LocalGov Drupal (LGD) FAQs

Interested to learn more about LocalGov Drupal (LGD)? We've compiled a collection of frequently asked questions (FAQs) to help you better understand the value and opportunity of LGD to your teams and users.

Invuse and Annertech - your LGD team

As UX specialists we combine our knowledge of accessibility, user research and content best practice to ensure that your LGD website supports key user journeys and provides an exceptional user-first experience. Our approach ensures your site drives digital transformation, and the adoption of a digital first agenda.

Along with our development partner, Annertech, we provide Drupal development, user research, and digital accessibility services to support a Drupal best-of-breed website that councils across the UK can easily adopt and use with minimal upfront and ongoing maintenance costs attached.

Invuse and Annertech have been working with local councils across the United Kingdom and Ireland for over 8 years to design, develop and test with local authorities and their end users.

Q. What is LocalGov Drupal

LocalGov Drupal is a partnership of councils across the United Kingdom, working together to design, develop and share Drupal code to help one another serve their citizens more efficiently.

The initiative is part funded by the Ministry of Local Government and Housing and the councils involved, to help continuously improve and evolve the code being developed between the councils so that all involved benefit.

Q. What is LocalGov Drupal trying to achieve?

Together, we are trying to help councils co-develop, share and maintain open source Drupal code for their citizen facing websites.

We are trying to identify and resolve challenges that councils across the United Kingdom are facing on their websites with the services they’re providing to their citizens.

We want to work together to create a unified approach to solving these challenges, sharing our experiences and expertise to solve problems once together instead of numerous times individually.

Q. What challenges does LocalGov Drupal help you overcome?

  1. Reducing the time and resource intensive tasks of redesigning and rebuilding platforms that other councils have already built to meet business objectives.
  2. Gain access to the knowledge and practices from other councils that have already been solved through LocalGov Drupal.
  3. If you have budgetary challenges in building a website from scratch or migrating from your existing website, LocalGov Drupal is a cost effective solution.
  4. Shared costs with your fellow councils. Many organisations lack the resources needed to build new features on their websites independently. If other councils believe your suggestions would benefit them, this can be delivered and funded collectively through LocalGov Drupal.
  5. Reduce any concerns around meeting GDS standards. The LocalGov Drupal distribution’s default theme has been designed based on the GDS Service Manual, however, you will work with a Drupal partner to design your own look and feel, ensuring your brand and culture is present.

Q. What are the benefits of using LocalGov Drupal for your website?

  1. Shared code and best practices help you to maintain and evolve your website to continuously meet the needs of your citizens.
  2. Access to both Technical and Communications Specialists to support you with any ideas you want to explore or challenges that you face regarding your website.
  3. Whether it’s getting you up and running quickly, migrating your current website or working on custom developments and integrations, your Drupal partner will be on hand to support you continuously.
  4. You’re contributing towards the community. As LocalGov Drupal grows, your input helps to shape, build and improve the partnership for all councils involved.

Q. What experience does Invuse and Annertech have in this space?

Invuse and Annertech have been working with Local Councils across the United Kingdom and Ireland for over 8 years, providing Drupal development services.

We are recognised in the market as one of Europe’s leading Drupal specialists, having some of the brightest minds in the Drupal community.

Our teams are very active members of the Drupal community, with over 5,000+ commits and over 150 years’ combined Drupal experience. We are also responsible for in excess of 50 contributed projects on drupal.org.

Invuse have worked with both local and central government over the last 8 years, working on various user research projects, and helping customers design, develop and deploy industry leading digital services that focus on the key objectives as defined by GDS, using agile development.

Annertech have worked closely with some of the largest local councils in Ireland, designing and developing Drupal web services that focus on helping organisations meet end user requirements and business objectives. This is done alongside contributing to Ireland’s build to share initiative for code sharing at a council level.

Q. Who is using LocalGov Drupal?

LocalGov Drupal (LGD) currently have over 30 participating councils including:

  • Bath & North East Somerset
  • Blackburn & Darwen
  • Bracknell Forest
  • Brighton & Hove
  • Canterbury
  • Croydon
  • Cumbria
  • East Hampshire
  • Essex
  • Hammersmith & Fulham
  • Haringey
  • Hart
  • Havant
  • Kensington & Chelsea
  • Lambeth
  • Luton
  • Milton Keynes
  • Newcastle
  • Oxfordshire
  • Redcar and Cleveland
  • Rutland
  • Sheffield
  • Tamworth
  • Waltham Forest
  • West Lindsey
  • City of Westminster
  • Wirral

Q. Who are our customers?

Invuse are working with councils – including Essex, Redcar and Cleveland, Barking and Blackburn – helping them bring to life their digital transformation strategy, adopt a digital-first approach and connect their organisational priorities/goals with the voice of their end users.

