Just before I went on holiday, I spent a bit of time one evening researching what content management systems (CMSs) are used by local councils in the UK. A CMS is the software that runs a website, just in case you didn’t know.
The results can be found in this Google Spreadsheet, as well as the summary pie chart above. There’s been a lot of discussion about it on Twitter, which you can follow up from the replies to my original tweet.
I need to give a big thanks to everyone who has helped fill in some of the blanks, but a special thank you to Colin Stenning from Bracknell Forest Council, who has combined some previously research he has done, as well as making other updates to clean the whole thing up a lot better.
Findings
Jadu is the current market leader, with their own commercial product. 70 councils use it, according to the data at the time of writing
Umbraco and Drupal are next, showing a strong use of open source software in the sector. These numbers could potentially increase in the next year, particularly with the LocalGovDrupal project proving very popular. Of course, these open source systems will be supported by a range of different agencies and suppliers. It’s hard to estimate the potential size and variety in this market.
GOSS ICM comes next, the fourth most popular in total and the second most popular commercial system
Then there’s a bit of a drop, and the Consensis CMS comes next.
There are several other open source CMSs in use, including WordPress, Squiz, DNN, Liferay and Joomla
There are a couple of councils who appear to be rolling their own CMS rather than using something prebuilt (whether commercial or open source). This strikes me as being rather eccentric, but I’m sure they have their reasons.
The answer for poor council websites?
Finally, and most troubling, on my late night wanderings through the world of local council websites, I came across some that are simply dreadful. There are always reasons for these things, of course, and I wouldn’t want to directly criticise any council or team. Cash strapped local authorities can’t afford the web teams or the technology to do much more.
However, there are solutions out there to help. LocalGovDrupal is shaping up to be the council-website-in-a-box that could solve the problem. Or why not take a leaf out of Tewkesbury’s book, and use the £250 a year SquareSpace service? Yes, opportunities for customisation are limited, but at that price you get something modern, responsive and effective – and zero technical hassle.
The method
I took the URLs for the websites of all councils in the UK from this list on the LGA website. It would appear that it isn’t up to date and misses
Those URLs I chucked into a batch process on whatcms.org (it cost me $10). That detected 257 CMSs. I then started visiting each site that was missing, and checked to see for credits on the site itself or clues in the source code and caught another 50 or so. Since sharing the work on Twitter and other places, some folk have come forward to fill in some other blanks, and thanks to Colin there are almost none left now.
LocalGovDrupal is an open source implementation of the classic Drupal content management system hat has been developed by councils for councils, with the help of some funding from MHCLG.
It is, by my reckoning, the best example I have seen of open source use in local government, largely because councils are contributing to the project as well as consuming it.
16 councils are now involved and conservative estimates calculate that millions of pounds have been saved compared to using commercial off the shelf alternatives.
What is great is that councils are using those savings to invest in other things to make their websites better, like content design and user research.
Will Callaghan has been the main driver of the project and he gives us some of the background, while Kate Hurr talks about the progress Cumbria Council are making in implementing LocalGovDrupal. We also talk a little bit about pies! 🥧
I honestly can’t praise this project enough, I think it’s brilliant, and a wonderful example of the benefits of open, collaborative working, and sharing and re-use of technology across the sector.
LocalGovDrupal is an open source implementation of the classic Drupal content management system hat has been developed by councils for councils, with the help of some funding from MHCLG.
It is, by my reckoning, the best example I have seen of open source use in local government, largely because councils are contributing to the project as well as consuming it.
16 councils are now involved and conservative estimates calculate that millions of pounds have been saved compared to using commercial off the shelf alternatives.
What is great is that councils are using those savings to invest in other things to make their websites better, like content design and user research.
Will Callaghan has been the main driver of the project and he gives us some of the background, while Kate Hurr talks about the progress Cumbria Council are making in implementing LocalGovDrupal. We also talk a little bit about pies! 🥧
I honestly can’t praise this project enough, I think it’s brilliant, and a wonderful example of the benefits of open, collaborative working, and sharing and re-use of technology across the sector.
This is a nice and easy framework to use when you find yourself needing to do a quick service discovery to find out some basic details about a service and how it can be transformed.
The point at which you might want to use this is right at the start of your digital work, when you either:
need to identify a service to work with
or have decided which service to work with already, but need to gather some up front information on what you’re dealing with
Whichever way you use it, you’ll find it a really helpful way to have a meaningful conversation with the service owner, that will help you get on the same page really quickly.
