Immediately following his swearing in, after being elected into office, the then Chairman of Udenu LCDA of Enugu state, Nigeria, declared as one of his mandates: to revolutionize it's citizens relationship at the local stage through digital technology.
Icelark was chosen to partner with the local government to make this vision come true.
After series of meetings with the chairman and some key Udenu council government officials, Icelark summarized and articulated the project objectives agreed upon:
When the local government stakeholders became satisfied with the current draft of the project objectives go ahead was given to begin work on crafting the digital strategy that would inform the subsequent activities/stages of the project.
With the authority from the chairman the Icelark team arranged meetings and workshops with the various departments of the local government to gather the primary information, knowledge and insights for the website.
These now formed the basis for the websites information architecture, content strategy and content models. From the meetings we also worked out the requirements for the website functionality, interactions and content foundations as it relates internally to the local government.
We conducted primary research to dig up relevant facts and information about past administrations and their achievements, history of the local government, information about the various communities within it, personalities, historical locations, and other interesting and relevant information.
At the end of the research exercise we had more information and data than we can possibly use. We now faced the enormous task of sorting through the "information mountain" to clean, validate, select and organise into useful data models.
The shear volume of information and data we had to work through necessitated a significant change in the project schedule. But the final outcome was worth the delay, as we ended up with sensible information architecture, content strategy and content management plans.
We finally translated all of the findings and insights into a digital strategy that captures the chairman’s digital vision, as well as that detailed how to realise it in concrete terms.
We broke down the digital strategy into definitive initiatives, with priorities, timelines, and final outcomes.
During our competitor’s and industry research, no other government website within Nigeria has any digital presence close enough to the vision we had for the Udenu local council website. Most of our inspirations and ideas came from researching foreign governments with established standards for government web and digital assets. These included governments in USA, Australia, UK, among others.
We were particularly attracted to these government digital resources because they has a very stringent standards, often documented, for creating digital assets. These are often documented and published as established policies. They spell out specific standards, guidelines and formats to the letter including security, performance, etc.
We adopted and adapted some relevant aspects of these standards, and fine-tuned them to suite our client's use case.
As a result the digital/web presence we created for Udenu Local Council Development Authority is of a global standard, well ahead of any other government digital presence in Nigeria at the time of it's launch. It was truly a national revolution.
We created social media channels that integrated seamlessly with the website, following the standard official government look and feel.
The result was a web and social media presence that served faithfully the digital aspiration of the then Udenu LCDA administration for the duration of their tenure, at least. The aspiration was to run a government tailor-made and suited for the modern 21st century era that is characterized and driven largely by the digital revolution.
With the web and social media platform Icelark created during his tenure, his mission was certainly accomplished.
With a new administration at the helm of affairs now, we hope the new stakeholders would recognize the value, take up and expand on the solid digital foundation that has been laid by the previous administration.
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