LAWs Pilots In Progress
The LAWs National Project has agreed pilot programmes and objectives with five Local Authorities and the Sopra Group. The five authorities have agreed pilot content and objectives with a view to delivering case studies and relevant advice and guidance to other potential LAWs output adopters.
The Five pilot authorities are:
Barnsley MBC; Northampton BC; King's Lynn & West Norfolk BC; Coventry City Council and Worthing BC.
The Pilots vary in content and detailed objectives, but share overall objectives:
• To demonstrate the usefulness, relevance and ease of adoption of the LAWs project outputs.
• To highlight implementation and support issues.
• To install a framework that assists the councils move towards meeting 2005 targets for delivering services online.
The pilot profiles are:
Barnsley MBC and Northampton Borough Council:
Both Authorities are implementing APLAWS+ Content Management System; LAWs Generic Content; the Local Government Category list and associated Metadata. These will be installed and working by March 31 and guided by LAWs Organisational Development and Usability guidelines. Sopra consultants and LAWs project strand leaders are working closely with the pilots to assist deployment and to capture lessons learned.
The pilots also plan to review LGol-Net middleware as the means to connect systems beyond March 31st. LGol-Net is being deployed in other projects around the UK in multi-authority environments. Barnsley and Northampton will review LGol-Net as a strategic layer for connecting back-end systems to their APLAWS+ web based services. The pilots will also review LAWS Community Engagement Modules, designed to help community organisations and the Local Authority address a wide agenda of engagement. Modules include Jobs, Events, Locations and self service web pages.
APLAWS+ has been released to the pilots ahead of general release and is now installed and configured. Proving the benefits of the new features in APLAWS+ is an important pilot objective.
King's Lynn and West Norfolk Borough Council:
Kings Lynn & West Norfolk BC is also deploying the APLAWS+ Content Management System; LAWs Generic content; LAWs Local Government Category list and associated Metadata.
Kings Lynn, Barnsley and Northampton are co-operating to share lessons learned and to compare achievements. By piloting similar technologies and associated guidelines in three councils comprising a small district, large borough and a metropolitan authority, LAWs and Sopra plan to report on project, programme and deployment issues relevant to the size of the Authority and its internal structures.
Worthing Borough Council
Worthing BC has commissioned the installation of a content management system from Terminal Four Ltd (T4). The pilot will demonstrate that the LAWs Project components are modular and do not depend on the implementation of APLAWS+ CMS. Worthing will adopt the Generic Content and Categories of service (LGCL) and also be guided by the LAWs Organisational Guidelines.
Coventry City Council
Coventry City Council is working with Sopra to deploy LGol-Net middleware and the LAWs transactional software to address connectivity and to make their APLAWS+ environment more transactional and integrated.
LGol-Net is being deployed within both library services and street services. It will enable end to end transactional services in a wholly LAWs derived environment. E Forms are being developed using a LAWs output, X-Forms. Transactional schemas are drawing on LAWs X-Transact.
The pilot will help identify the skills and resources needed to deploy this layer of transactional services as well as demonstrate that improved customer facing services can be delivered by the LAWs project.
Implementation Support and Sustainability
The pilots are being supported by the Sopra Group but draw heavily on the various Authorities' in-house services. An important output from the pilots is to gauge the degree of external support different authorities may need in order to fully exploit LAWs outputs.
All the pilot Authorities plan to use LAWs components beyond the pilot phase which ends for contractual purposes on March 31st.
An important deliverable from LAWs is to ensure that the supplier community will support and develop the components indefinitely. Early signs are that a number of private sector companies will commit to long term plans to ensure support services and sustainability.
Reporting and Case Studies
Interim reports will be made available through this web site. Case studies and final reports will be constructed to ensure that the lessons learned in the pilots are widely reported and shared.
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