How LocalGov Drupal aligns with the government’s ICT strategy

The Irish government’s Connecting Government 2030 ICT Strategy was published last year and the Build to Share initiative remains one of its core tenets.

All public bodies ultimately use similar systems to carry out core day-to-day work. Build to Share (B2S) is the government’s aim to rationalise disparate systems, thereby decreasing the ICT cost base and saving time.

Part of this strategy includes sharing infrastructure and application code for both internal and public-facing digital platforms.

What B2S offers is obvious in terms of cost saving, but what is more implicit is that it standardises best practice and ultimately provides a better service to citizens.

Working in concert: LocalGov Drupal and Build to Share

LocalGov Drupal (LGD) is a publicly available, free-to-use, publishing platform that is built by councils for councils.

Though its genesis was in Britain, it has grown into a collaborative community of developers and local government innovators that have developed a product specifically aimed at council functionality.

The LGD code-sharing initiative is in keeping with the government’s philosophy of delivering a common applications approach and creating efficiencies.

Another reason why LGD effectively mirrors the ethos of B2S is because it is constantly evolving, and new features are continuously being added. If a council develops new functionality, it can add it back to the LGD distro, thus improving it as a product.

Other relevant factors:

• LGD is built with WCAG accessibility in mind.

• All of the user research has already been conducted.

• LGD has a defined roadmap.

To date, 35 councils have signed up to LGD, and its inadvertent chiming with the Irish Government’s B2S initiative has meant that it is gaining popularity with Irish councils.

LGD’s adoption in Ireland: Tipperary County Council

Tipperary County Council was already using the Drupal CMS, but its digital team wanted to move to LGD and build the new website themselves, with our help. The entire project was completed in four months.

Importantly, they developed functionality that is pertinent to Irish councils: an integration with the Irish Services Catalogue, which allows users to access information on services provided by local authorities.

Irish language translations were also needed in order for the council to provide essential services information in Irish.

Because time and money had been saved by using LGD, Tipperary were in a position to develop this functionality, and now other councils can avail of it.

This approach is truly in keeping with the B2S mindset.

There is no doubt that B2S and LGD are singing off the same hymn sheet. Both are concerned with delivering exemplary services to citizens while coalescing technical resources to save time and money.

As more Irish councils join LGD, its relevance to local governments’ online offering is destined to grow and dovetail with what the central government is promoting as we further move to a digital-first world.

For details, see www.annertech.com/localgov-drupal; email hello@annertech.com; 01 524 0312.