Province of Flemish Brabant
Amplexor builds new website for Province of Flemish Brabant based on Tridion WCM solution
Implementation of a Web Content Management (WCM) system for the new website of the province of Flemish Brabant, which is very user-friendly and has many extra features. In the longer term, the administration of the province also wants to build its new intranet in this new WCM system. The implementation will be managed by the province, with the support of consultants provided by Amplexor.
The administration of the province of Flemish Brabant was looking for a new Web Content Management System based on a call for tenders. It opted for a negotiated procedure with prior publication at European level. The contract was awarded according to a number of clearly-defined criteria, such as the price (total cost of ownership), functional and technical qualities. The functional qualities required included the user-friendliness of the software, the overall project approach and the possibility of using new developments immediately. In terms of technical qualities, the ability to integrate the software, the security and the expandability were examined. Based on all these criteria, the Amplexor company was chosen, with the Tridion WCM system. Amplexor was awarded the contract because the company had extensive know-how and expertise in Web Content Management. Previously, for example, the company had implemented the Tridion software for the website of the province of Antwerp. In addition, Amplexor was very keen to transfer its know-how. The province's programmers attended training before the project, so that they could be actively involved in the implementation of the new website.
David Verdonck, Project Manager at Amplexor explains: "In liaison with the province, we seconded our developers temporarily to the province's offices. In that way, there could be optimal interaction between the Amplexor staff and the core team set up by the provincial administration with responsibility for developing the website. This ensured that the communication was particularly organic and easy, and that optimised knowledge transfer."
Tridion, the WCM system offered by Amplexor, was chosen by the province for its technical qualities, ease of integration and security. And what was just as important for the provincial administration was the possibility of extending the package with various modules, so that it could be custom-configured, and adapted to the specific wishes of the provincial administration.
David Verdonck explains: "Tridion is particularly powerful, and for example, from the start, offers a functionality for optimal management and re-use of content for various sites, possibly in several languages. Many of our customers use this functionality to manage several sites and/or languages at minimum cost."
After a preparatory phase, the province and Amplexor started the implementation of the new web site in September 2007. The new website was able to go online officially on 29 April 2008, due to the rapid progress of the work. At the same time, the province's own staff built the website http://www.pivo.be, using the Tridion environment. In the future, the provincial administration will also build itself a new intranet in this WCM system.
Client
Flemish Brabant is a recently-created province, has been keen on making use of computerisation since it was set up in 1995. The splitting-up of the former province of Brabant and the move from Brussels to Leuven was seized as an opportunity to computerise wherever possible. Almost all the administration's officials started working with networked PCs at the beginning of 1995. The degree of penetration of computers in the workplace was already 95% in 1995, which was unique for public administrations at that time. The provincial administration's very first website also dated from that time. It was a static site, without many features, but nevertheless, Flemish Brabant was still the first Flemish province to have a web site. A few years later, in 1998, came a new, much more flexible, web site. In 2002, the province switched to a WCM system offering more extensive possibilities. The site played a pioneering role in the structuring of the information, which was no longer decided from the administration's viewpoint, but was based on what was important for users.
Today, the province is generating its fourth website, which runs entirely in a Tridion environment and which has made yet more progress in user-friendliness.
Problem statement
- making information from the authorities comprehensible;
- roll-out of complex, multilingual web site;
- demand for new functionality;
- demand for support and knowledge transfer;
- possibility to expand the site.
Solution and benefits
Implementation of the Tridion WCM system, custom-configured and tailored to the specific wishes of the province of Flemish Brabant. There is extensive knowledge transfer between the Amplexor and those in the province's team responsible for the project. The possibility of expansion is already foreseen in the system (for example, a decentralised shopping cart system for publications and the integration of other web applications such as the legacy database). Amplexor also developed a specific intelligent search engine which enables not only full-text searches of the site content, but also searches based on metadata, which is appended to various pages and documents. Tridion allows websites to be built simply in different languages. The web can be consulted in English, Dutch, French and German. All aspects of the site can be managed centrally ('blueprinting'). Using this centralised management, it is very fast to roll-out new sites.
Products/technology used
Tridion is built on an open (XML, SOAP, .NET, JAVA) and component-based architecture of 4 layers(Browser-based user interface, JSP/ASP interface layer, Content Management Application, XML Content Repository). The Tridion architecture consists of a management and a presentation system, separated by a firewall.
The management system runs on a Windows platform and can be adapted to the specific requirements of the customer. At the request of the Province of Flemish Brabant, a number of automated features have been incorporated on top of the Tridion API. These automated features were writen in VB or in .NET.
The presentation system runs on a Solaris platfomr and is written in J2EE technology: Java Server pages are generated from the presentation system, which are published to the webserver/application server. In this way, JAVA applications in the site can be called or integrated.
All content is stored in a relational database (Oracle database).
