Country connections

North Norfolk in the UK is home to 100,000 people living in 200 small, rural communities spread across 373 square miles. Like all councils, North Norfolk District Council was obliged to follow the government’s modernising and best-value agenda. But, as Nick Manthorpe, media officer at North Norfolk District Council reveals, with only three area offices covering seven towns and 121 defined parishes, this was to prove challenging.

In rural north Norfolk, public transport is as patchy and infrequent as one would expect for a large countryside district. Simple things like shopping, socialising or receiving healthcare mean travelling miles and as the number of village post offices, pubs and garages – let alone those essential services like doctors’ surgeries or police stations – continue to dwindle, the issue of remoteness becomes an ever-greater problem.

Against this backdrop, like all councils, North Norfolk District Council (NNDC) had to follow the direction of the government’s modernising and best-value agenda, at the heart of which lay an emphasis on providing local authority services in a customer-focused way. However, with only three area offices, including our headquarters in Cromer, covering seven market or resort towns and 121 defined parishes, we were presented with a significant problem.

At the same time, the government established its blanket e-Government Best Value target, known as BVPI 157, which required all council services to be made available electronically by 2005, where it was possible to do so. According to Mori research, about 45 per cent of north Norfolk residents already had internet access (at home and/or work). And, of course, the internet was established globally as a means of providing access to services in ways the traditional infrastructure could not.

It was clear we had to kick-start an e-government programme, not just for the sake of meeting targets, but because it was a way of overcoming the issue of remoteness from service providers experienced by north Norfolk residents.

We had something of a headstart in that we were part of the groundbreaking Norfolk and Waveney Information Area (a partnership of Norfolk local authorities’ websites, plus that of Waveney District Council in North Suffolk, bound together

by a common navigational facility), launched in 1997. We had, and still have, one of the UK’s best geographical information systems (GIS), which was built in-house. And our information, communications and technology (ICT) section had built an extranet for councillors to access information and documents.

So while making the most of our own skills, we were already working in partnership with other groups, thinking in terms of joining up services across the tiers of local government using high-quality data.

How to Reach Out?

We did not have the money to fund such a project on our own, but the government’s competitive ‘Invest to Save’ programme provided the answer. We submitted a bid and, out of 422 expressions of interest, we were one of 46 organisations to receive funding in 2001.

The £210,000 from ‘Invest to Save’ attracted a further £160,000 from the East of England Development Agency (EEDA) and £20,000 from Norfolk County Council. With an additional £50,000 from our own coffers, our two-year Reach Out project could finally get underway.

The initial four aims of the project were to:

Develop a website with a pilot selection of transactional services;
Develop electronic links with town and parish councils to speed up the exchange of information;
Allow town and parish councils, community groups, voluntary organisations, clubs and societies to have mini-sites within the new, overarching www.northnorfolk.org site, making their own services more widely available;
Provide public internet access points in some remote communities to help those without internet access make use of the new system.

A project team of council officers, including the officer e-champion, the in-house project manager, the head of corporate finance, the head of ICT, the media officer and two directorate representatives, was established. A community web editor (a post that has now evolved into e-government officer) was appointed early in the life of the project. This person sat with the project group and worked closely with the project manager on site development, undertaking the bulk of the community liaison work.

We felt it was important to make the best use of the skills and experience of our own staff. The local knowledge and flexibility of our implementation team in understanding and responding to local needs proved critical to the project’s success. We also trusted and harnessed other in-house skills, like our proven ability to attract funding from external sources, minimising the impact on the local taxpayer.

A project board was set up to have ultimate control over the Reach Out project. This consisted of the officer e-champion, a representative each from funding partners EEDA and Norfolk County Council, a parish council representative, a community or voluntary sector representative (from a disability and access action group), and the member e-champion, who chaired the board.

Community, not council

The focus of the project was on building the new website www.northnorfolk.org – for the benefit of the district as a whole – enabling people to reach, and do business with, authorities, agencies, community groups and voluntary organisations in the locality. The new system would conform to the Government Interoperability Framework, meaning the technology behind the website would position us well to meet the 2005 deadline and allow for interaction with other public-service organisations.

It was important to find out as soon as possible if what we envisaged would actually suit the community at large. Surveys and focus groups of town and parish councils, as well as community and voluntary organisations, were undertaken, with most elements of the project generating significant enthusiasm.

One part of the plan was not so warmly received. The aim of introducing a structured-electronic-communication system between the NNDC and the town and parish councils was swiftly dismissed. In our focus groups with these councils, it was quickly discovered that their existing channels of communication could not be bettered: usually, the clerk to the council would pay a visit, in person, to councillors whenever an issue arose or there was information or documentation to be passed on. These councils felt that – while it would be something a coming generation of parish councils would be likely to embrace – an electronic system would be neither efficient nor relevant at this stage.

Nevertheless, we made a change to our rules to allow town and parish councils to borrow money through the precept process – to purchase new PCs for their clerks and gain internet access – plus we expanded information on the website that was of specific interest to parish councils.

Therefore, the project’s success was founded on the way in which partners and users, from staff, parish councillors, internet novices and pub landlords right up to central government, were consulted, involved and enthused from the earliest possible stage to the final stages of the project lifecycle.

