Isle of Man public sector organisations and are supported by the dedicated and experienced Isle of Man Government E-Services Team at PDMS and the Web Services Team within the Information Systems Division of Government (ISD).
PDMS and their web design team, Digital Design were approached by the Isle of Man Government to build a new website for the Department of Home Affairs (DHA).
The Isle of Man Government websites are currently built using a standard pan-governmental application framework which has resulted in centralised management of all gov.im websites.
Some of the benefits of this include;
- shared technologies and software platforms
- shared design, development and project management resources
- shared security standards and hosting arrangements
- shared support and maintenance services
- shared customer service provision
- shared standards for Accessibility compliance
- shared project management methodologies and processes
- shared search engine efficiencies*, and
- shared and reduced costs
*Search engine efficiencies are gained through:
- Standard page structures designed to achieve optimum search engine rankings
- Consistent organic growth of the overall website
- Using the same domain name for the past ten years
- Gov.im-specific search tools which register new changes instantly
- Content editors responsible for editing meta data for their own pages
Agencies of the Government are able to update and maintain their websites through staff with ‘editor’ status. This is an important feature of all agency websites, but none more so than the DHA website which serves as the website for the Island’s land-based emergency services.
The Department of Home Affairs comprises 7 government agencies;
- IOM Fire & Rescue Service
- IOM Constabulary
- IOM Prison Service
- IOM Probation Service
- Emergency Planning Unit and Civil Defence
- Communications Division
- Chief Executive’s Office
Navigation of the site can be done in either of two ways. The first is the headings bar down which runs down the left hand side of the website. This is a common feature of all gov.im websites, and users of Isle of Man Government sites will be familiar with this. There is also a colourful hub-and-spoke navigation feature on the home page. Each agency of the DHA was assigned a colour which helps the user to differentiate between agencies. These colour themes are consistent throughout the website.
Digital Design implemented a new colourway as well as a new logo, which were then used in the rebranding of the DHA.
Information can be found on the site relating to parliamentary business, legislation, annual reports, missing person reports, fire safety, carbon monoxide awareness, and much more. Of course, contact details are easy to locate as well as contact forms for non-emergency queries.
