March 2013 saw the completion of a wide-ranging two-year development programme of the warwickshire.gov.uk website, involving a shift in the delivery of online services and information; the development of a new content management system; and the implementation of new authoring models and standards.
The programme didn't just result in changes to the council's website. The e-services team, managing, leading, developing and ultimately implementing the programme, had vastly expanded its collective knowledge and adopted new approaches to developments.
The local elections of May 2013 came just two months after the completion of the programme. National media outlets had demonstrated new and exciting methods of presenting live election results, raising customer expectations in the process. Warwickshire county council wanted to rise to these new expectations, and this presented an exciting opportunity for the team to put some of its new found knowledge to good use.
We decided the system would serve two purposes – to present information to the public in the run up to election day, including details of previous election results for each electoral area; and to present live results as they were declared on results day. We felt that the use of maps was key to clear presentation of this information, with electoral areas and results being overlaid onto a map of the county.
Open source solutions offered us the level of flexibility we required, at zero cost. Applications and services such as OpenStreetMap, WordPress and JQuery were used for the presentation, while Google Fusion Tables (although not open source) was used for inputting and storing the data. Building the solution within existing technologies – namely WordPress – allowed us to apply the same branding and styling as the rest of the council website, ensuring a seamless user experience as they moved from the main site into the elections system.
The initial phase – the presentation of candidates and results of previous elections – was launched a few days before election day. It allowed customers to explore the democratic changes and the fortunes of each candidate since 2005. Feedback at this stage was positive, but limited – the real test would come on results day.
Counts were performed at centres at each of Warwickshire's five districts and borough on Friday 3 May. Officers at each count were responsible for inputting election results into a Google Fusion Table as they were declared. Within seconds, these results were automatically displayed on the election result system, with the electoral areas of the map being filled with the winning party's colour. Clicking on an electoral area then showed the breakdown of the votes, presented as raw figures and pie charts.
The e-services team closely monitored social media for real time customer feedback, and were able to respond to requests and suggestions from members of the public. For example, it became apparent that visitors would find useful an overall score of the number of seats won by each party. This was quickly developed and launched within an hour.
The system was designed to work well on mobile devices, using responsive design principles. On the day, 20% of visits came from mobile and tablet devices, with approximately 13,000 page views.
Back at the count centres, the election results webpages were projected on large screens, set to cycle between the overall county view and the electorial areas for that district. Members commented on how useful this had been in keeping track of the wider activity elsewhere. Officers at the counts also ensured the council's Democracy Twitter account was updated after each declaration.
The elections results system saw a total of 78,000 page views on Friday 3 May, including a peak of 620 simultaneous visitors – approximately five times the number the site normally receives. Most importantly, the site stayed up at all time, with barely any degradation in performance.
Since the election, the system has remained live at www.warwickshire.gov.uk/pastelections. It was initially developed specifically for the election, but has now become the main method of presenting election data (past and current) to the public. We believe this is a smarter approach to the issue of open data and transparency within the public sector, rather than simply publishing raw data.
Because the solution was built using open source solutions, we are able to share the technology and implantation details free of charge with other interested authorities. If you are interested, please contact paulinman@warwickshire.gov.uk.
Paul Inman, e-services team leader for Warwickshire county council. Content on this page is produced and controlled by Tata Consultancy Services
