Auros drives online engagement for unitary authority launch

Client profile

Bedford Borough Council became a unitary authority in April 2009. Previously Bedfordshire County Council had been responsible for areas such as education, social services and transport for the population of 155,000.

Business need

Faced with the challenge of reaching unitary status by the 1st April 2009, Bedford Borough Council evaluated their Web Content Management System (WCMS).

They concluded that legacy solutions would not meet the needs of the new Unitary Authority in terms of either scalability or features.

Inline with the e-government initiative the new website needed to transform how the council engaged with the public and provide opportunities for self-service.

What Auros did

Having demonstrated a great insight into the challenge as well as having significant experience in the Local Authority arena, Bedford Borough Council appointed Auros for this important project.

Auros delivered a robust and scalable WCMS replacing incumbent disparate systems and providing a fast and simple way for content specialists to update the website. The project was delivered within very aggressive time and budgetary constraints.

The project also provided Bedford Borough Council with the opportunity to run a content audit, ensuring all content was refreshed and presented in a user-friendly format in time for the launch of the new unitary authority.

bedford.gov.uk