A number of major city councils have implemented an update to their web platforms, that eliminates the high cost of upgrading to major version releases thanks to an continuous delivery process developed by software provider Jadu.
Coventry City Council recently moved to the new iterative platform ‘Jadu Universe Continuum’ alongside a re-design of their corporate website, part of a strategic focus on the digital customer experience and wider transformation programme.
The web should be the channel of choice for Coventry City Council and needs to underpin everything we do. Our priorities are to the people we serve and it’s essential that we focus on the channels and devices they choose.
Martin Reeves, Chief Executive of Coventry City Council
The council’s website was redesigned recently to work on mobile, tablet and desktop devices, which is a feature of the Jadu Universe Continuum Platform, the web content management system the Council uses to publish its website.
Jadu has recently reinvented the release cycle for the new Universe Continuum platform of web content management (Jadu CMS) and data capture (Jadu XFP) enterprise tools to use an Agile, continuous delivery process. This means that the software the council uses to power its web channel can be upgraded to new versions in weeks rather than years, with little effort and resources, reducing the overall cost of updating the software by 70% - saving up to £1.2m per year.
In the last 12 months, Jadu has made substantial changes to our business and our culture to ensure we were meeting the needs of our customers. Through Continuous Delivery, we can now keep customers like Coventry City Council up to date with the latest feature releases measured in days instead of years. We’ve seen the last of big bang upgrades to our platform and our customers have welcomed the move. We would like to see larger IT firms in the sector doing the same.
says Suraj Kika, Chief Executive Officer of Jadu.
Among the council’s who have moved to the Jadu Universe Continuum platform are York City Council, Manchester City Council and Worcestershire County Council.
This is really exciting news. At our recent Local Digital Trends event Jadu and other suppliers supporting the programme were very keen to do more to help local government meet a challenging future by using digital more effectively.
I am delighted to see Jadu showing such great leadership, helping to move local government on faster and further. And I will be interested to see whether other suppliers pick up the gauntlet that Jadu has thrown down!
Julian Bowrey, Deputy Director Corporate & Digital Communications at DCLG
Jadu now powers over 70 local authority websites, apps, e-forms and payment services in the UK with a rapidly growing local government business in the US and Australia. The company has traditionally been releasing new updates and versions of the platform twice per year, however as of this month both products will release every two weeks.
Local Authorities need to keep ahead of the digital curve. It is essential our web platforms can stay up to date in order to meet our customers needs to access council services online. We are really pleased that Jadu have innovated with much faster updates and continuous improvement in support of the Council’s digital strategy and desire to be more Agile.
Martin Reeves, Chief Executive of Coventry City Council
Jadu has been implementing Agile since 2013 and delivered its first significant Agile projects last year including a £2.5m contract for The Ministry of Justice among others. The company announced the launch of its cloud based Case Management system, ‘Jadu Q’ last month.
