Brent was one of the first councils to begin to make its data open and is currently working on publishing its spend and contracts data. This page will be updated with progress.

Brent’s primary open data page is at www.brent.gov.uk/opendata. A list of useful links about Open Data is shown on the right hand side.

The project, which is funded by the IDeA, aims to help Brent residents reduce their energy consumption and explore the ways in which online social media can increase awareness of climate change issues.

The pages on BRAIN have embedded feeds from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and display aggregated energy usage data directly from the energy monitoring devices used by the participants in their homes. The aggregated data is displayed using Google APIs for the swingometer and line charts and the map showing energy savings by ward uses the standard Brent tMaps facility.

The project will run for 6 months and aims to show that energy usage can be reduced by at least 10%. The online charts will show the status of energy saving across the borough week by week with the baseline being established by usage in the first couple of weeks.

The Society of Information Technology Management (Socitm) published its annual Better Connected report on 1 March and rated the Brent website and 10 other UK local authority sites with the highest ranking.

Brent was also recognised as being consistently amongst the top 20 websites more times than any other local authority and is the only London borough to achieve the 4 star rating this year.

The survey took place last November and consists of over 120 questions covering a wide range of typical enquiries made to local authority websites.  Further details are available from the  news release on Socitm website.

We are using this in several ways on the Brent website -

1.  Maps. We have added a new category of Health which allows you to see all the doctors, dentists, pharmacies etc in Brent. See the Health category on http://www.brent.gov.uk/maps. This uses the NHS API to extract data relevant to Brent on a regular basis and store it so that the maps can be drawn quickly.

2.  Gadgets and widgets such as the Brent iGoogle and Mac OS X widgets. These allows you to specify a postcode and see the nearest doctors, dentists etc. They use the API to get the NHS data dynamically at that moment in time.

3.  Property pages. These show a wide range of data related to each property in Brent and under Health you can link to the nearest doctors, dentists etc in the NHS website. See http://www.brent.gov.uk/mybrent or for example the Town Hall page.  These simply use URLs containing the appropriate postcode.

At present, we have two available – one for iGoogle (compatible with any computer that has a web browser) and the other for Mac OS X.  A version for the Windows Vista / Windows 7 sidebar will be available in the future.

Currently the widget allows you to perform find-your-nearest searches with a variety of different types of location from our online mapping facility.  The “Directions” link shows you the route from your postcode location to the selected item.

More facilities will be added in the future.

See www.brent.gov.uk/gadgets for more details.

The page concentrates on using search rather than traditional navigation. You can select whether to search on everything or just services or forms. Or you can use  ’find your nearest’ and enter a postcode to see the local services you want on a map.

The search box uses type ahead text to help you find what you are looking for quickly – just select the item you want from the drop down list.  If it is not in the list then just click on the Search button to use the search engine as normal.

The popular pages, forms and services use data taken automatically from the Google Analytics results for the website.

We really welcome constructive feedback on our trial homepage.  Please either post a comment on this blog and vote for your preferred homepage or email webmaster@brent.gov.uk

You might also like to look at other local authority websites which have already changed to minimal home pages such as Lancashire, Swale or Westminster.

Update 28 Nov 2009:  We will be using the minimal page in place of our normal homepage for a trial period starting on 7 December. We will then revert to the normal homepage while we evaluate the feedback and decide which will be the primary page in the future – so please carry on sending us your comments and many thanks to those who have already done so.

Update  18 Dec 2009: we have now gone back to the old homepage while we analyse the results of the trial. But the minimal page is still available and you can still comment on it.

Update 1 July 2010: The minimal homepage is now live and has replaced the previous version. Many thanks to all those who gave us feedback during the consultation – our response to your suggestions is in a comment to this post.

Rationalising down to a couple of websites works well for central government but what happens when the service or information is delivered by local government?  This is where Local Directgov comes in – it provides the link between Directgov or BusinessLink and the 380 local authority websites in England.

When you are on the Directgov website and ask for information about a local service (e.g. parks, libraries or council tax) you will be asked for your postcode or nearest town and then redirected straight to the appropriate page for that service on the relevant local authority website.

The EU Services Directive which comes into force in December 2009 depends on Local Directgov to allow enquiries from anywhere in Europe about licences or business regulation to be directed to the appropriate page on a UK local authority website.

The way this works is that each council website supplies the URL of its pages for about 200 common services to Local Directgov. These services are part of the Local Government Service List (LGSL) which is a comprehensive list of the 700+ services that local government provides.

LGSL has other benefits – it allows webpages which relate to a particular service to be grouped together within a council website or similar information viewed across other local authority websites.  It can also be used in conjunction with the Local Government Navigation List (LGNL) to link relevant pages to the common navigation headings that are often used on local authority websites.

The Brent Council website uses LGSL very extensively.  It allows us to provide the appropriate left hand navigation and relevant associated information on the right hand side of any page or form. When the page is concerned with one of the 200 services supported by LDG it also allows us to link directly to the appropriate page on other council websites across London.

For example a map URL contains the LGSL code for a particular service e.g 438 for Libraries and this results in the relevant Library navigation being displayed on the left of the map.

Or the page for Parks shows “See this service in other boroughs” under Related Links because it is an LDG supported service and this allows you to select any other London borough and go straight to its own Parks page.

The use of Local Directgov and LGSL helps to allow local authority websites to retain their own separate identities that cater for local needs and priorities but also present a standard appearance when it is necessary.

A PowerPoint presentation (1.2 Mb) showing the use of LGSL/LGNL is now available (October 2010).

This needs a combination not only of web software that that can generate XHTML compliant code but also web editors who take care to create content that is easy to read and will be accessible for users with assistive technology.

We have recently employed the help of two leading organisations in this area – the RNIB and the Shaw Trust – to conduct accessibility reviews of the Brent website and we are engaged in implementing their recommendations.

You might have noticed some of the changes that we have made – such as greater contrast between text and background, highlights when you select an option and more notification when a page opens in a new window.

If you experience any accessibility problems with our website or you have any related suggestions we would like to hear from you.

In the past online mapping used to mean complex GIS (Geographical Information Systems) but now that Google maps and GPS systems are so popular everyone expects online maps on council websites to be just as easy to use.

In fact there is a place for both approaches – Google type maps for convenience & ease of use and GIS type maps for precision & accuracy – so we provide both on the Brent website. Indeed we have gone further than this to give you a choice between Google, Microsoft or Ordnance Survey maps.

And we have done our best to help users with visual impairment to be able to use the maps by including text information for the locations as well as the visual map itself – below the map is a list of the locations with links to further data held elsewhere on the website.

If you think that any of the locations are not correct we have provided a facility for you to let us know – just click on the pin icon and select the correction option in the Infobox  – click on the map for the new location and we will be notified of your suggestion.

See for yourself at www.brent.gov.uk/maps or look at an example such as Schools in Brent.

Brent Council website

We won’t be able to reply to every comment but value your opinions and will keep you up to date with new changes, features and modifications as a result of your feedback.

You can post a comment on this site or email us at webmaster@brent.gov.uk