"Working with the teams involved has been incredible, their passion and buy-in with our vision was what made the whole journey, from procurement to delivery, completely seamless. The transparency and communication back to our team is why we have been able to launch an efficient resident-focused platform."
Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council
“The project taken on by Invuse was a culmination of a great working relationship, professional insight and shared knowledge of WCAG regulations, a higher level understanding of accessibility and our responsibility towards our residents. The team at Invuse was helpful, friendly, available at any time and able to provide advice and resolutions throughout the project.”
Blackburn and Darwen Website Team

Q. What will the service include?

We will work with you to deliver each phase of your rollout, as defined below:

Localgov Drupal discovery phase

Stage 1 - Discovery & Strategy

Initially we’ll work closely with you to conduct a functional and technical discovery on your current website to help us understand the architecture and setup. From this we will carry out a gap analysis on what you have and how that maps to what the LocalGov website service offers.

Following this, we’ll then move into a migration discovery phase that focuses on conducting a detailed analysis of the components and content on your website that will need to be migrated. The output of this discovery will be to create a plan that seamlessly migrates you across to the new website service.

Finally, we’ll conduct a thorough user research phase that includes stakeholder interviews, end user surveys, and scenario testing to ensure we have an in -depth understanding of what your website needs, and the tools you need to deliver the services your citizens need.

Stage 2 - Design & Implement

As part of this phase, we will work with you to analyse the requirements gathered throughout the discovery phase, before designing and building your new website. This will include UX Design, Content Design, Information Architecture (IA) and building out any defined features and integrations required for your website.

Once you’re happy with the design and build of the website, we’ll support you every step of the way throughout your migration stage.

Stage 3 - Maintain and evolve

Once you’ve launched your new website, Annertech will work closely with you to host and maintain your service ensuring the performance of the service is to the highest possible quality, and all security and environment updates are completed in a timely fashion.

The team will keep you updated with any new developments taking place with other councils using the LocalGov Drupal service, and ensure you reap the benefits for any new features introduced.

As well as this, Annertech will support you with any custom developments you wish to make on your website.

Q. How easy will it be to move from our existing website to the LocalGov Drupal service?

We’re here to support you the whole way through the process, making the transition as smooth as possible. Following the discoveries detailed above, we’ll be able to present you with a detailed plan to move your website across to the LocalGov service and introduce you to the team. The design and build side of things will be simple, then we just need to focus on migrating any features or content across that are still relevant to you.

Q. How much does it cost?

The benefit of open source code is that costs are kept to a minimum. The code that has already been developed by LocalGov Drupal will be given to you completely free of charge, saving you time and money. The only costs that you will incur is the effort required to move from your current service and any additional custom development that you desire.

Once you’ve launched your new website, you’ll then only have to pay a small annual fee for us to host and maintain your website, and for any new developments you wish to make throughout the contract.

Q. What if we need to develop a feature that other councils don’t have?

That’s not a problem, in fact it’s expected. Although councils provide similar services and are trying to overcome the same challenges, we understand that there will always be unique challenges and requirements for each website.

A good example of a feature request or integration request could be requiring your intranet to connect to your website to share and publish content between the platforms. In this instance, we work closely with Invotra Limited to integrate their intranet solution with the LocalGov Drupal distribution used to build your website.

Annertech has a team of experienced designers and developers that will support you through any features you wish to develop and add to your website.

Q. How do we get started with LocalGov Drupal?

Join 26 UK councils (and counting) who are benefiting from the power of LocalGov Drupal and let Invuse open your eyes to the possibilities of better user experience, stronger collaboration and the opportunity to become the voice of your end users.

5 reasons to choose Invuse

  1. We provide extensive user research and stakeholder engagement ahead of migration to ensure your solution meet your users needs and expectations
  2. We carry out content/accessibility audits and cleanse exercises with stakeholders using redundant, out-of-date and trivial (ROT) analysis
  3. We have 15+ years Drupal and Local Government experience while LDG is built in adherence to GOV.UK, NHS Identity and GDS design principles
  4. We carry out extensive key user journeys mapping and implementation
  5. We carry out both remote and face-to-face user and accessibility testing

Get in touch to learn more and we can get your discovery scheduled. Complete the form (right), email enquiries@invotra.com
or call +44 (0)20 8164 6423 (UK and Ireland).

Start your journey with LGD here