Some quick notes on how to use this – although remember, you are free to do what you like with it!
Replace <Name of service> with… oh, you know surely
You can delete the link to this post to protect your reputation if you like
Add a quick summary of what the purpose of service is – both in terms of the user need and what the organisation needs to achieve
Consider the components of the service (whether tech or process based). Leave ticks for those that are needed and crosses for those which aren’t
How is the service currently delivered? Again, leave ticks and crosses in the right places
Think about the users of the service. Are they
Everyday residents?
People running their own businesses?
Professionals working alongside the organisation, perhaps solicitors, architects, or folk from other public services?
Politicians, whether at a local or national level
As well as doing the tick and cross thing, add the number of people who use the service every month, to get an idea of the size of this thing
Finally do some quick analysis on three criteria:
What would the level of benefit be to the end user if we transformed this service? Green for lots, red for little, amber for somewhere in the middle
What would the level of benefit be to the organisation (savings, happier staff etc) if we transformed this service? Green for lots, red for little, amber for somewhere in the middle
How hard would it be to transform this service? Green for easy, red for nightmare, amber for somewhere in the middle
If you are running this exercise before choosing which service to transform, this analysis will help you decide whether a particular service is a good candidate. If you’ve already fixed on a service to transform, the outcome of this might a) change your mind; or b) decide how to approach it.
Hopefully this comes in handy! Let me know if so 🙂
I had enormous fun last week chatting with Ben Proctor from Data Orchard about the concept of data maturity in organisations.
Data Orchard have identified 5 stages of data maturity, each of which describe the extent to which an organisation uses data to improve the way it works. The stages are: unaware, emerging, learning, developing and mastering.
In this half hour or so, we discuss important topics such as:
why using data is a cultural, not a technology issue
what some of the technology barriers can be
what steps needs to be taken for an organisation wanting to be data mature
the state of open data in the UK
why bats are interesting in a data sense, much more so than newts
Ben mentions are few projects and things during the conversations, here they are for your convenience:
A cool tool built by Jean-Baptiste Robertson which links openstreetmap.cymru, Wikidata and and Wikipedia and is so awesome thanks, in part, to the efforts of the National Library of Wales
I had enormous fun last week chatting with Ben Proctor from Data Orchard about the concept of data maturity in organisations.
Data Orchard have identified 5 stages of data maturity, each of which describe the extent to which an organisation uses data to improve the way it works. The stages are: unaware, emerging, learning, developing and mastering.
In this half hour or so, we discuss important topics such as:
why using data is a cultural, not a technology issue
what some of the technology barriers can be
what steps needs to be taken for an organisation wanting to be data mature
the state of open data in the UK
why bats are interesting in a data sense, much more so than newts
Ben mentions are few projects and things during the conversations, here they are for your convenience:
A cool tool built by Jean-Baptiste Robertson which links openstreetmap.cymru, Wikidata and and Wikipedia and is so awesome thanks, in part, to the efforts of the National Library of Wales
There has been a fair bit of interest in it since it was published, so I thought it might be useful to run a short online workshop running through how it works with a smallish group of people. As I have at this stage no real idea what I am doing, it will be free for public sector people.
There has been a fair bit of interest in it since it was published, so I thought it might be useful to run a short online workshop running through how it works with a smallish group of people. As I have at this stage no real idea what I am doing, it will be free for public sector people.
And this is, of course, quite right. Doing good digital work means taking it seriously, and that means resourcing it properly.
Indeed, 7 people doesn’t sound like that many, right? Well, in some organisations where the entire digital and IT team is only 10 people, which includes application support and the helpdesk, it’s huge. And most importantly, it’s never going to happen.
The compromise
In this situation you have to be prepared to compromise. I think you can get this down to three people in terms of a full time digital team, with the need to borrow a bit of time from others to get really specialised stuff done.
What this means though is coming up with some new roles that combine some of those in the GDS list.
First you need someone who understand both digital and services and can work between the two. In a traditional project this would probably be your business analyst, but that won’t quite cut it here. This person needs to be able to do a bit of BA, but also be handy at running user research sessions, writing user stories, and managing the backlog. Some kind of service design thinking would be helpful too, ensuring a focus on building an end-to-end service that delivers on that user need.
