to explore large national and local datasets and develop their own insights and ideas. This can be applied to areas such as interpretation of consultation results or to engagement activities such as participatory budgeting. Pilot will focus on four examples – two of interpreting survey results, two of community budget consultations
Lichfield District Council - local consultation hub
Development of hub which brings together all local online consultations with petitions and forums, plus new engagement tools such as “Shape It” – which will allow citizens to suggest ideas for improvement to be voted on by others, and “Report it” – links to council’s CRM system to allow residents to report issues and receive updates
Liverpool City Council - "My Neighbourhood" citizen portal
Development of a Citizens’ portal (“My Neighbourhood”) for service requests, neighbourhood problem reporting, request tracking/automatic updates and providing information on reported incidents and performance against SLAs via interactive ‘neighbourhood dashboard’
Norfolk County Council - Community Mash-ups
Developing both technology and approach for 5 bespoke web 2.0 community mash up websites capturing live local information and discussions from public / 3rd sector websites, blogs and social media sites – as a basis for on- and off-line dialogue on local issues. Project will also develop “widgets” for use by other individuals and groups to extend the sites’ reach.
Redbridge London Borough Council - MyNeighbourhood
Development of an interactive, ultralocal communications network through the "MyNeighbourhood" application. Will enable citizens to define their own neighbourhood through selection from a list of neighbourhoods, by postcodes or by self-defining their locality. Users will also be able to determine what type of special interest information will be provided. They will also receive email alerts to changes in services and have report back facilities to tell the council how they are doing.
Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council - Citizen data vault
Secure citizen portal enabling them to download information from an LSP data-hub. Citizens will be able to download their service/claimant histories and eliminate errors across delivery units, change details and consent to data sharing between LSP partners to improve joint service delivery. They would also be able to access performance information relating to the services they receive and information on services they might need, based on their profile. Citizens could also be notified of potentially useful services and apply for them via the portal.
South Lakeland District Council - dynamic geotagged information
Project to extend functionality of their new Information Architecture system which dynamically creates up-to-date performance information from other systems, to:
Suffolk County Council - resources for young carers
A support resource for young family carers bringing together information from a range of providers and support agencies (Suffolk CC, NHS, Suffolk Family Carers, Age concern, MIND) and enabling direct lines of communication between these organisations and the young carers through IT/mobile technologies and other non IT methods.
Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council - interactive housing map
An interactive community map providing information to enable people on the housing needs register to make informed decisions on where to live e.g. bus routes, schools, location of shops, choice based letting vacancies, the level of demand for property types and localities. There will also be a user feedback capability and ability for citizens and community groups to add information.
Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council - "Getting Involved" interactive database
"Getting Involved" Interactive database hub will help people access opportunities to engage or participate locally and allow them to register interest online or contact named individuals. It will match citizens to LSP opportunities such as resident groups, forums, starting a Homewatch scheme, becoming a school governor (currently over 100 listed and growing)