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LinguaSkin Isle of Anglesey Council
Case Study Orchard Housing
LinguaSkin Case Study
Isle of Anglesey County Council
Isle of Anglesey County Council (IOACC) is the local authority for the island of Anglesey in North Wales.

The Council uses Orchard Housing, a third-party online system for managing social housing. Part of the system is a self-service portal to which members of the public has access.

LinguaSkin customer endorsement

We now have a secure bilingual portal for Anglesey residents to check their housing rent balance, report a repair and amend their personal information.

LinguaSkin customer endorsement
Online Services Manager

The need for a multilingual application

The Council’s policy is that all public services must be provided bilingually in English and Welsh. While the Orchard Housing system has some built in bilingual capability additional functionality was required by IOACC.

Why LinguaSkin?

Because LinguaSkin is non-invasive it does not interfere with an existing site or application. The Council immediately saw that it could be a solution in providing the Orchard Housing portal bilingually to the public. The Council spoke to Orchard Housing who was happy for the collaboration with LinguaSkin to go ahead.

LinguaSkin customer endorsement

It’ll make third party online products more attractive to organisations like us who require a bilingual interface.

LinguaSkin customer endorsement
Online Services Manager

Other online self-service portals for services such as licensing and leisure would provide an improved user experience for the citizen but they are not available bilingually. The Council realised that it could use LinguaSkin with other applications that it currently uses.

LinguaSkin customer endorsement

It’s enabling the public to access bilingual services online and it fits in to our Customer Excellence project where we are developing additional customer access channels.

LinguaSkin customer endorsement
Online Services Manager

Interceptor Solutions was given access to the Council’s test server so LinguaSkin could be configured and implemented using a reverse proxy. The Council was then able to check the test site to smooth out any glitches before it was moved to its own server and made available to the public.

LinguaSkin customer endorsement

The process has been very flexible. Interceptor Solutions have been very supportive and have explained the process well. They’re very easy to work with.

LinguaSkin customer endorsement
Online Services Manager

Easy to use

LinguaSkin customer endorsement

It hasn’t been at all disruptive and took a reasonable amount of my time.

LinguaSkin customer endorsement
Online Services Manager

The Council did not have to provide huge input during the implementation process beyond agreeing and approving the contract, translating the text and checking the site.

As the site was thoroughly tested before being made available to the public, any risk was minimised, and unless Orchard or the council makes changes, there will be little ongoing maintenance.

LinguaSkin customer endorsement

LinguaSkin has given us another option when implementing third-party systems. We won’t have to wait while bilingual capability is being developed.

LinguaSkin customer endorsement
Online Services Manager

Cost-effective

Given that many third-party applications are not built to be multilingual, and there is usually a hefty cost attached to developing a multilingual application, the Council felt that the cost of LinguaSkin was very reasonable.

LinguaSkin customer endorsement

We will consider utilising LinguaSkin as a solution to making other applications accessible to the public in a bilingual format.

LinguaSkin customer endorsement
Online Services Manager

Key Points

Technical details

Deployment: Reverse Proxy on IIS on IOACC network
Web Server: Apache Tomcat 7.0
Application: Orchard Housing Tenant Portal
Content types: HTML, CSS, Javascript, Cold Fusion
Languages: EN, CY
Num replacements: 1224

Acknowledgement of support

Through its Welsh-language Technology and Digital Media Grant, the Welsh Government has funded several LinguaSkin implementation case studies to research the potential of multilingual software interfaces. Isle of Anglesey County Council and Interceptor Solutions acknowledge this support.

Welsh Government Logo

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