In my chat with Ben Unsworth, he mentioned a role in his team called ‘Business Designer’. Now, to be clear, this is NOT the role I describe above, but it is a great title for it!
Second you need someone who can build your digital service for you. This depends on your tech stack of course in terms of the specific skills, but a developer will be the person to do this. Now, in this smaller team, they are likely to need to be skilled in various disciplines, as they are likely responsible for not just the new digital service, but also building the integrations, the workflows, the web forms and so on.
Third, you need an organiser. They will need to be more hands-on than a pure Delivery Manager would be, but would combine elements of that role with more traditional project management activities, including liaising with suppliers and other third parties. The organiser would also pick up some other bits, such as managing the performance of the project, perhaps using OKRs, managing the transition from project to live service and BAU support, and also considering how the success of the service will be judged in the future.
Other specialist roles you either need access to, or some time from up front from, include:
Someone to influence others – in smaller organisations, it might well be a good idea to have a sponsoring Director that you can use to get others to toe the line, and to ensure others at the top are making the right decisions, and supporting the work
Someone to get the interaction design right – this is such an important element of successful digital services but often gets overlooked. At the very least, hire someone to produce a design system that can be easily followed by your developer
Someone to (re)write the web copy – having good content design is absolutely vital to building a successful digital service. Hopefully you will have someone in the web team or the comms department who can help out with this when needed
Someone to check what you’ve done – with a small, tight squad, it’s often easy to take pride in your work to the extent that you might miss whether you’ve done the right thing or not. So it’s a good idea to have someone neutral who can do a bit of quality assurance on it. A good way to do this might be to run a service assessment on completed projects before they go live.
Is it ideal to build end-to-end digital services using just a team of 3 people? No! But the reality of the situation in many smaller organisations is that having dedicated product managers and service designers is just never going to happen.
Having a small, motivated and enthusiastic squad of three adaptable multi-skilled people working together on multiple projects, and this building their trust in one another, can really get a lot done. Just as long as they are allowed to focus and don’t get dragged into other stuff all the time!
The thing you mustn’t miss
What I have neglected to mention until now is the vital importance of having committed involvement of the service you are transforming involved in your project. You need both a leader from that department around, to make decisions and to ensure there is strategic buy-in for the changes being made.
Then you’ll also need some front line folk and managers on board so they can give their perspective and also ensure they feel like they are part of the change, and can champion it to their colleagues.
The elephant in the room – capability
The question all this leads us to ask, is where can these three people with this amazing set of skills be found? Are there service designers who can also product manage, user research and process map just sitting around in large numbers, waiting to be called upon?
No, of course not. However, I can pretty much guarantee that somewhere in your organisation, there is a great organiser, an enthusiastic techie and, yes, an eager person who has a really good empathetic understanding of the needs of the users of your services.
I am not intending to diminish the professional importance or ability of the roles described in the GDS service manual. Where possible you should always try and find the budget to employ properly trained and experienced people in what are genuinely specialised roles.
But when you just can’t afford to do that, stick to the maxim that you hire for attitude and train for skills. Find the people who want to do this: those with ideas and the fire in their bellies needed to make change happen – and make sure you support them to give them the skills and experience to help them do a great job – whether through training, coaching and mentoring, or pointing them to websites with loads of sensible technology and digital advice.
I really enjoyed this conversation with Sharon O’Dea about the digital workplace. She shares an absolute tonne of insight into how organisations have responded to remote working in lockdown, what impact that has had on the use of internal technology, and what culture and behaviour change is going to be needed in future.
I managed to exert some self discipline and kept this video to 30 minutes or thereabouts. I think you’ll get a lot out of it!
If audio is your thing, you can listen to this on SoundCloud.
I really enjoyed this conversation with Sharon O’Dea about the digital workplace. She shares an absolute tonne of insight into how organisations have responded to remote working in lockdown, what impact that has had on the use of internal technology, and what culture and behaviour change is going to be needed in future.
I managed to exert some self discipline and kept this video to 30 minutes or thereabouts. I think you’ll get a lot out of it!
If audio is your thing, you can listen to this on SoundCloud.
I’ve started up a new site recently, which I’ve called SensibleTech.
The aim is to share the stuff I’ve learned over the last decade or so of doing digital in public services. I reckon most of the things that are keeping people and organisations from confidently grasping the opportunity that digital offers are things they don’t need to worry about. They just need reassurance that answers are out there.
