Graversham Borough Council develops web solutions for local authority e-service delivery

Gravesham Borough Council has taken a leading step with the development of a number of web-based services to meet the e-government requirements. The web solution, which is the first step in a partnership formed between Gravesham and The Pixel Group, was developed on Gravesham’s Intranet and is due to go live as a fully-fledged Internet solution later this year.

The Electronic Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF) sets out the standards that must be adopted across the public sector to achieve truly joined-up Government. It recognises the importance of the browser as a key interface and the need to access data held in legacy systems. The Pixel solution fully meets this requirement.

The e-government targets for central and local government require all Local Authorities to deliver 25% of their services that are capable of electronic delivery by the year 2002 and 100% by the year 2005. Although some Local Authorities are currently considering their options for achieving the targets, the majority are still waiting to evaluate implementations from more progressive Councils. One of the objectives of Gravesham’s partnership withPixel has been to organise a series of seminars throughout the UK to demonstrate the solution – to date, over 200 Local Authority IT Managers have reviewed Gravesham’s host-to-web solution.

Robin Daly, Gravesham’s IT Services Manager cites four reasons why Gravesham decided to partner with Pixel and adopt its HostAccess Gateway technology:

• At under £30,000, HostAccess Gateway provided a cost-effective alternative to the extremely high cost alternatives of implementing a host-to-web initiative. The costs of rewriting the host applications, of developing new interfaces to the data, and of replicating the existing and proven data logic within Gravesham’s numerous applications could easily have run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.
• HostAccess Gateway required absolutely no changes whatsoever to the underlying host applications. Gravesham could thus capitalize on its years of investment in its host systems, their business logic and methodology.
• HostAccess Gateway allowed Gravesham to develop individual web solutions to host applications in a matter of hours. Robin Daly confirmed that the entire initial project, that required the development of customize web pages providing access to five separate host applications, took his department approximately one man-week. Indeed, Gravesham’s IT Department was able to build a web solution allowing residents to notify the Council of pest control problems, with the data being written directly to the Council’s Pick database, in under 2.5 hours.
• HostAccess Gateway built upon existing and proven technologies in conformance with the E-GIF Standards. As such, the existing expertise within Gravesham’s 8-strong IT Department was more than adequate for the development of complex web-pages that provided live and real-time interaction with the Council’s complex, multiple host applications.

“Gravesham is a medium-sized District Council,” explained Robin Daly. “We have a mixture of modern and legacy systems, proven logic in our legacy systems, and no requirement to replace our core systems.”

“Our E-Government challenge was to web-enable our core business systems,” he continued. “HostAccess Gateway seemed to fit our requirements and we eventually agreed a partnership with Pixel to trial HostAccess Gateway.”

The results have surpassed all of Gravesham’s expectations.

Gravesham has been able to bring the wealth of data held in its legacy applications to the web with a solution which provides both Intranet and Internet access to Council information residing on text based or ‘green screen’ corporate systems. By partnering withPixel and adopting HostAccess Gateway, Gravesham has developed multiple suites of web pages that provide council personnel and the general public with real-time access to information sourced from legacy systems. These legacy systems can also be updated live if required from the web pages.

Gravesham’s adoption of Pixel’s technology required no changes whatsoever to underlying host applications, no redevelopments, no system downtime and no compromises to its existing log-in and security procedures. The solution allows information from different systems to be presented on the same web pages, allowing Council employees to access associated data from various databases owned by different departments, whilst web pages being developed for access by the general public currently include:

• Council Housing Availability – allowing tenants and prospective tenants to query Gravesham’s database of available properties by location, number of bedrooms and type of property to determine availability and their position on the housing allocation list.
• Council Housing Repairs - giving tenants the ability to request and book repairs on-line.
• Information for Creditors – including details of recent invoices and payments, pending payments etc.
• Council Tax and Business Rates – providing on-line access to payment and account status information and a link to an e-bank service enabling payment on-line.
• Reporting and booking removal of wasps, vermin etc.

In addition to the HostAccess Gateway Host-to-Web solution, Gravesham has also confirmed its intention to adopt Pixel’s HostAccess Thin Client solution. HostAccess Thin Client utilizes the same server-based core technology as HostAccess Gateway and allows true, thin-client browser-based emulation to be implemented throughout an Intranet and Extranet environment.

Last Updated: 20 Jul 2001

| Home | | What's New | | News | | Articles | | Workspace | | Pick of the Web | | InfoCentre | | Parting Shots | | About Us | | Subscribe |