Update: July 19th-23rd, 2010

LOOKING LOCAL BREAKS 120 PARTNER BARRIER
Looking Local broke the 120 partner figure this week – Hurrah!
New partners during 2010 have taken Looking Local to a new level and the increasing subscription shows that our service, solution, efficiencies and audience is right on the money for public sector organisations.

NEET PROJECT OUTLINES SOLUTION
A major milestone in our project to deliver a mobile solution focused on the NEET (Not in Education, Employment of Training) community was reached this week, following a successful workshop with all partners and most importantly the frontline staff (NEET Personal Advisors) up in Kirklees.

The proposed solution is driven by an ethos of encouraging engagement between NEETs and their Personal Advisors (PAs) and will use a range of social media tools; some elements will be bespoke but others will use off the shelf, well used technologies. The solution is yet to be confirmed but aspects may well include an SMS-driven CRM system, using existing social network tools such as Facebook to allow PAs to create their own client groups to more effectively communicate with the NEET community as well as the build of specific Smart Phone applications.
Background can be found here: www.lookinglocal.gov.uk/site/news/2010-05-19-neet.html
Keep an eye here for developments

LOCAL DIRECTGOV
Looking Local Operations Managers Guy Giles was invited this week to take part in a workshop about the future of Local DirectGov. At the London event Guy contributed to the debate as to how to take their service forward in this new age of austerity and how to make best use of digital media, syndication and different platforms. The debate continues…

LOOKING LOCAL DISCUSSES MOVING HEALTHCARE IN WALES ON TO NEW PLATFORMS
Our discussions this week with Informing Healthcare and NHS Wales were positive as all organisations are keen on making GP appointments and patient records digitally available across Wales. Looking Local already offers GP appointment and repeat prescriptions via its partnership with EMIS, but is keen to widen the access to all surgeries and systems to ensure access across the range of digital capabilities. Now that all of Wales are live on DiTV and mobile via Looking Local, we hope to work on a health and healthcare pilot in Wales to make this a reality.

HOUNSLOW HOMES LAUNCH EVENT
Hounslow Homes, a new partner of Looking Local, officially launched their site last Friday with a great event in west London. Hounslow Homes showed a TV version of their Looking Local service live on a large TV, as well as setting up a data projector to show the web view. A second plasma showed how people can access Looking Local with a Wii set up and delegates demo’d the service out on all media. To ensure the event well, they got a launch cake made with some freebies (fridge magnets, etc) giving access instructions, etc. Good luck with it all HH…

NEW SITES LIVE THIS WEEK …
Include Durham Housing Solutions, the Welsh version of the Ceredigion site and Norfolk County Council.
Great to have you all on board…