e-sudbury.com
Innovative community portal to provide online information resource for Greater Sudbury residents
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Company Overview
Located in the Canadian Shield in northeastern Ontario, Greater Sudbury is best known as one of the world’s top producers of nickel, copper, cobalt, zinc and other precious metals.
Business Challenge
The city recognized that it needed to embrace technology to expand its presence on the world stage, as well as encourage short-term growth and future sustainability for the city and surrounding area.
In 1999, e-sudbury.com was established by The City of Greater Sudbury Community Development Corporation in partnership with FedNor and HRDC, to promote and develop IT initiatives aimed at sustaining and enhancing the economic development of the city. One primary area of focus for e-Sudbury.com is improving access to information for the community.
“We talked to local citizens and they felt that information about Sudbury was difficult to find on the Internet because of the way it was presented, and that it was in silos,” says Jody Cameron, Project Manager, e-Sudbury.com. “There was not one platform that linked all the community assets and information in one window.”
As a result, e-sudbury.com established the SmartSudbury program. In July 2003, SmartSudbury was selected by the provincial government for its Connect Ontario program to develop a community Web portal. Connect Ontario’s goal is to make the entire province a global Internet and e-business hub and to provide rural and northern communities the opportunity to participate in the digital economy.
SmartSudbury will be a networked community that will provide improved access to Greater Sudbury’s community services and information by empowering the community through a socially responsible, interactive, information and community-based network.
The SmartSudbury portal will create a one-stop online location for residents of the community to access accurate and timely local information about services provided by the government, business, tourism, cultural and community agencies. Along with the portal site, a suite of software tools supporting online workgroups will also be created.
The plan for SmartSudbury is to build a portal infrastructure to provide additional online services for the community. This includes:
| • | Developing a community portal which will provide residents of Greater Sudbury with one-window access to local news, events and attractions, online collaboration space for organizations, as well as e-mail and calendaring capabilities |
| • | Developing a Web site to allow citizens to apply, track, search and pay for building permits |
| • | Enhancing the tourism Web site to include more functionality for both users and suppliers such as providing links to airlines and tourism information for the region |
| • | Developing a digital link between the four sites of the Greater Sudbury Museums (the Anderson Museum, the Flour Mill Museum, the Copper Cliff Museum and the Rayside Heritage Museum) |
| • | Promoting tourism to the area with the creation of a virtual heritage tour |
| • | Further enhancing the already successful community services and volunteerism Web site www.CRNet.ca by providing improved functionality. |
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Solution
To help develop and deploy its community portal, SmartSudbury partnered with Navantis, an award-winning IT professional services firm and Microsoft Gold Certified partner. Working with Navantis, SmartSudbury will deploy a full spectrum of Microsoft-based technology to build the portal.
The framework for the portal, which is the Navantis Community Municipal Portal (CMP), is based on Microsoft® Content Management Server 2002, Microsoft Commerce Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, Visual Studio® .Net Enterprise Edition development system, SQL Server, Windows Server 2003 operating system, and Microsoft Exchange Conferencing Server.
“We decided to work with Navantis and Microsoft because we felt their vision was in line with ours and that the offering presented was much more sophisticated than the others we were looking at,” says Cameron. “We also felt the Microsoft-based solution is scalable enough to do what we need it to do. The products fit together very well to provide this one solution that is very robust and very powerful, and that’s what we were looking for.”
“The CMP solution is a comprehensive solution designed specifically to meet the unique requirements of innovative cities like Greater Sudbury,” says Jason Martin, President, Navantis. “The CMP solution is flexible, dynamic and scalable to grow and evolve as the city’s needs change. It can be configured to do exactly what they need it to do. Among other things, this solution will enable members of the community to easily update, access and share information across various organizations.”
Business Benefits
Expected to go live in late 2004 or early 2005, the SmartSudbury community portal will provide a one-stop online resource about the Greater Sudbury area for citizens, businesses and tourists. The portal is also expected to be the framework and launch pad for other valuable applications that could provide additional benefits for local residents and businesses.
“There are going to be more organizations and groups that will want to leverage the asset of the community portal infrastructure to benefit their organization,” says Cameron.
Connecting the community
With Microsoft® Content Management Server 2002, SmartSudbury will have comprehensive software to manage Web content. Providing template-based publishing capabilities, Microsoft® Content Management Server 2002 gives non-technical content providers an easy-to-use format for creating and publishing rich content directly to the portal. This means that individuals within the various community organizations in Greater Sudbury can submit live and up-to-date information quickly and easily.
“The focus is on aggregating content to help community-based organizations, and to drive a tremendous amount of meaningful content to benefit the citizens,” says Cameron. “We are looking at providing an environment for over 900 community-based organizations that can use the portal. They’ll be able to go in and create their own personalized page, and their own gateway to the city. They can personalize their own content according to their needs.”
According to Cameron, local organizations will have the ability to establish an online presence easily and can readily share information. “The various associations we have in Sudbury such as hockey, soccer and baseball associations, for example, do not have the resources or capacity to be able to have any kind of real online presence,” he says. “What we are providing these associations, using Navantis CMP which uses Microsoft-based technology, are the tools and abilities and the training to be able to provide things like registration online. They will also be able to put all their schedules online and have their own space within the portal.”
Expanding the reach
While the main portal will allow for better information sharing and collaboration, the other applications within the portal will also bring added benefits to citizens. For example, applying and paying for building permits will be streamlined and simplified once the application is available online. According to Cameron, the turnaround time for building permits will now be reduced by 50 per cent versus using paper-based forms, saving time and reducing building costs for contractors and local residents.
Although not yet launched, the community portal for SmartSudbury has also already captured the interest of local school boards, who are expressing interest in leveraging the community portal infrastructure to expand their own online presence.
According to Cameron, once developed, the school board will have access to the community portal, which will allow students or schools to develop their own sites. Students and teachers will also be able to access such things like email and events calendars from the community portal. As well, since the portal will also include Microsoft Commerce Server, parents will even be able to pay for field trips online.
“They will have a much more robust education portal than just e-learning,” says Cameron. “It’s very exciting because as a citizen in Sudbury, you can create your own personalized content. Not only will you see your son and daughter’s hockey schedule, you’re going to see your son and daughter’s grades at school, and see a calendar of school events.”
SmartSudbury expects that the benefits to the community will continue to grow as more organizations see the ease of use of the technology implemented by Navantis and Microsoft.
“What this portal does is increase the quality of life for citizens, by aggregating content in one spot and making community-based information easier to access,” says Cameron.
Microsoft Windows Server System
Microsoft® Windows Server System is a comprehensive, integrated, and interoperable server infrastructure that helps reduce the complexity and costs of building, deploying, connecting, and operating agile business solutions. Windows Server System helps customers create new value for their business through the strategic use of their IT assets. With the Windows Server operating system as its foundation, Windows Server System delivers dependable infrastructure for data management and analysis; enterprise integration; customer, partner, and employee portals; business process automation; communications and collaboration; and core IT operations including security, deployment, and systems management.
For more information about Windows Server System, go to:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com
For more information about Navantis products and services, call (416) 532-5554 or visit the Web site at: www.navantis.com
For more information about Greater Sudbury Development Corporation - SmartSudbury Program products and services, call (705) 674-4455, ext. 4627 or visit the Web site at: www.e-sudbury.com