I’ve moaned in the past that a lot of the potentially useful material that gets published isn’t useful at all, because it’s so often vendor-produced and so, naturally, focuses on how great their product is, rather than everything else that goes into building great digital services – particularly the things that don’t quite go to plan.
So I want to publish articles sharing how I approach certain things in the hope that others can make use of that themselves, and some of the templates I’ve made over the years. I’m also talking to experts in the field and sharing their experience and knowledge too.
In the future, I’d like to look into more formal learning, whether online workshops over Zoom or e-learning courses that people can complete at their convenience. But for now, articles and videos are enough.
Go and take a look around, some of the content on there already includes:
The local digital declaration is three years old as I go to keyboard. I was privileged enough to be around at the time it was being put together, had some small input into it, and helped to promote it. I think it is well and truly a good thing.
What it does is define for the whole local government sector what digital is all about. It removes those misunderstandings that digital is just about channel shift, or better websites, or one single other thing. It explains that while good digital is not just about technology, it also is about technology, and how you have to get that and the culture right to make progress.
Hundreds of councils have signed up to it. Many did so, I am sure, because it was a commitment to doing things right, and because they believed in it. I suspect some signed up because they wanted to be in the cool crowd, even though they weren’t really bought into the whole thing. Plenty signed up because it meant they could apply for some funding. That’s a shame, but it’s understandable.
The truth is, signing up to the declaration is easy (thanks to it being a good digital service!). Living up to it is hard, and I would wager that not one single council could really say they are living and breathing every ambition and commitment in there. But that’s ok – it’s fine to be aspirational, as long as you are actively aspiring, and not just doing nothing.
Signing the declaration, or making a big deal of trying to meet all of its statements if you signed it a while ago, is a great way of getting some momentum going on your digital work.
Here’s 5 ways how to get cracking right away:
Use it to get the bosses excited about digital
Get some senior people together on a Teams or Zoom call, and take them through the declaration. Focus on the elements of it that are likely to resonate with them, such as:
fixing the plumbing of poorly implemented line of business software and untangling the spaghetti of multiple systems that overlap and don’t talk to each other (apologies for the metaphor mixing)
focus on the transformation of organisational culture and ways of working, which will be at the top of many people’s minds, particular now as we exit the lockdown of 2021
emphasise the potential for sharing technology, research, experience and knowledge through the network of signatories, including the great funded projects that can be tapped into
maybe mention the funding too if there’s still some available. Free money always goes down well
Encourage the leadership that this presents a clear to do list to become a sector leader in digital, as long as there is some commitment to making it happen – and maybe have a few small exmaples up your sleeve of things you could get on with quickly, and can report back to show progress.
Start blogging
A key part of the declaration is bringing the really positive open working culture of the internet age into our organisations. The best way to do that? Start blogging.
Seriously, it is not hard – and it is a great test of your mettle as a change agent in your organisation, and of your organisation’s commitment to the digital agenda, particularly if the culture where you work is one where blogging is a tricky thing to get started with.
There are loads of models to follow, but the really easy one to do, I would suggest, is:
register a blog at wordpress.com – it’s free and easy, and you don’t need to ask permission to do it. Call it something like [Name of Council] Digital – simples.
write some weeknotes. Just a quick bulleted list of what you’ve done that week, if your nervous, or try something more contemplative if you’re confident about it. Check out the web of weeknotes site operated by Matt Jukes for inspiration.
when you’ve published a few posts, show your boss and explain how it helps meet the declaration thing you spoke at with them a few weeks ago. Ask if you can email a link to your weeknote to the leadership team every week to get them interested
Boom! You’re on your way to an open, digital culture. Now get cracking on laptop stickers and posters.
Run some service assessments
Sometimes this is seen as an incredibly daunting thing to do, but actually done the right way service assessing is a great way of introducing people to what is really important in delivering good digital services.
Now, for those working with very estblishment outfits like GDS and others, service assessments can be pretty formal gateway style checkpoints, to prevent poor digital services from going live. That’s exactly how it should be for such organisations, but if you’re just starting out, then a bit of compromise is needed.
Instead, use the service assessment process to demonstrate to folk across your organisation what good looks like, and how much of a positive impact just doing a bit of user research could have, or how we could be really sure our information security is spot on, or indeed how we could have saved money if we’d just used that thing IT bought last year, rather than buying another new thing just for this service.
