The SDS blog

We have recently launched a new website for Greater North Kent (GNK). GNK is a strategic collaboration between six partner authorities: Dartford, Gravesham, Medway, Maidstone, Swale and Kent County Council.

Teignbridge District Council are working hard to ensure their website content is meeting their customer’s needs. They asked SDS to help them by delivering training for management and content editors.

The London Borough of Bexley are replacing their shared network drive with SharePoint. SDS helped to deliver training to prepare staff for the changes. Here are some of the things we liked about SharePoint.

Sevenoaks District Council are seeing a sustained increase in calls. They asked SDS to help them understand the drivers for the calls and identify any avoidable contact.

Many local authorities in Kent, Sussex and Surrey are now accessing our new digital accessibility e-learning course. Here is some more information about the course. We hope this course will be helpful for you and your organisation too. 

Whether you are new to digital accessibility or looking for ways to further embed accessibility in your organisation’s culture and working practices, there’s something for everyone in this series of eight 45 minute webinars being held between May to July.

Never before has your intranet been so important for staff engagement with your organisation.

Sometimes it can be tricky to get valuable information about how your clients and customers use your services. This is information that would be helpful to see where they’re going and what they’re doing on your website, how they are...

TikTok might not be a platform that you would think of when it comes to accessibility, however, perhaps it should be.

The pandemic shifted our ways of working. Many employees are now working remotely full time or “hybrid” working, where part of their time is spent remote and part in the office.

As the restrictions on where we work are lifting, lots of us are reflecting on the ways we used to work and how we will work in the future.

There are around 10,000 local parish, town, community, and neighbourhood councils in England. These work hard to provide services that meet the needs of their residents and improve community well-being.

The Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) issued an accessibility monitoring report detailing the work they have undertaken in 2021 testing public sector websites.

Many changes have taken place over the last few years and so the aim of this project is to explore whether current processes are still fit for purpose, whether they can be digitised or indeed whether they are still needed.

Kent Housing Group recently won a bid from Kent County Council to support landlords who are suffering rent arrears problems that have built up as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Both Waverley Borough Council and Tandridge District Council required some user testing on their waste forms. Whilst the more common usability testing was carried out, checking for functionality and looking at the technical aspects, SDS also user tested for digital...

Many of our partner organisations have been working hard to create a culture of accessibility throughout their organisations. Sevenoaks, Central Bedfordshire and Tonbridge and Malling have all asked us to help with this by delivering several virtual, live and interactive...

SDS have been delivering live and interactive training courses to Project Managers across Ashford Borough Council introducing them to agile ways of working.

SDS have reviewed the East Sussex Building Control Partnership’s business processes, to explore ways to enhance customer experience and improve efficiency.

Waverley Borough Council approached Smarter Digital Services (SDS) to assist them with conducting user testing on their new website.