What is the innovation?

The innovation in Redbridge is a new council website, Redbridge-i, which users can customise and personalise, and which uses features based on Web 2.0 principles to encourage community engagement.

How did it happen?

The initial idea for Redbridge-i came from the Council’s Chief Executive Roger Hampson, in early 2006. He wanted to draw on the best of private sector thinking in terms of the tools used on their websites. He set his officers the task of reviewing the impact of these new technologies on the private sector and their potential uses in public organisations.

Redbridge felt that a website that incorporated user generated content could give residents a direct say in how services are delivered. By improving communication with the public, the Council would also gain information about the needs of communities in the Borough and increase the savings made through online transactions.

The Chief Executive also felt that if the Council didn’t offer users the opportunity to comment on services, other websites would fill this gap in the market: ‘Who owns the local authority? It should be the public. It should be their descriptions of their localities. We should be able to say to them, “this belongs to you, and you don’t need to go to another website to make us do something”.’

From an initial set-up meeting in June 2006, the development of the Redbridge-i website took about a year. The work was progressed through a weekly project board meeting involving staff from across the organisation and chaired by the Chief Executive. A live website was built as a proof of concept and this was demonstrated to the Council’s Management Board and members in September 2006.

Following Cabinet approval in October 2006, the technical development of the site began. The proof of concept demonstrated that the Council had the internal expertise to deliver the project in-house. Redbridge felt that this option represented the best value for money, offered them the most flexibility to make ongoing changes to the site and promoted a greater sense of ownership within the Council.

A light touch approach has been taken to user registration on the website. Users do not need to register to customise the site. They can modify the features that appear on the homepage and their layout on the page. These include internal and external modules, for example ‘my councillors’ or BBC news and weather.

Users accessing services through the site can also register to personalise the site based on their postcode. Information such as the location of recycling points, library opening times or transport services, will then relate directly to their locality. They can request emails alerting them to changes to services, for example informing them of waste collection times during holiday periods. Users are provided with recommendations for other pages they might find useful based on their profile and the pages they access.

Interactive maps allow the public to report the exact location of incidents such as missed bin collections, graffiti, street lighting problems or abandoned vehicles. The site is also integrated with the local land and property gazetteer.

The Council hosts and moderates a number of discussion forums on the website, on topics such as the use of allotments, forthcoming budget decisions and Redbridge’s impact on the environment. There are seven area-based forums where participants can discuss issues relevant to their specific localities. The Mayor also writes a regular blog.

News of the site, including features in national newspaper and radio media, has generated a lot of interest from other authorities. The Council is keen to make the features of Redbridge-i available to other authorities, and has continued to use open source technologies which allow maximum compatibility.

What has changed?

There has been a steady increase in online registrations since the website was launched. These are currently running at about 500 new registrations a month and there has been a 10 per cent increase month on month since Redbridge-i launched. In total Redbridge-i has over 10,100 live registered users and 50,000 unique visitors in total. This has largely been achieved through word of mouth. Forty-six per cent of registered users have requested email alerts about changes to services.

People are starting to use the site for transactions. Payments online doubled in the month after Redbridge-i went live and are currently running at over 3,500 a month, equating to nearly £500,000; around 1,000 transactions a month more than the previous year’s figures. Each transaction carried out on Redbridge-i is £1.75 cheaper than a phone transaction and £6.32 cheaper than a face to face transaction. There has been a resultant drop in visits to one-stop-shops and telephone enquiries. However moving people to cheaper channels is not the sole goal of Redbridge-i: it aims to get residents more interested in the Council and its services.

Redbridge sees the changes to its website as having widened the field of participation and debate. It has engaged groups of people who do not normally contribute to debates about local services, and is receiving more and broader feedback on its performance.

The online forums are a popular feature of the new website, with over 1,000 forum messages posted in the last quarter of 2007. Over 700 incident reports were made via the website in the same period. The Council has found out about minor issues, such as not being able to get in the building early enough when observing committee meetings, that are a source of irritation for the public and can be rectified quickly. It has now developed community specific forums, for example for the different faith groups in the Borough, to facilitate more discussion. Ultimately it plans to develop a ‘pledge bank’, where citizens can get together, for example, to clean up a local pond.

This approach also allows the Council to identify coherent patterns of interaction, providing them with rich data for segmenting the local communities. For example, it can identify school service users and forum contributors on related topics and contact these people if any changes are proposed to education services. This is timely, cost-effective and targeted.

Why did it work?

Key to the success of the initiative is a clear vision driven by a wider philosophy about changing the relationship between citizens and local councils. The notion that technology is making people more aware of their neighbourhoods, and that the local authority was the natural organisation to channel this interest, was key to securing broad political support for the initiative.

Redbridge-i was not a heavily planned programme, and was delivered by a small team with engagement across the Council. The team felt it would be hard to predict consumer demand, and so followed an ‘emergent strategy’ of adding functions and seeing how well they are used. As Chief Executive Roger Hampson says, ‘I am not going to map out all the possible consequences of any new function… we let the resident do that, and where it doesn’t work well we discontinue it.’

The Council’s members were involved in the early debates on how to develop the website and their input has shaped it throughout. One concern was that increased public engagement through the forums might diminish the role of councillors as the representatives of their wards. However, members have been given training on contributing to discussion forums and many contribute regularly to debates. In this way Redbridge-i is beginning to facilitate increased engagement between councillors and the public.

Redbridge was keen that the website was not seen as the province of their ICT team. A conference in the spring of 2007 involved about 500 staff from across the organisation in developing the website. Workshops explored issues such as: using mapping techniques; enhancing transactional capacity; and using the discussion forums. Focus groups were also held with the public to explore the website features they would expect to use.

An important ingredient for the success of the forums is that relevant officers respond quickly, when appropriate, and members frequently participate in discussions. This means questions are answered effectively, positions clarified and a more productive dialogue can be held. This has required a culture that is prepared to accept criticism and engage in debate in real time.

What next?

Redbridge is continuing to develop the website, particularly its interactive features. The Council is using the technology to start an ongoing dialogue with communities in the Borough on local issues. The Council is also launching The Redbridge Conversation, a large-scale collaboration with the public to clarify local funding priorities. In particular it hopes to widen the consultation beyond the people who will get involved anyway, for example through area committees, and engage in more detailed discussions with particular sections of the community.