Identifying access points

Free internet access was already available in the county council’s libraries, so we searched a six-mile radius of those libraries to locate gaps for free public internet access points. We identified six locations – some in the gaps and some in town locations where year-long trials were thought worthwhile: a pub, a post office, a Citizens’ Advice Bureau, a tourist attraction, a doctor’s surgery and a sheltered housing scheme. (Strictly speaking, this last one was not a public access point, but a valuable experiment nonetheless.)

A further ancillary aim of the project was to promote internet use in general. Hundreds of printed training packs (using www.northnorfolk.org as an illustration of, and introduction to, the use of websites) have been distributed for free through council offices and local libraries (many of which have used the packs in structured internet ‘taster’ sessions for novices).

The implementation process

The transactional website modules were custom-built and bound together by an innovative e-citizen module for customer registration and verification. These modules make use (via XML) of data contained within our existing self-built GIS and other systems. The contact-management software sits behind the system enabling enquiries to be directed straight to the appropriate department or officer and allowing customers to see how their enquiries are being dealt with.

The first interactive facilities to come online allowed residents to:

Check planning files dating back to 1974;
Find out refuse collection dates;
Request repairs to council houses;
Check council tax balances;
Make payments;
Order car parking season tickets;
Get in touch with the council via a contact-management system;
Take part in consultations.

The whole website package is bound together by browser-based content-management software. During the tender process for purchase of the content-management system, potential users within the council, all of them web novices, were invited to attend the presentations of those making bids and were particularly impressed by the simplicity of one technology provider’s offering. Mini-site owners, also novices and operating from remote locations without immediate recourse to technical support, used the same solutions provider for site authoring.

We opted to host www.northnorfolk.org ourselves. Hardware requirements included a public web server, a content-management server – courtesy of the aforementioned solutions provider – and an upgrade to our leased telecommunications line. For the public access points, we needed four PCs and two kiosks, which were connected via ISDN. PCs have also been installed in the reception areas of our Cromer and Fakenham offices for public internet access.

The entire project was delivered within a modest budget compared to the oft-quoted multimillion pound estimates for implementing e-government in district councils at that time.

Where to next?

The Reach Out project’s cross-cutting and pragmatic approach to improving access to local services earned it the runner-up award in The District Council e-Government Innovation Awards last year. It was also a finalist in the Information Management Awards 2003.

The internet has provided newer, faster channels for contact and transactions with NNDC, anytime, anywhere, and this benefit can extend to other organisations under the www.northnorfolk.org umbrella. Also, we are in a strong position to interact electronically with other agencies and tiers of local government as they too work towards 2005.

Indeed, a new Norfolk-wide project (Norfolk Portal) is picking up where the Norfolk and Waveney Information Area left off, introducing a common search facility for the new generation of Norfolk authority websites. Around 40 local organisations are queuing up to have mini-sites within www.northnorfolk.org. In fact, last year, a web editor was recruited to create templates in the content-management system to speed up the process of getting the mini-sites up and running and liaise with these customers.

Reach Out was the foundation for our first Implementing e-Government (IEG) statement and strategy, mapping out the road for e-enabling all services by 2005. Our IEG2 statement has now been published and secured £200,000 in further government funding for future developments, effectively allowing Reach Out 2 to proceed.

Reaching out a second time

As yet, only limited data is available to show the impact Reach Out has had on improving business efficiency, effectiveness or customer satisfaction. Take-up of the new access channels has been slow, but promotion of www.northnorfolk.org and the public access points continues – and pervasive promotion takes time.

Nevertheless, Reach Out 2, the second phase of implementing e-government at NNDC is underway. It has begun with a review of the first Reach Out project to establish how far its targets have been met and whether the performance monitoring was adequate. The review is also looking at whether the public access points have been successful and whether they should be retained, moved or abandoned.

Feedback from our staff and other users is being used to identify the priority areas for development. By the end of April 2004, a detailed plan will be in place for the electronic delivery of those NNDC services that have not yet been e-enabled.

The fact that Reach Out funding was sought and obtained from ‘Invest to Save’ suggests an expectation that we can be measurably more cost-effective in our service delivery in the long run. The modernisation of council practices is a politically driven process and details of any restructuring have yet to be determined.

Our modules and contact-management system allow our processes to be modernised in line with the government’s agenda and the stated aims of our ruling Liberal Democrat group. As more and more communication and consultation is carried out electronically, our decision-making and response process will be faster and more accurate, while our performance data will be easier to gather. There is currently a front-office/back-office project underway at NNDC to review our contact-management system and requirements, explore our options and establish whether this kind of reorganisation would be the best way forward.

As part of Reach Out 2, we also envisage the creation of a corporate intranet to work alongside www.northnorfolk.org to improve communication for the benefit of our 350 or so staff, and our customers, both within and outside of the district. Our content-management system facilitates the job of setting up an intranet and improving the councillors’ extranet. It also allows staff

to ‘own’ the information they distribute internally or externally – for the sake of accuracy and timeliness (and with a chain of authorisation if necessary) – with senior management endorsing this principle. Some staff members already use our content-management system, but Reach Out 2 will include training for far greater numbers.

At the same time, the Norfolk Portal will allow staff to get good quality information from other authorities’ websites and not just our own. Ultimately, however, it is our customers who reap the greatest rewards from Reach Out, with greater convenience, choice and transparency when it comes to dealing with the council, which is now more responsive to their needs.

Nick Manthorpe is media officer at North Norfolk District Council. He can be contacted at nmanthorpe@north-norfolk.gov.uk.