About communityPortals

Background

The collective goal of the Leicester-Shire E-government Partnership is to use technology to provide joined-up services to customers in Leicester-Shire area. The aim is to use ICT to help the local authorities in the City and County to work together to ensure that customers can get access to information about all services in Leicester-Shire no matter which Partner they contact and how they contact them.

A bid for the 'Community Portals' project - which could underpin this strategy - was successful in receiving LGOL funding from ODPM. The Community Portals project falls under the Portals theme presented in the year 1 funding submission.

communityPortals

The Community Portals system provides an easy-to-use Web site "construction kit" for use by people in the community and creative sectors. It aims to offer simple management of content-rich Web sites together with XML compliance and interoperability with other systems including Infolinx, Magnet and other community portals across the region and country. It is envisaged that a typical Community Portal implementation will let a team of community based "content managers" design, build and maintain a high-quality Web site (or set of Web sites) with the minimum of prior technical expertise.

The Community Portal system allows users to create groups of either geographic or subject themed Web sites (or both). XML data exchange can be used to push and pull content to and from other sources - making it possible for Community Portal sites to be an integral part of any wider Internet project.

The project itself is grounded in 18 months of prior investigations and implementations. In particular, the Leicestershire Villages, Leicestershire Parish Councils and Charnwood On-line sites can all be seen as Community Portal "prototypes".

Community Portals is compliant with the latest e-Government standards for meta-data and XML interoperability. This means that as well as benefiting from the system's ease-of-use, users of the Community Portals system have the reassurance of knowing that e-Government issues have been fully considered and that any data entered in to their site will be sharable with similar systems.

Open Source Release

The software developed is being released as 'Open Source' to benefit the wider internet community. To become involved in the development, or to obtain more information please visit out Web site at www.leicestershirecommunity.com or contact Ray Smith at the Leicestershire Rural Partnership on 01509 643468.