Community ICT

Village Websites

A growing number of communities are setting up their own websites which are provided on a voluntary or not-for-profit basis by the community, often through local partnerships. This could be the Parish or Town Council, the community Newsletter, the school, local businesses and representatives of voluntary organisations such as the local history group.

Getting Started

The success of community websites relies on it being relevant, up to date and an integral part of the community. You need to get the community involved and get local organisations interested. If there is some general support for the idea, it is time to establish some real commitment and recruit a steering group to take the project forward.

How can the Parish Council use websites?

Parish Councils can use websites to enhance their communication in several ways:

• ‘notice board’ for Parish Council announcements (e.g. agenda for meetings)
• inviting view and comments from the Community
• information about what the Parish Council does and how to get in contact
• information about local issues which are the responsibility of other authorities, and how to contact them
• progress reports on the Parish Plan
• discussion forum on important local issues

See the ‘links’ section of the DAPC website [ www.dapc.org.uk ]

What is ‘e-government?’

‘E-government’ is all about giving better and more efficient access to services and decision-makers through email and the internet. The County Council and District Council all carry statements about their plans to implement e-government on their websites. It is intended that 100% of appropriate services will be available electronically by December 2005.

The overall aim is to make services more accessible, convenient, responsive and cost effective. Be more open, accountable, inclusive and better able to reach the community. Working in partnership with other councils and public organisations, so that citizens can access services more effectively.

Who can help?

Examples of websites from other communities are listed on the DAPC website [ www.dapc.org.uk ] and are a good opportunity to see what information they contain and how they operate.

UKVillages hosts a website for every single town, village or community in the UK on their site [ www.UKVillage.co.uk ] Members of a community can add information on their site by filling in an online form: whether its posting notices, listing a local business, or promoting local events. 37 Church St, Harston, Cambridge CB2 5NP Tel: 01223 874500 E: [ info@UKVillages.co.uk ]

A Community Website Builder is available free of charge to voluntary and charitable groups at [ http://www.communitykit.co.uk ] This scheme is operated by BT and ik.com

‘CommuniGate’ is another web-based organisation which offers free web space, and tools for setting up a site, to charities and community groups. See [ www.communigate.co.uk ]

What is Broadband?

Broadband is a connection that allows you to transfer computer data at high speed, through the ordinary telephone line or another route. It should be remembered, however, that Broadband is not essential to access the Internet.

Content of website

Put the most important information on the front of the website. The further people have to delve to find things the less likely they are to bother. It is better in the long run not to have too many levels on your website.

You must update the information and be seen to do so by date stamping all your pages. Currency is as important as content and this also refers to those links you provide. You don’t want to send a person to look at something that doesn’t exist anymore.

People will want to contact you in person and so you need to ensure that you clearly display your full postal address and telephone number on your website. Not all people will want to communicate by email especially if they have a complicated enquiry.

Ask your internet service provider to provide you with the logs for your website. These give you an idea of which pages are of most interest. There is no point spending a lot of time updating pages that are not being looked at. You will also get a better idea of the areas of the website that are popular and may need expanding.

Usability

It is important that all people can access your website and find what they are looking for. A nice little tool to use is the Bobby Scan. This looks at your website and exposes barriers to accessibility that people may find.

To run a Bobby Scan:-

• Go to the Bobby website [ http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp ]
• Enter the website address of your page
• Select the guidelines W3C
• Click submit
• Each point displayed is accompanied by an explanation and a rationale.

Things to avoid –

• Multiple menu lists – These confuse people, especially when the same entry appears in two or more places. In a book, you would never see a list of entries both running across the contents page and down the side of it – so why do this electronically?
• Using ‘open new browser window’ – Some users are not aware the new window sites on top of the original one and are confused when the ‘back’ button is greyed out.
• Using frames – Putting pages in frames means that the website address of your site stays at the ‘Home’ page location, and does not changes as you access new information pages. This means that if people want to bookmark specific pages they can’t. Also, frames are often difficult to print as they confuse printers.
• Including unexplained/poorly explained ‘click here’ links – It is always better to give people plenty of detail about what page or information to expect. Link text should be meaningful enough to make sense when read out of context.

Feedback

You need to offer your users the opportunity to feedback their thoughts about the service you are offering. A small questionnaire could be put on the website or you could simply ask people to contact you with ideas to improve your service.

Learning

The Community Council of Devon offer basic learning opportunities on community websites through workshops. For information on future events see out training page [ link to training page ] Also why not check out Oxfordshire RCC toolkit on ’Wired up Villages.’ [ http://www.oxonrcc.org.uk/handbook.pdf ]