Development for Local Government
Trustworthy. Innovative. Highly economical.
As a decision-maker in local government, you have never been under such pressure to deliver efficient services at ever-lower costs.
Many development companies will promise you that they understand local government needs. So how do you know which ones will deliver excellent software, without taking you for an expensive ride?
mySociety is the answer to these fears. We bring years of experience in local government, and a very economical bottom line. Tell us your needs and we'll show you the solution.
Features Why choose mySociety?
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Search high and low - you won't find anyone like us
mySociety are a pretty unique proposition in the world of local government suppliers. We grew from a vision – that council services could be more accessible, effective and open.
A decade down the line, and over 30 local government clients have chosen to integrate our simple, highly usable software. We’ve also built high-traffic web tools for 10 Downing Street.
Or you may know us for our public projects, such as the award-winning FixMyStreet.com.
As a social enterprise, we don’t put profit above all else. Can you say the same about the other options you’ve considered? Find out how different we are.
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Good communication shouldn't be rocket science
Our local government clients tell us we’re different to work with - different in a good way.
See, to us, it’s obvious that every software build starts with a rigorous assessment of your needs. Why wouldn’t there be full consultation during the process? And of course you should have easy access to support afterwards.
Apparently not every digital agency or software supplier works that way – but to us, these are just the basics.
Drop us an email. You can be sure we’ll be in touch – and we’ll stay that way.
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Keeping your residents happy
Some websites are painful – that’s a fact. And some are so painless, you barely notice you’re using them. That’s the sort that people will adopt quickly and easily – and that’s the sort we make.
When a website has reached the height of usability, it feels like it could never have been built another way. But believe us – it takes some deep thinking to make things that simple. We’ve won awards for our relentless focus on people-centric user experiences.
What are the ingredients of these highly usable sites? We work in HTML, CSS and Javascript – the three fundamentals of web front end development.
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We're multi-lingual
Some agencies are besotted with a single coding language, and inflexible as a consequence. Not so mySociety.
Our team regularly builds projects in Python, PHP, Ruby-on-Rails, Perl and Node.js, and using the Django and Catalyst frameworks. We’re also at home across a range of different database technologies, using PostgresQL, mySQL and MongoDB on production sites.
This diversity comes from a high skilled development team, selected for the high quality of their work, rather than the language it was written in. Each developer has a wide range of experience, and all are actively engaged in keeping their skills current.
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Mobile sites and apps
Increasingly, your residents are accessing your website on a screen just a few inches wide. With the massive rise in mobile take-up, the demand is for readable text, clear navigation, and fast loading times.
We launched our first iPhone app in 2008, when the app store had been online for a matter of weeks. These days we operate a ‘Mobile First’ philosophy, starting from the question “How will this work on mobile?” before moving to the web.
mySociety builds apps across the popular mobile operating systems, iOS, Android, Windows & Blackberry, and we’ll drive your design processes to ensure that all thinking is mobile-focused.
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Open source; incredible benefits
mySociety is an open source organisation: our own public domain websites are open source and, optionally, the projects we build for you can be, too.
There are substantial benefits to working this way:
Financial: We can often repurpose software from our substantial back catalogue of local government projects. That means lower costs for you.
Practical: Once we’ve delivered your project, the code is available for any contractor to work on. No contractual tie-ins to worry about; no obscure codebase that only its originators know how to patch.
Beneficial to the wider community: The software you commission from us can enter the public realm as open source, magnifying the value of your investment across the wider public sector. One benefit of open source is that it can always be worked on and refined by clever people – you may just receive back a smarter version further down the line.
We understand that open source is not viable for every project, but it is an option for every mySociety build. Find out more about open source.
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Activate your data
Many of mySociety’s projects are founded on mapping and data visualisation – see, for instance, Mapumental. We work with state of the art visualisation technologies, and we’ll display your data so that it’s both beautiful and meaningful.
Need the world to sit up and pay attention? We’re expert in pulling out the stories that matter to your residents – and the stories the local press should know – from reams of data. We’ll advise on approaches likely to succeed, and how to avoid common pitfalls.
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Seriously, that's the total price?!
You may find yourself surprised when you ask us for a quote.
mySociety is a not-for-profit organisation, with proceeds from our commercial work feeding into our charitable endeavours. We have low overheads. Our skilled team can turn projects around quickly.
For these, and all sorts of other reasons, our prices generally come in far below expectations. Our prices are very competitive when compared against typical web development agencies – try us and see.