“Liferay is the perfect solution for our agile approach to developing applications. The open standards platform allows us to concentrate on developing a great user experience in the knowledge that we are not locking ourselves into unsustainable support costs.” John Jackson, Assistant Director of ICT at London Borough of Camden

1. LIFERAY CASE STUDY
http:// www.camden.gov.uk
London Borough of Camden
www.camden.gov.uk
The London Borough of Camden covers an area of 22 square kilometres, stretching from
“Liferay is the perfect Hampstead Heath, one of the largest open spaces in the capital, through Camden Town, Euston,
solution for our agile and King’s Cross to central London. Parts of central London falling under Camden’s jurisdiction,
approach to developing such as Holborn and Covent Garden, are amongst the capital’s most developed areas.
applications. The open Camden Council delivers over 500 services to nearly 250,000 residents and 24,000
standards platform businesses, and supports a daily flow of commuters and visitors that increases its
allows us to concentrate population threefold. To ensure utmost quality of service, scrutiny committees carefully
on developing a great measure performance throughout the year. They play an important role in identifying
user experience in the areas that are not successfully meeting standards.
knowledge that we are
not locking ourselves Challenge
into unsustainable Local or central government bodies strive to deliver services as efficiently and effectively
support costs.” as possible. This is a great challenge – efficient services may not be able to address
complex issues, and effective services usually are not easily translated into straightforward
John Jackson
Assistant Director of ICT online procedures. Previously, Camden provided a limited number of disjointed online
services. A lack of cohesion and usability resulted in slow and expensive processes that
caused confusion for end users, in many cases requiring multiple contacts at the Council
to get one thing done. This situation was represented by a set of siloed ICT systems,
reflecting the Council’s disparate service offerings.
Camden recognised its services needed to be overhauled into a user-friendly online offering
with a single user interface (UI) for end users – one for citizens and one for local businesses.
The resulting savings in operational costs were a significant benefit, with an initial target
of £300,000 in annual savings year on year attached to the business portal project.
The Council’s business objective was to move 85% of their transactions online by 2015
using proven and robust software platforms. At this stage there was no preference for
either open source or proprietary software.
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2. LIFERAY CASE STUDY
Resolution
The Council’s priorities – service delivery and end user experience – defined the first step in designing a solution. An in-depth research
initiative revealed a variety of requirements expected by Camden’s residents and businesses: a single point of contact, viewable status
and history of transactions, customised content, and automated messaging and transaction confirmation. The right solution obviously
needed to be flexible and customisable. To lower costs and encourage users away from expensive, traditional channels, any online
offering must be a better and more convenient experience. Camden therefore designed their solution ‘bottom up’ from the end
user experience, using an open source portal solution: easy to set up, customisable, interoperable, and flexible. In summary,
Alasdair Mangham (Head of Information Systems and Development, Camden Council) said, “We must remember that channel shift
is the Council’s objective – not the customer’s. For our customers it is always about the easiest way to get something done.”
Initial in-house testing demonstrated Liferay Portal’s ability to meet Camden’s requirements in many ways, including multi-level authorisation,
standard compliance, and customisation of the user registration process. Camden’s Assistant Director of ICT, John Jackson, then commissioned
a formal evaluation with Gartner, who recognise Liferay Portal as a leader in their Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portals. Their expert analysis
proved to be a deciding factor into executive buy-in.
Liferay now powers the user interaction end of Camden’s two portal solutions: a business portal and a citizen-facing portal. Both portals
offer single points of contact where businesses and citizens can access information and transact securely with the council. Businesses
and citizens have different needs and frequencies of interaction. Liferay’s flexibility, however, meant that most of the code and functionalities
used in one portal could be adapted to the other. Other key components of Liferay included:
• High level of configurability without touching the core of the software
• A wealth of out-of-the-box features
• Standards compliance
• Enterprise grade support and UK-based account management
• Interoperability and integration capabilities (including Facebook, Google and Open ID login; legacy line of business application using
Camden’s integrated business services (SOA) and GIS addressing service; and financial information systems)
• Compatibility with the UK Government’s Open Standards agenda
Finally, Liferay’s agility allows for extensions of the portals to be taken in stages. From the first installation of Liferay, a working
citizen-facing portal was live in just twelve weeks. Within the following 15 months, Camden will have achieved two further releases on
the citizen-facing portal, and two on the business portal.
Business value added
The ongoing challenge for government continues to be delivering more services for less cost, and Liferay as an open source portal solution
enables just that. Camden’s portal solutions reduce costly, traditional channels of service delivery by moving them online in a way that
is secure, user-friendly and customisable. With no increase in staffing, Camden’s ICT team have seen increased productivity, faster time to
market, and significant savings for the Council.
Future planned releases include higher-level services for more sensitive layers of data requiring two-factor user authentication, as well
as use of Liferay Portal’s standard auditing portlet to capture relevant data to be fed into the Council’s customer insight and operational
management processes. As local and central government evolve to the next phase of web development, moving from delivering simple
transactions to a unified online customer service, they will find significant opportunity for innovation and savings offered by Open
Standards-based software.
Both Liferay and Camden are committed to continue working together to offer a local government solution on Liferay Marketplace in future.
Organisations interested in such a solution are encouraged to contact Liferay.
130107
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