Jonathan Ballinger, Southend-on-Sea Borough Council ICT Officer, recently added an information rich database for Southend's DiTV and mobile citizens called 'Where I Live'. His experience and explanation of the process will give heart to others considering plugin development....

I recently had the task of creating a version of Southend-on-Sea's 'Where I Live' system (http://www.southend.gov.uk/whereilive/) that would be usable via DigiTV.  The council had initiated plans to open up a new channel of communication with our residents, and Where I Live was considered a useful part of how we communicated with them prior to DigiTV.

I raised the possibility of implementing this sort of plug-in with the starter kit package that we had, and Ian Wiebkin (DigiTV's Technical Manager) let me know that, not only was it possible, Where I Live would make an ideal plug-in.

In early January, I began reading the DigiTV Wiki and sketching up various prototype designs of how it could work before settling on a design I liked.  I created a user experience diagram showing how the user's actions would flow through the system, and mocked up some screenshots to go with it.

Ian's response was positive, so I then set about actually implementing it.  This was simpler than I expected as the framework provided is very well defined and, aside from the period where I was testing the limits of what elements were available to me, how much text I could get on screen and whether images were worthwhile given the amount of information I was trying to present on screen, it was a very speedy project.

In the end the DigiTV Where I Live system offers the following information: Black Sack Delivery Days, Broken Streetlights, Closest Library, Who's my MP?, School Catchment Areas, What's my Ward?/Who's my Councillor?, Waste Collection Days, Closest Recycling Centre and Leisure Centres.  The design of the plug-in allows me to add more Where I Live information sources at a later date with relative ease as it follows the same plug-in architecture I used for the initial Where I Live system. Each section presents information local to the location entered by the user and it is built on top of the existing Where I Live system.

If I was asked to create more plug-ins for DigiTV in the future, I would have no problems doing so as the process was very straightforward, and the personal contact all the way through meant that I always knew what was going on from the Kirklees side of the equation.

Jon Ballinger BSc, MBCS, ICT Officer, ICT Division,Southend-on-Sea Borough Council, Civic Centre, Victoria Avenue, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, SS2 6YL