Chesterfield Royal hospital wanted a new website design, template and navigation system to improve the usability and visual appeal of the site. Working with Zedcore/HealtheWeb, Infobo provided the information architecture for the project, writing the design proposal, creating the wireframes and revising the navigational structure.

Infobo also project managed the development, using a PRINCE2 environment. The new design was launched ahead of schedule and on budget.

Visit the website at www.chesterfieldroyal.nhs.uk.

Advances in technology have made it easier to collect and organise information than ever before. Companies like Google and Facebook store billions of details from websites and online accounts, and make good money from the services they provide to people. Governments have also been developing information-centric systems, from the laudable data.gov initiatives both in the UK and the US to the more questionable collection of personal data. Once information is collected and organised electronically, it’s much easier to share and exploit.

The NUT used to communicate with lay officers across England and Wales via post and phone. The Union saw how this could be improved by utilising technology to do things more quickly, cheaply and effectively. The result is ‘Hearth’, an online community and resource centre that has transformed communication between the union, its officers, staff and reps.Phil Katz, the Project Manager behind ‘Hearth’, explains why the NUT acted; “Local authorities were merging, so we had some large localities that could trace Union roots back 130 years, and other small, newer associations of just 600 members. Through ‘Hearth’ we were able to provide the same level of high quality resources, information and advice to all groups in one place.”

In January, the government launched a new website aimed at making government information more accessible across the web. Inspired by a similar US website launched by the Obama administration, data.gov.uk provides free and easy access to large amounts of official data. The idea is that companies and organisations can use this information in new and innovative ways not provided for by the authorities.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British inventor of the World Wide Web, led on the project. In the 1990s, Berners-Lee devised a way to use the internet that would help make it easier to share information about physics with other researchers, laying the foundations for the World Wide Web. He has adopted a similar approach with data.gov.uk, using an evolving standard for sharing information called the ‘semantic’ web.

When Unions first started using the web, documents such as magazines, newsletters and circulars were loaded onto Union websites, usually on an ad hoc basis. In addition, there was a centralised system for storing items like publications, circulars and minutes. Intranets were yet another repository.This expansion has caused problems. Some collections would be the only store for certain documents, while other items were duplicated across all the collections. For Union staff, this has caused confusion, and members have found that the information available from the website is usually limited to a few publications.