It is not easy going green, particularly if you are unsure where to begin. Though consumers often have the best intentions to live more sustainable lives - to recycle, to buy locally produced food, to support fair trade, to set up a composter - these golden intentions are often crippled by a lack of useful information and sign-posting.
That's where SustainWales.com comes in. This ambitious project is managed by Cynnal Cymru, the not-for-profit Sustainable Development Forum for Wales. Funded by the Welsh Assembly Government, the Wales Council for Voluntary Action, and the Countryside Council for Wales, SustainWales.com makes it easy for consumers to find sustainable living projects in their community.
It also provides a simple but effective avenue for promotion for businesses or organisations providing sustainable products or services; since the website launch in July 2006, numerous small or voluntary projects are reaping the benefit of a listing in this web-accessible directory of sustainable development services.
The Requirement
Cynnal Cymru spent considerable time researching the market and developing a demonstration of the service that SustainWales.com would provide. Following feedback from focus groups across the spectrum of the website's intended users, the organisation sought a technical partner to develop an accessible, bilingual, database-driven website which could support the sophisticated location-based services it hoped to offer.
Helen Nelson, executive director of Cynnal Cymru, says: "Draig won the development contract on the strength of its in-house draig.PMD software application, and its familiarity with the complexities of bilingual website development."
The Solution
draig.PMD is a feature-rich enterprise information directory used by numerous organisations across the UK to collate and organise information from a diverse range of data providers. In addition to flexible search capabilities, it features a range of modules that are geared towards the varying needs of users.
As a result of this highly flexible and configurable functionality, each of draig.PMD's modules can be configured to meet the exact requirements of each client and situation.
Draig's software development team worked closely with Helen Nelson and Kris Rees, Cynnal Cymru's website officer, to decide the exact level of customisation of draig.PMD which would be required.
At the heart of SustainWales.com is a powerful geographic information service which integrates with Microsoft MapPoint, a programmable web service used by enterprises and independent software developers to integrate location-based services such as maps, driving directions and proximity searches into software applications and business processes. This feature was developed specifically for Cynnal Cymru, and now complements key functions within draig.PMD, including:
- Browsing and Searching. Enabling users to find and access information in the directory;
- Portfolios and Saved Searches. Enhancing data management and usability;
- Devolved Data Entry. Information providers entering their own content on the directory;
- Expiry Management and Notification. Enabling information to be maintained up to date and ensure relevance;
- Quality Assurance. Configurable with varying trust levels, to enable review and approval of all additions and changes to ensure appropriateness;
- Hierarchical User Management. Full user management with users structured into Organisations to enable management to be delegated;
- Access Rights and Data Scoping. Providing a flexible and manageable infrastructure to control user rights, permissions and restricting data scope;
- Audit Trails. Tracking all user activity to maximise security and auditability;
- Information Hierarchies. The capability to use templates to link information items to reflect real world relationships and cross-references;
- Multilingual support. Multilingual user interface, language preference tracking and integrity reports;
- Analysis and reporting. A reporting infrastructure providing monitoring and scrutiny of all activity, as well as analysis leading to market intelligence.
In addition to being fully bilingual and accessible, SustainWales.com is compliant with the Welsh Language Board's Bilingual Software Guidelines and Standards document, authored by Draig Technology. The company was commissioned to produce the guidelines by the WLB in recognition of its bilingual software development expertise.
A Successful Outcome
Draig's managing director, Richard Sheppard, has built his company on a cornerstone of project delivery on time and on budget. The SustainWales.com project is an exceptional example of this principle; Draig was given just six months to produce the directory, and its successful achievement of this target meant that SustainWales.com was showcased to critical acclaim at the 2006 Royal Welsh Show.
Helen Nelson comments: "We would never have achieved our goal of launching the site on time without Draig Technology's help. The company's project management was excellent and its people are brilliant communicators. Cynnal Cymru is looking forward to a long-term partnership with Draig which will see us realising our vision of a sustainable future for Wales."