Essex paves the way for the Citizen's Gateway

Citation

(2002), "Essex paves the way for the Citizen's Gateway", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 36 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/prog.2002.28036aab.006

Essex paves the way for the Citizen's Gateway

Essex paves the way for the Citizen's Gateway

Essex County Council has been awarded £865,000 by the New Opportunities Fund (NOF) under its digitisation programme, intended to support the creation of useful information and resources for the People's Network – the initiative to link all public libraries to the Internet.

The award, one of the largest made by NOF under this programme, will enable Essex County Council to develop a sophisticated "finding aid" designed to make it easier for people to get information over the Internet.

The Seamless Citizen's Access to Digitised Sources project (SCADS) will create a Web-based Citizen's Gateway: a single point of access to information from multiple sources. Important benefits of SCADS include:

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  Enabling people to find information from national and local sources in a single search.

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  Selection by the project team of information from the best available sources, ensuring the use of up-to-date standards and common indexing terms.

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  Searching Web sites and databases together, providing a single set of results for the user.

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  Searching for information by subject and place.

The project partners come from a number of key public information providers and portal initiatives including: the NHS (NHS Direct and National Electronic Library for Health), Departments of Education and Skills and Work and Pensions (worktrain), BBC (BBC Online), Lord Chancellor's Department (Just Ask – Community Legal Service), HMSO (Information Asset Register), e-envoy's office (UK Online), Common Purpose (Citizen Connect), NACAB (Advice Guide), East of England Development Agency (Regional Observatory). Private sector partners include Fretwell Downing Informatics and MDR Partners.

Substantial extra funding has also been made available by NOF for a broader consortium project (led by Essex County Council), which includes the charities Age Concern and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, together with other local authorities including North Lincolnshire, Medway, Bexley, Brighton, Bromley, East Sussex, Kent, and West Sussex. As a result, the SCADS system will benefit a combined population of over six million users. It is planned that, eventually, the SCADS solution will be implemented by other local authorities across the country.

The SCADS project builds on SEAMLESS, an earlier project in Essex, through which a large number of local information providers are co-operating to provide information services to the public. SEAMLESS is the first element of the Essex Community Network, which will also include the development of the Essex Online portal. SEAMLESS (www.seamless.org.uk) was officially launched in July 2001 at the Essex Record Office, Chelmsford.

For further information please contact: Essex County Council Corporate Communications, PO Box 11, County Hall, Chelmsford CM1 1LX, UK. Tel: +44 (0) 1245 492211; E-mail: corp.comms@ essexcc.gov.uk; URL: www.essexcc.gov.uk