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Projects » The Conservative Party » Six Challenges
Overview
David Cameron has recently established six 'policy groups' to examine six key challenges facing Britain and the rest of the world. Dealing with issues such as global poverty, social justice and public service reform, each policy group will use the next eighteen months to explore and understand today's problems and their solutions. More crucially, people from outside politics will be involved in each group and will help inform the policy development process. What is essential to the 'six challenges' initiative is that the Conservative Party creates a dialogue with the electorate and allows opinions to be heard.
Challenge
Our brief was to support each of the six challenges online, with a coherent communications framework that could be tailored to each policy group and their target demographic. The content management of each challenge website would need to be completely intuitive, catering for a user group that would be technically non-savvy. Most importantly, these websites were to act as points for discussion away from the constraints of the main Conservative Party website. Web 2.0 technologies would be used to empower the electorate and give the public a voice where policy making was concerned.
Solution
The suite of policy group websites was created and deployed within a two month timescale. Our end solution is a consistent and intuitive set of Web 2.0 features that can be activated by each policy group for their respective sites. Based on the TYPO3 platform and our 'involve' technology, our simplified content management solution uses AJAX to create a responsive and seamless user interface. Editorial content on each challenge website can be created and edited 'in-line' by non-technical users, allowing them to click on a web page, edit text and publish content without ever having to enter a separate window or application. To create an ongoing dialogue with the electorate, interactive features such as blogs, forums and podcasts can be easily activated and managed by policy members. All of this happens within a fixed and consistent visual framework.
On a technical level, we have created a 'social software' package that is driven by TYPO3 but simplifies the user interface for day-to-day website publishers. Our page and feature-editing tools allows each policy group to tailor their website for their target audience. But most importantly of all, these websites offer the public an unparalleled gateway to engagement with policy makers. The 'Six Challenges' websites represent the very centre of modern conservative thinking.
Visit the Six Challenges websites:
www.globalpovertychallenge.com
www.qualityoflifechallenge.com
www.competitivechallenge.com
www.oursecuritychallenge.com
www.socialjusticechallenge.com
www.publicserviceschallenge.com
Services used on this project