cms – Dave Briggs

What content management systems are used in local government?

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.

Featured image credit: Sigmund on Unsplash

Are open standards a closed barrier? | Government Digital Service – "Fresh out of a roundtable discussion on the Open Standards: Open Opportunities consultation, Linda Humphries discusses whether open can really mean closed."
eParticipation needs to be carefully integrated into the complex world of existing participation processes | British Politics and Policy at LSE – "While technical problems can sink eParticipation initiatives, the core challenges are on the social side. Ella Taylor-Smith discusses what eParticipation actually means and how it should be evaluated."
#Unacceptable IT is pervasive | | G-CloudG-Cloud – "Real progress has been blocked by many things including an absence of capability in both departments and their suppliers, by a strong resistance to change, by the perverse incentives of contracts that mean its cheaper to pay service credits than to fix the problem and by an unwillingness to embrace the potential of newer and smaller players to offer status quo-busting ideas."
Canada’s Action Plan on Open Government 1 / 5 – "Canada's commitment to open government is part of the federal government's efforts to foster greater openness and accountability, to provide Canadians with more opportunities to learn about and participate in government, to drive innovation and economic opportunities for all Canadians and, at the same time, create a more cost effective, efficient and responsive government."
GDS design principles – Interesting and important stuff for webbies to consider.
Making the case for a FOSS CMS | Digital by Default – Matt Jukes shares his thinking on choosing a CMS.

You can find all my bookmarks on Pinboard.

What I’ve been reading

I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.

openkent :: home – "Open Kent is where public sector bodies in Kent can publish information about the services they provide."
How to do a Crowd | Innovator Inside – For crowds, read communities, groups, whatever. Good stuff.
Shabby PR from SOCITM « Simon Wakeman – "As a PR man I’m well versed in the technique in play here – create a stir around headline grabbing stat or two then ride to the rescue with a carefully pitched product or service to solve the various woes created by aforementioned stat. "
Government corporate websites in eye-popping 3D – Fascinating to watch this develop.
Local Government please don’t sack the connectors. « Podnosh – "So as funding dries up for the jobs best done by connectors – please local government management, make sure you find ways of keeping them in fruitful work and onside – because you will be needing them."

You can find all my bookmarks on Pinboard.

What I’ve been reading

I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.

2011 London Social Business Summit – Great content from this event.
Introducing South West LocalGovCamp #swlocalgc « Carl’s Notepad – This should be a good one!
’100 million comments a year’ – mutual support and advice in a shrinking state – How government could be making better use of online communities – great stuff from Will Perrin.
Misleading money-saving claims help no one – Ben Goldacre exposes the lazy thinking involved in some "research" about council spending – curiously promoted by CLG.
BBC News – Google’s Chromebook – lost in the cloud? – Interesting review of the new Chrome based laptops.
A little local difficulty – honestlyreal – A very useful primer on Local DirectGov
How To Run A News Site And Newspaper Using WordPress And Google Docs – Really nice workflow system.

You can find all my bookmarks on Pinboard.

Bookmarks for February 23rd through April 4th

I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.

Reaping the benefits of shared services – Interesting interview with @terryhuggins on the shared services arrangement between South Holland and East Lindsay councils.
UK IT Strategy Sets the Pace for All European Governments, But Can They Deliver? – Interesting coverage of the new UK gov IT strategy
NESTA – Innovation in Public Sector Organisations – "A pilot survey for measuring innovation across the public sector" – interesting read
Loosemore leads Lane Fox vision work | Puffbox.com – Nice update from Simon on some interesting developments.
Things about Blogging – Great blogging tips
COI is dead, long live the GCC? – Good coverage of the future of COI from Andrew.
Seldom a love story: IT and end users – O’Reilly Radar – "Prioritization must be determined by the business, not an IT staffer who's just trying to do the right thing."
Fear of Facebook: Thoughts On The Meaning of Social – "Things aren’t getting any better in terms of privacy related fears."
The zero cost CMS | Stephen Hale – "The digital communications teams I’ve worked in have all spent too much of their time finding ways around the CMS, and not enough time actually communicating."
Citizen journalist or citizen? – Good stuff on bloggers reporting on councils by @podnosh

You can find all my bookmarks on Delicious. There is also even more stuff on my shared Google Reader page.

You can also see all the videos I think are worth watching at my video scrapbook.

Sharing and flexibility

Nice post from BIS’ Neil Williams on deciding up on a commenting system for the department’s website.

Go read the whole thing, but he summarises:

So what have we learned?

People blogging about what they are up to is dead handy. Stephen and Jimmy writing their posts, me reading them, has saved you thousands of pounds. Direct cause and effect.

Having the flexibility to embed stuff is awesome. Insist on it next time you buy a CMS. Hats off to the guys at Eduserv for really coming through for us on this one. We couldn’t put pages together like this and this and this without it.

The growing availability of embeddable stuff is way cool. I’m excited about what else we might be able to achieve without dev work – like page ratings using Bazaarvoice and forums using Talki.

We all need to think differently now. Few things we might want our website to do are going to be unique to us. Gov webbies, and suppliers of government web services, need to adapt and thoroughly check out 3rd party plugins before embarking on any kind of jiggery-bespokery. Why pay for our own learning curve when others have already been through it?

My take (which pretty much repeats what Neil has said:

People sharing stuff via blogs is good and has measurable impact.
In whatever you do, being flexible and open means you can make the most of developments in technology, or whatever.

Tag: cms

Link roundup

Link roundup

What I’ve been reading

Bookmarks for February 23rd through April 4th

Sharing and flexibility