COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

Monday, October 08, 2012

QUESTION NO.22

QUESTION: Councillor D. Looney

To ask the Manager, in the context of overall excellent online and social networking engagement by this Council, when it is planned to upgrade the design and structure of the Council website, as previously indicated; and in particular to improve access to Councillor details for members of the public on the Council's website and in its social networking.

REPLY:

Regarding the website redesign, works have continued throughout 2012. A complete redesign and information architecture exercise was undertaken in conjunction with the individual Council departments and with the benefit of intelligence gleaned from previous usage and statistical analysis in respect of what the customer base of the Council actually uses on www.sdcc.ie. An open source content management system known as Drupal has been utilised in the development thus far.

The major design work is now completed and further work is taking place on designing specific parts of the site such as the elected members portal referenced in previous reports. All of the previous web site content is being examined for ongoing relevance and earmarked as appropriate for being ported to the new format web site including an extensive range of archive documents which are available to download by the user. This process is considerable in its complexity and the voluminous nature of the content which currently exists.

The elected members portal incorporates the additional details requested for the elected members including social media, other contacts, alternate email addresses and maps of their respective electoral areas.

The project has a delivery date of Q4, 2012. The current best estimate for a go live is the first week of December, 2012.