My House

My House is the fast route to information about local services centred on where people live. Using a Council’s website a citizen simply enters his or her address and is immediately presented with information on services around their location..

My Alerts

My Alerts enables a member of public to sign up to a Local Authority alert service that automatically sends an email (or possibly an SMS) when any council related service event happens within a predefined distance from their house.

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What we do

Astun Technology's iShare data integration and publishing platform enables public sector organisations such as Local Authorities and Blue Light services to make the most of their own data, extracting it, transforming it and publishing it both internally and externally. It can serve call centres via systems integration and citizens via the web with a rich mix of information and maps while delivering real savings through 'Channel Shift' and transactional services. iShare also provides a direct communications channel to citizens that subscribe to its automated 'My Alerts' service.

Easily configured and completely automated iShare is a unique mix of the Astun's own purpose built modules and the best Open Source components. In use with over thirty local authorities the award winning iShare platform continues to evolve to meet growing e-services needs.

iShareMaps v3 easier for Citizens and Administrators

Version 3.0 of iShareMaps Location Server was released in October 2008. New features included:

Lightening fast, advanced address searching with word matching through Data Share. Current LLPG's include CAPS, Aligned Assets, Northgate, PlanTech. Others will be implemented free of charge to licensees of Data Share.
Spatial Data Transformations - getting data ready for the public.
Workflows - enabling multiple tasks to be run as 'jobs' via scheduled tasks
Transaction Fault Reporting - fully integrated with eforms such as Achieve Forms
MapServer 5.0 - higher quality map rendering
My Alerts - keeping the citizen up to date automatically - including NON SPATIAL information
Multiple My House pages with Area searching and the ability to embed HTML
iShareMaps Studio - a new adminsitration console to easily manage the complete solution
Remote Server capabilities for offsite server requiring FTP synchronisation

Spatial Data Transformation

Getting data ready for the public. As you may be aware not all GIS data is necessarily directly 'fit' for public use. Examples where Data Share can help:

Automatically buffer TPO's points into relevant boundaries for use in the On-line maps.
Massaging master planning application layers that often hold many years' applications and 'splitting' into relevant time period layers – therefore making Find Nearest queries more relevant.
Roadworks transformation from the national street works XML specification normally output form Highways systems into MapInfo layers
Combining NSG elementary street units (ESU's) into complete streets to allow for enhanced curved feature labelling for the maps

Workflow

Enabling multiple tasks to be run in a 'job' with dependencies being able to be set. Examples can be:

Amalgamation and manipulation of multiple spatial layers within a Spatial Database (we use the Open Source PostgreSQL) such as the TPO or Planning examples above
ODBC downloads of Back Office databases
Spatial layer creation - such as automatically creating a MapInfo layer from an ODBC download.
VB Scripts - such as downloading XML feeds from external websites to create layers i.e. BBC Travel News.

All workflow items are performed through windows scheduled tasks with no user interaction required therefore reducing needs on internal resources.

Transactional Fault Reporting

New to version 3.0 is transactional fault reporting. Maps (built with Javascript) can be embedded within your e-Forms workflow to allow members of public to report the location (via the map) of a 'fault' whether broken paving, street lights, abandoned cars, fly tipping etc. The faults are logged within Data Share (after confirmation through your e-forms) allowing other users to see previous reports when logging theirs.

MapServer 5.0

The best open source mapping engine v5.0 has many new capabilities highlights include:

New advanced rendering engine providing 'beautiful' maps - seeing is believing!
Labels following the shape features
Dynamic Pie and Bar charts
Simpler administration of map files with 'Include' capabilties

Revised My House pages

Options of having:

References to other geographies and data sources such as My House, My Street, My Neighbourhood, My Ward
Searching polygons for everything that intersects - useful for councillors' wards!
Include deeplinks to other websites using the Postcode i.e. link to UpMyStreet, houseprices.co.uk etc
Ability to embed HTML within the pages with headers and footers for layers and layer groups
include non spatial information such as news, PR, events

iShareMaps Studio

A new single adminstration console for managing the whole server whether you've got the Map Portal and My House or Data Share or My Alerts

Remote Server synchronisation

Where a council may not have 24/7 availability of an Intranet / Web connection we now have synchronisation capabilities to remote servers hosted by ISP's.

This is a major upgrade to the leading Web Mapping solution for Local Authorities in the UK

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Awards

3 out of top 20 web sites

For the second year running three iShare sites featured in the SOCITM Better Connected 2010 survey's top twenty. The ‘Better Connected’ survey is the 12th annual survey of all Local Authority websites. Two iShare sites, out of only 11, had top 4 star ratings and six sites had 3 star ratings.

South Tyneside Council , Winner of the 2008 'Best Business Process Transfomation' Exemplar Award has picked up another award this time for ‘Local e-government excellence - Take-up & usage growth’.

Read about the Evolution of the platform (2.45Mb)