Improving services for the online citizen isn't just about the implementation of technology, says Parity
Building websites and portals for the public sector to improve their services to the e-citizen is big business, yet implementing the technology is only a small factor in the overall solution says Parity
Public sector departments are under pressure to improve and provide more services to citizens via the internet. When websites are designed and implemented well, they not only help make public departments' internal operations significantly more efficient, saving time and money, but they also give the general public much greater access to information and services not previously possible without a visit to their local offices.
Examples of newly built websites and portals by Parity include the Fire Gateway, the Government watchdog Ofgem and Northamptonshire County Council. “There is no doubt that online services do provide easier access for citizens to get information at a fraction of the time it used to take, but they need to find the site in the first place and then retrieve the piece of information that they are seeking easily,” says David Conkleton, Managing Director of Parity Business Solutions.
Building a web portal is not just about implementing a piece of technology, it is also about embracing the behavioural sciences. How people search and the search terms they use are fundamental to whether service delivery is actually improved or not. A well designed government website or portal should be focused around the citizen to enable them to find what they want quickly and easily.
“Search optimisation and user centred design is not just for the private sector”, says Conkleton. “The science behind how a citizen will search for information from their local service provider has now become an integral part of the solutions that we build. It can be extremely frustrating for a member of the public to be told to go online and then struggle to find the website or indeed when they get there, the navigation is not intuitive enough for them to find what they need.”
Parity is building web portals for many of its public sector clients using Microsoft Office SharePoint designed to improve internal operations in document management and the dissemination of information to the general public. “Many IT companies think that it is just about coming up with the technology solution but this is not our approach,” says Conkleton. “We have experts in our teams on the technology but we also have experts in user centred design, content and search optimisation for delivery of the whole package.”
About Parity Group plc
Parity is a leading IT Business services organisation delivering technical, recruitment and training solutions to the UK and Irish markets.
They focus on the key areas of project, programme and IT service management. Parity's Training business educates client's own staff in these skill areas; their Resources business recruits highly skilled short term, interim and permanent staff; and their Solutions business takes total delivery responsibility for IT projects and programmes as well as the ongoing delivery of IT applications and business processes.
Parity's 30 years' expertise in Project and Programme Management minimises business risk associated with systems implementation, integration or business change for clients. Listed on the London Stock Exchange, Parity recorded a turnover of over £150m in 2006.
Parity has deep industry knowledge and expertise in Finance, Utilities, Telecoms and the Public Sector delivering people, skills and concepts for IT projects and programmes throughout the UK. Parity have provided these services to a range of notable clients, including Hewlett Packard, IBM, Ministry of Defence, Royal Bank of Scotland, Northern Ireland Electricity, Siemens and GlaxoSmithKline.
Contact details:
For more information on Parity, visit www.parity.net or contact Caroline Overholt (c.overholt@parity.net) or Luke Searle at ITPR (lukes@itpr.co.uk)