Find some enthusiastic friendly folk to be on your panel. If you can find someone from another organisation who has done it before, all the better. People don’t need to be digital experts, they just need to be interested and curious, and maybe have had a read of the service standard beforehand, and be good at asking sensible questions.
At the end, rather than a strict go/no go decision on whether the service can go live, you’ll have a list of improvement that could be made to it, or maybe a checklist of things to do on the next service you’ll work on.
At Croydon we did a very early service assessment on our own digital blog which was a great, low risk place to start. Here’s the summary report which gives a flavour, and how it’s not that scary a process, not really.
Get involved in a funded project
The declaration fund enabled a lot of projects to get going, and several of them have survived into being in a usable state. That sounds like faint praise, but it isn’t – it’s only right as you go through the cycle of discovery to alpha then beta then live that some stuff drops out along the way. We can’t do everything all the time, after all.
Take a look through, especially those that made it to the beta phase, as these really ought to be thing you can make use of. I’m particularly proud of LocalGovDrupal – an open source, website in a box for councils that is now being used by several councils, including Brighton and Croydon.
If you’re at the right stage to make use of something built by the sector for the sector, then that has to be a great win for you, your organisation and your digital plans.
Join some networks and start sharing
Collaboration is key to the declaration, which is music to my ears. It’s what drives SensibleTech, after all, and inspires me to share this stuff with you all.
You can get together with others in exactly the same position as you in other organisations up and down the country by connecting through groups such as LocalGovDigital and OneTeamGov. There’s also a bunch of helpful people on Twitter who you can track down and LinkedIn can be useful too for meeting folk and finding out what others are up to.
Also take a look at the events that folk like Nick Hill run, which are free and provide loads of opportunities to meet and learn from others.
If you’re nervous and not sure where to start with joining some of these network, just yell, I’d be happy to introduce you.
Personas are a great place to start with user centred design, particularly if the whole practice is new to your organisation. This is because they can provide a quick and cheap way of ensuring your project puts the different types of user at the heart of your service design process.
Personas are fictional representations of the different types of potential users of your service. Well written ones can bring the important user types to life, which is why it helps to make them as realistic as possible. They also help to give the project team focus, by constantly reminding them of what really matters to their users. Finally, they are a great way of engaging stakeholders with your work, introducing personality and something relatable.
They can have their downsides though:
often personas aren’t based on user research, but assumptions
they can sometimes focus on what user’s want rather than what they need
they can get stale quickly – don’t fall into the trap of not updating them or using the same personas over and over again
They should not be the only form of user centred design that is used in a project – personas are not a shortcut or a tick in a box
So make sure you use them properly, and most importantly of all – do your research first!
To make your life easier, here is a simple template to use for your user personas. Feel free to amend it in any way you like to make it work for you.
It’s taken a while to record the second CDO Chat video, but today I finally had the joy of an hour of Ben Unsworth‘s virtual company!
Ben has done loads in digital government, including stints at the Home Office and with FutureGov, and these days he is the Director for Service Transformation at Essex County Council.
In this video, we talk about Ben’s role and what it encompasses, the importance of accessibility in digital services, the roles needed to make change happen, and the impact of the lockdowns and the future of work. Oh, and of course we hear a little about his shed too.
If audio is more your thing, you can grab that on Soundcloud.
It’s taken a while to record the second CDO Chat video, but today I finally had the joy of an hour of Ben Unsworth‘s virtual company!
Ben has done loads in digital government, including stints at the Home Office and with FutureGov, and these days he is the Director for Service Transformation at Essex County Council.
In this video, we talk about Ben’s role and what it encompasses, the importance of accessibility in digital services, the roles needed to make change happen, and the impact of the lockdowns and the future of work. Oh, and of course we hear a little about his shed too.
If audio is more your thing, you can grab that on Soundcloud.
I’ve been involved in the implementation of low code in a couple of councils, and in the right circumstances it’s a great fit. In the panel session, I’ll be exploring what those circumstances are, and what some of low code’s pitfalls are, as well as what it is brilliant at.
I’m going to be chatting with the following ‘legends of low code’:
Kev Rowe, Croydon Council
Craig Barker, Cumbria County Council
Clare Evans, Tewkesbury Borough Council
Ben Evans, Ashfield District Council
Lee Gallagher, Hertsmere Council
Big thanks to Nick Hill for organising the panel – as well as being informative, it should be good fun too.
