The Leicester-Shire e-Government partnership is to get a Gateway web site to give citizens a single point of access to local government-based services.

The system will give people in Leicestershire access to location-based information about council services, based on their postcode.

Gateway is very important in helping the area fulfill its e-government obligations, according to Angela Taylor, Leicestershire County Council's IT project manager.

'Our vision is that e-government in Leicester and across the county will provide the opportunity for our citizens to access appropriate jointly-delivered services and information where and when they want it, in the form they prefer,' she said.

The partnership, which includes the county and city councils and seven other district councils, will use the system to save time on manually updating their individual web sites and lowering the number of telephone enquiries they receive.

Previously each council had to update its own thesaurus and taxonomy database manually for each web site, says Taylor.

'This can be a painfully slow labour-intensive process that can be both inaccurate and inconsistent. With the Cintra supplied Gateway technology, the procedure is completely automated,' she said.

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