It lets us pool our resources and think bigger, creating groundbreaking features that help everyone.
Once the work is complete, it is open-sourced and free for anyone to use.
What our Community Fund has delivered in 2024
Elections (v2 and v3) - We delivered two major upgrades thanks to funding from Cumberland and Westmorland & Furness Councils. Rohallion led the dev work with contributions from Mark Conroy, Big Blue Door and others.
Subsite extras - With funding from Essex County Council, our suppliers, Chicken brought functionality developed for Hammermsith & Fulham Council to everyone. Mark Conroy, Annertech and Big Blue Door also contributed.
Events v2 (coming soon) - With the same Essex funding, Chicken are creating a new version of Events that will include multiple event channels rather than a single list. Brighton & Hove has also contributed and is already using the code on its site.
Thanks to all those who've contributed.
Projects that need funding
Alongside participating councils, we've identified these features that require funding from one or more councils.
- Elections v4 - supports elections where multiple candidates can be elected in any single ward, also potentially adding proportional representation
- Auto-import of PDFs into publications - allows councils to automatically transform PDFs into our new web based Publications content format
- Insight dashboard - pulls analytics, call centre data and user feedback directly into the content admin view of LocalGov Drupal where content designers can use it to improve site content
- Quality metrics - provides automated accessibility, readability, page weight and other performance measures to enable better content design
- Specialist Planning Publishing - discovery project for local plans, design codes and data publishing for planning teams in councils
As the work progresses, we’ll add detailed pages for each project, including estimated costs.
How to co-fund a feature
Have you seen something your council is interested in? If so, email Will, and we’ll let you know how to proceed.
How the Community Fund works
We’ll run a campaign to see if any councils are interested in funding a particular feature or product.
We'll start the work once we have the interest/funding required.
The way projects are delivered will remain flexible to ensure ease of delivery. This will include:
- Using council devs to do the work and inter-council money transfers.
- Using specialist devs and administered through LocalGov Drupal/Open Digital Co-operative or a lead council.
- Using our core team
Once we have the money pledged, LocalGov Drupal/Open Digital Co-operative will let other contracts to subscribing suppliers.
Subscriptions
The Roadmap and BAU are funded through our regular subscriptions. We are a not-for-profit co-operative; 70% of subscription revenue is spent on further developing the platform and 30% on running the project and facilitating our collaboration.