Gate Seven's history is all about supporting communities. We extend this principle to web-based development, and we work with community groups to ensure that they can have powerful, effective web sites, based on a powerful content management system, at costs they can afford

Empowering and Supporting Active Participation

For many community organisations, the passive publication of information is not enough, and this is a good reason why a content management system works well for them. What they need is a sort of permanent meeting place, where members of the group can not only be informed, but also communicate, plan, and otherwise co-operate.

• sharing of experience and knowledge,
• collaboration on projects and documents
• additional stress on accessibility for particular groups
• booking facilities
• openness in consultation
• transparency and participation with regard to decision making processes.
• empowering people to make informed decisions
• in situations where community members may be geographically separated
• awareness-raising
• fund raising
• advertising and selling goods or events
• All of this may need to take place at a number of levels, involving different groups and sub-groups, and at times, confidentially.

For such groups publishing information and supporting communication - function in other words - are more important than appearance - design, branding and presentation of identity are secondary issues.

Money (or rather the lack of it) may encourage a maximum of make do and do-it-yourself - as might the principle of using a web-based project to train, skill and empower groups and individuals.

A community web site is a particularly good way to manage open government and governance. The processes which have gone into the decision making process can both be documented, and often carried out directly on the site, and published instantly. In the same way  consultations can be made fully transparent.