Make it Local Scotland project updates

Below you will find updates on the councils we're working with through the Make It Local Scotland programme.

Orkney Islands Council - July 2012

History meets technology

Over the years in Orkney we have many different groups working with their heritage in different ways. I am the County Archaeologist, working with development and planning and archaeology and I maintain a database of sites and monuments records. Part of that database is a record of place names. Over the years it has become recognised that the place names on OS maps were collected by people who did not necessarily record the local way of speaking, instead attempting to standardise and anglicise the words, some of which had their roots in 800 years of Norse and then Scots language. So this project gives us an ideal opportunity to try to incorporate the spoken word by local people uploading their own place names in local dialect as an audio tag on our new site.

There is also a huge amount of damage being done to sites and monuments on the coast that I as a single archaeologist cannot hope to monitor. So I hope to engage people in recording historic sites and monuments and their condition as they encounter them, uploading current photos.

I was lucky enough to engage COPLA, an amazing IT company, who are presently in possession of a copy of the Orkney Sites and Monuments database and working on it, and with examples of Place names databases kindly supplied by the Shetland Amenity Trust and the Scottish Place Names Society (thanks due to Doreen Waugh in particular) are bringing together a database to pilot a more joined up and interactive approach to the historic environment.

Not only that but once I started, I began to realise that there were databases and records of place names of Orkney held in many different ways, including the database for Westray Peeceneems: This is part of a heritage initiative in that island (pop. c. 800). Here they have already recorded spoken place names, but have not launched them on the world wide web. And they have kindly offered to supply me with their files. This will enable us to get off to a good start.

We were also lucky enough to have a visit from Eileen Brooke Freeman from Shetland to support this project- she was helping to get the Deerness folk starting to record audio files. Eileen was sponsored by the ‘Thing Project’ an NPP EU project where Placenames are central to understanding these ancient assembly sites, one of which Deerness is the proud possessor.

Pictured above is a tenth and eleventh century Viking stronghold on the Brough of Deerness in Orkney which is being eroded by the sea. Hopefully people will want to contribute photos of its current state to support our new web project that is documenting our disappearing heritage.

Julie Gibson, County Archaeologist, Orkney Islands Council

Picture courtesy of Frank Bradford

Glasgow City Council - June 2012

We are Appy so far…

Work is progressing well on our snow app. Our developer, Iriss, has shown us a working prototype application that is able to plot multiple routes on a map from mock data. It seems to work fine and it’s been tested using GPS. Now we need to test this with ‘real’ data.

Our next step is to start working on an API so we can collect the ‘live’ data, following which we will need to do lots more testing to ensure the integrity of the data.

We are looking at setting up a focus group for the look and feel of the application so we can get objective input from our target audiences. We will specifically talk to our home care staff to test the prototype as they will make use of the app this winter to get out to their appointments in the community so it’s vital that it works well for them.

Gary Hurr, Glasgow City Council

Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Councils - May 2012

The project team have met three times - once physically and twice via teleconference - and have now agreed the final project scope. We had many ideas beyond the initial proposal but agreed to focus in this phase on ones that we can safely deliver in the timescale.

We've identified the necessary data sources from both authorities and are working through issues about what can be released as open data. We're still ironing out some issues about data formats and conversions but we can see a way through that now.

Bill at Swirrl has started work on building the RDF Triple Store and on importing sample data sets into it.

We're also looking at linkages with the TellMeScotland (PINS) portal, and road works / traffic commissioner data regarding road works.

Lighthouse have started work on wire-framing the web solution - for both the desktop and mobile web interfaces.

We've some work to do on the naming / branding of the finished product which will inform how we market the finished portal.

We're looking at how we utilise road users'  feedback to enrich the datasets, and add that to the data store.

Finally we're starting to look at how the councils' customer service and roads functions can utilise the data gathered and interact with users of the system.

We've two more project meetings lined up in the next month to keep things moving forward.

Ian Watt, e-Government Manager, Aberdeen City Council

Edinburgh Council - May 2012

The Edinburgh Make It Local Scotland project is now steaming along as we are nearly into June! The Project team has met several times and got to know one another as well as planning work towards our prototype delivery in July. At the moment we are carrying out user testing and deciding on the designer who will be working with us - I put out a brief locally some weeks ago. Our developer is also busy working on base code and carrying out research on some key points, notably mapping.

The user testing involves our service designer and customer experience consultant. Throughout the week we have drop-in sessions going on both with staff and the public. She has created some wireframes so that testers could get an idea of what we are wanting to deliver. So far feedback has been pretty positive, with people liking the idea, and giving lots of tips on what they'd like to see on our website and app. Parks and Green Spaces are somewhere most people want to spend time so we're on a bit of winner! Next week we'll be discussing the results as a team and feeding this into design and build for the prototype. We'll hope to test again in July and see how the initial service works for customers.

We're in the middle of designer selection as well, and that's a tricky process as we want someone with both the skills to deliver the really smart look we want but also able to work well to tight timescales and with other members of the project team they have to get to know pretty fast. We're expecting to have a clarifications meeting next week and take it from there. June is looking very busy.

Meantime we're working hard identifying content for the prototype, digitising some data, researching images and deciding on the size and shape of the content we'll use to describe features in parks. There are a number of questions -  how much content can you put on an App, how does it work between the App and the website, how much will users read? The team are getting a buzz out of discussing this and everyone is excited and wants it to work. So there is quite a lot of discussion going on.

And finally, with our Communications lead on board we're talking about the brand for this new digital service - amazing how difficult it is to come up with an original name! We need a name that describes the service, is easily understood and also has domain names available. In Edinburgh that's quite a hard ask so we're trying to be creative and hope to have white smoke coming out of the chimney next week. There are lots of marketing opportunities with our project, and the only limits will be budget and people to make it happen!

If you want to learn more about the project get in touch with Sally Kerr at Edinburgh Council (Sally.Kerr@edinburgh.gov.uk)