The Organisation

The District of North East Derbyshire was formed in 1974 comprising Chesterfield Rural District Council and the Urban Districts of Clay Cross and Dronfield.

A population of almost 100,000 residents is spread across the heart of the former North Derbyshire Coalfield, covering an area of approximately 100 square miles.

The Challenge

Before implementing Interact, NEDDC’s intranet was simply a document store and telephone directory. It consisted of mainly hard-coded html pages so maintenance and development required technical knowledge and expertise from a handful of qualified ICT staff.

There was no search facility and there were often complaints about the information not being kept up to date. Also there was no way that information could be targeted or restricted to certain groups.

Fran Walton, e-Information Officer at NEDDC comments:

“Although it contained the telephone directory, an electronic copy of the staff handbook and various other documents for staff reference, there was definite scope for development in terms of creating a more collaborative, or ‘transactional’, hub for Officers across the authority”

Use of a well managed and current intranet would also lead to savings in operating costs, a reduction of paperwork, faster and better access to up to date information and improved control over document versions.

The Objective

 The key objectives of the new intranet were:

• To improve communication across their large organisation, particularly as Officers
  are spread out across a number of locations.
• The authority was going through a prolonged period of change, particularly in terms of electronic delivery of both back-office and customer-focused services. One way to ensure that Officers remained engaged in this change period was to ensure full breadth of communication at all levels. The delivery of a well thought-out intranet facility would allow as many Officers as possible to remain in touch with developments and strategies.
• To enhance efficiency savings in both Officer time and printing costs. A large amount of information was being distributed either across the whole organisation or within service areas via email or paper.
• Document Management: A central document repository would enable the authority to keep a tighter control over versions of various documents, allow a central place for Officers to access these documents, and increase Officer
  confidence in the validity and currency of the same documents. Physical office space could also be increased as there would be less space required for storing paper copies of publications and documentation.
• To reduce the strain on the email system:  A vast amount of information was shared across the authority via email, including large documents that could clog up users’ email inboxes.

Review and Research

NEDDC carried out a number of surveys with their users to find out:

• How satisfied they were with the old intranet; this survey actually revealed that 57% of respondents never actually used the intranet.
• They also conducted a more in-depth survey to get an idea for the features and facilities that staff would like to see in their intranet.

They also set up a Customer Reference Group – a number of staff from various service areas who were involved in every step of the intranet product specification and selection process. Following initial research, NEDDC invited a number of providers to demonstrate their software. The different systems were ranked according to how closely they met the requirement specification and could perform each of the tasks outlined therein.

Commenting on the choice of Interact, Fran Walton said:

“We examined a number of different solutions and formally assessed three intranet providers. A group of Officers from various service areas were delegated to help write our requirement specification and to assess the various suppliers’ offerings. Overall, Interact scored highest against our key requirements. It also had the right balance between being easy to use with its intuitive interface yet offering a feature rich, flexible and powerful solution”

Download the full case study to see lots of screenshots and read about how NEDDC:

• Manage their intranet
• How they branded and launched their intranet
• How they structure the intranet
• How they engage users
• How they use the intranet as a communication and collaboration tool
• How their intranet has improved NEDDC's processes
• How they ensure the intranet meets the needs of users