Your London

Creating a unified London resource to address the
needs of the capital's people

The London Portal, www.yourlondon.gov.uk has been developed to provide a single website that leads to and integrates a vast range of information and services across London. Prior to its development, there was little online information that unified all aspects of London life and little to exhibit London as one of the world's greatest cities. A recent international comparison of the official websites of 84 of the world's largest cities ranked London 54th, below the average score for developing world cities included in the survey. However, an internet search will retrieve more pages referring to London than any other major city in the world.

One-stop-shop

In the public sector alone, there are hundreds of websites and millions of web pages relating to London, all with different, and not necessarily obvious, starting points. Existing sites have been built to either address the needs of specific users, such as London visitors, or to represent London organisations. The Portal will provide a one-stop-shop for residents, visitors, students, job seekers, businesses, commuters and inward investors. To date, there has been no such single online representation of London to the world and the London Portal is expected to move London up the international e-league.

London has 32 borough councils, and the Corporation of London, each looking after its own public services such as environment, planning, community services and housing. This can easily lead to confusion for residents, workers and visitors to London, particularly for those who live, or are looking for services on the perimeter of two boroughs, or for those who live in one borough and work in another. Now, a citizen can type in the postcode or street where a problem exists and a form is automatically routed to the correct London borough.

With this in mind, London Connects was set up in 2001 to be London's regional e-government agency and lead several strategic pan London initiatives, including the city's presence online. Its remit is to present a unified London, which provides a genuinely useful service to online residents, visitors and businesses, and to create a leading information portal that the rest of the world aspires to.

Development

London Connects appointed System Associates, a provider of enterprise-wide internet solutions, as lead development partner for the Portal. System Associates is responsible for the architecture of the site as well as design, content, hosting, security and monitoring. The scale and scope of the project is huge and the key to its development has been to break the project down into manageable phases. Phase One was delivered within just six months, within budget, and offered a wealth of information for businesses, residents and visitors to London. Today more than 6,000 links populate the Your London site and it is growing and evolving at a rapid rate.

A content management team is responsible for establishing useful links and for vetting others that want to be linked to Your London. An automated system checks that links are still current and notifies the content management team of any discrepancies, so that they can be removed or amended.

Navigation and features

Visitors to the home page will find topical news and items of interest for people living, working and visiting London and a clearly navigable home page makes it easy for visitors to access the information they require within a few clicks. An easy-to-use site registration system allows regular users to tailor their search to their own requirements, so that the information most relevant to their area is displayed with the highest priority.

To locate facilities and services across London, the 'Find Your Nearest' search facility allows users to find their nearest hospitals, pharmacies, parks, recreation grounds, recycling centres and cash machines.

Integration

David Macken, managing director of System Associates comments: "Many new initiatives for the Portal require enterprise-wide integration involving all the boroughs and public services. We have to make it as easy as possible for IT managers to provide us with data. We therefore take data in a variety of formats and convert it into a format suitable for the portal. Although this takes a lot of time and patience, it actually quickens the process of integrating new information and secures collaboration from the many organisations required to make the project work."

The recent parks database is a good example of this. To date, there has been no single database that provides information about parks and open spaces in and around London. Obtaining data and images has involved considerable collaboration between various borough councils, as well as the Royal Parks. There was no standard format for data on London's parks and so the data that was provided required extensive cleaning. New information was included such as grid references, postcodes and images to create an information resource unique to London. The parks database has been linked to the London Wildlife Trust and London Wildweb websites to provide additional information about wildlife and fauna in London's parks, open spaces and areas of special scientific interest.

Information

There is a wealth of information for businesses and investors too, with information on employment, law, health and safety regulations, property planning and links to advisory services such as Business Link.

Visitors to the capital can find information and links to all the major tourist attractions, entertainment venues and shows, as well as information on eating out, accommodation and getting around London. Your London also provides a platform for London job seekers with an area devoted to jobs within London government.

In addition, Your London receives news feeds from BBC London, Transport for London and the Met Office; a live traffic and roadworks tool gives access to planned roadworks and CCTV cameras across the capital and enhanced community tools allow voluntary and community organisations to create a free web presence.

Peter Williams, Deputy CEO of London Connects comments, "There is still a lot to do and huge potential for Your London. The foundations are being laid for a pan London collaborative project that provides information without boundaries and it is likely to be an important access point for information about the 2012 Olympics. Its importance in developing joined up e-services has been acknowledged within central government and it has been the catalyst for larger joined up services projects such as Local Directgov.

Visit the Your London site (link opens in a new window)