Improving our digital doorstep

We’ve launched a new version of our bcpcouncil.gov.uk signposting website. This is a big step forwards in our work towards the creation of a single website for BCP Council.

The newly launched site enables us to move the website content that we’ve co-designed with services and citizens into a single space.

As part of our commitment to improving the digital experience of our citizens, the site contains additional features. These include:

• a content navigation, which has been co-designed with our citizens and based on best practice examples from other councils
• a search facility, which lets our site visitors search service content, across our signposting and preceding council websites

Newly aligned content, which has gone through our co-design, harmonisation, process and been published to the site includes:

• About the council
• Councillors, committees and elections
• Jobs and apprenticeships
• Contact us

This piece of work spanned the whole project team. It’s drawn on their existing digital knowledge but also given them the chance to develop new skills.

The co-design team worked with citizens and colleagues, from other councils, to develop a navigation structure, known as an information architecture (IA). This new IA uses language our citizens can relate to. We know this because we developed it with you by calling on our digital engagement group to get involved.

The content designers have been harmonising content with services, ready for launch day. They’ve completed detailed testing with our development team to ensure the site’s look, feel and functionality are right for you.

I’ve also had the opportunity to learn alongside the team. Taking part in the content co-design work, developing user stories and personas. I even dusted off my content management system login details to help get content published.

Progress was tracked using a digital roadmap plan, which we created using Microsoft Planner. Tasks were identified, assigned and moved through phases from backlog (work to be done) to completed. Drawing inspiration from our Government Digital Services ‘Agile for teams’ training, we used the roadmap much like a Kanban board.

So, what’s next?

Well, we still have a lot of work to do and we’ll be calling on colleagues and our citizens to help us.

With the refreshed site launched, our focus is fixed on service content redesign. Our content designers will continue harmonising the content from our preceding sites. Once the lead for each service has created a single version of that area’s content, it will be fact checked by subject matter experts within the service. Then it’s over to our co-design team to set activities for our digital engagement group to review it.

As content is approved and published to bcpcouncil.gov.uk, we’ll be removing it from the preceding council sites. So, as the new site grows, the old sites will shrink, until we only have one website.

Help us shape our digital space

What do you think of the refreshed bcpcouncil.gov.uk? Share your thoughts in our comments section.

Once you’ve told us what you think, why not help shape our next phase of digital improvements? You can get involved in the early stages of our redesign work by joining our digital engagement group. Given current social distancing efforts, this is the best way we can involve you with our project work, at the moment.

We’re listening and we want to hear from all areas of our community about what we can do to make our website work for you.

We’ll be setting activities and asking questions over the coming months, so join today.