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Hantsfire
...making Hampshire safer
The Hantsfire website has been running since September 2000. In this time it has received nominations and various awards for accessibility and ease of use. The website is regularly held up as a benchmark for other authority websites.
2005 sees the site being migrated to a Content Management System (CMS). This will provide a platform for delivering further online services and developing a transactional website.
The idea for Hantsfire was initially conceived in February 2000. The Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service (HFRS) Corporate Management Team chaired by David Howells identified the need for an official web presence. At that time information about the Service on the web was restricted to a few unofficial websites setup by stations and enthusiasts throughout the county and some text based webpages on Hampshire County Council's website (Hantsweb).
Hampshire County Council's IT Services were commissioned by the Service to provide web publishing training to several members of staff. Webspace was setup hosted by the Council's Hantsweb server to contain webpages created during the training days - this virtual webserver was aptly named Hantsfire.
Communications between IT Services and HFRS staff gave rise to a 'Hantsfire Web Steering Committee'. The committee had two specific objectives in creating the website which have since become the fundamental strategy of Hantsfire:
The latter was considered important in keeping the information up-to-date, accurate and consistent with the working practices of HFRS. A team of updaters made up from members from each department was deemed the best way to spread the workload and to keep the ownership and content of information under the control of the information source. This was a departure from the Fire Service sites on the web at that time which were maintained either by a third party company or by one or two employees.
The HFRS IT Trainer, Julie Gardiner and HCC Consultant Richard Whitehead then spent many hours using nothing more than a whiteboard and coloured pens to design the structure of the website based on these areas to incorporate all the strands of the Service. This was scrutinised and modified until a final structure agreed.
Three months of frantic webpage design followed whereby attendees from the initial training courses, newly titled Hantsfire editors and updaters, went about the process of creating the top-level indexes for their specific departments. These were transferred to the web after 'QA-ing' by Julie (Hantsfire Co-ordinator) and Richard (Hantsfire Architect). Hantsfire was under construction!
The website had a search facility provided by the Hantsweb Muscat engine and the beginnings of a links page. The site also adopted standard templates and style sheets to ensure that future developments to the corporate look would be easy to implement.
On September 29th 2000 the Barrier screen was removed and Hantsfire was officially launched.
Since the launch the growth and development of the site has been rapid. The following timeline documents some of the milestones.
| Month | Milestone |
|---|---|
| September 2000 | Hantsfire launch incorporating contributions from Personnel, Training, Commercial Training and Community Safety Departments. |
| November 2000 | Online Press tape launched |
| July 2001 | Home Fire Safety Online Safety Check |
| September 2001 | Web working Group established to co-ordinate expanding development |
Since that time, the website has become truly established as a major source of information for Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service. In June 2002, the Corporate Plan was published as a dynamic "web within a web" and officially launched by the Chairman of the Best Value Committee. In October 2002, Hantsfire's reputation was further enhanced by receiving the Hantsweb Accessibility award in competition with other Hampshire websites.
With the onset of electronic service delivery (ESD) as part of the e-Government strategy, we are working with IT Services at Hampshire County Council, to deliver more and better online services.
The KidZone is one area that has been completely redeveloped by Carl Smith (IT Services) in collaboration with the Fire Challenge Crew, with interactive games and puzzles for Key Stage 1, 2 and 3 children, using ideas and input from youngsters from Hampshire Schools who attended focus groups at Headquarters. The Kidzone was officially launched in April 2004.
Community Fire Safety is another area that is looking very seriously at ESD for educating the Hampshire residents and promoting the Fire Safety message.
In October 2005, the whole website was migrated to the OpenText Livelink Web Content Management System.
This has simplified the maintenance of the templates and structure of the site, and allows more time to be spent on developing and writing content.
