Governance
Agile Collective's Aaron Hirtenstein joined the team again to help push forward the governance strand, focussing on how we govern ourselves as a growing collaboration of councils and suppliers. This includes looking at how we are currently functioning and making suggestions for short term improvements as well as looking at how we might structure and govern a new organisation to ensure the longer term sustainability of the LocalGov Drupal project.
Legal entity
Mark Simmonds facilitated a workshop with the steering group to explore the various legal structures that might be considered appropriate for an incorporated organisation. While many of us were familiar with most options, I think it is fair to say we all learned something and left with a much better understanding of the
Business plan
We also met with James de le Vingne from Co-ops UK to discuss the organisation's business plan, potential structures and how Co-operatives Uk might be able to help. James encouraged us to focus on the business plan to answer the key question "where is the money coming from?". But also highlighted Co-operative UK's "The Hive" as a potential source of further business support and mentoring and encouraged us to apply.
Governance board
The outputs and workings of various governance sessions are now all collated into a single Miro board to help provide an overview and remind people of the research and thinking that is going into the decision making processes. See https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lyzSxsY=/
Communications
Tim and Michael continue to improve the LocalGov Drupal communications with a new CRM on ClinchPad to track leads and communications with councils and suppliers all in one place.
LocalGov Drupal Newsletter
We also now have a newsletter! So if you're not already signed up, please sign up here for fortnightly updates straight into your inbox. We hope to be sharing news on the latest releases, developments in our governance, new councils joining, case studies and other news.
Alert banner release 1.2.0
Following sterling work from Stephen, Adnan and Andy B, LocalGov Alert Banner 1.2.0 now includes:
- support for Alert Banners to use Workflows and Content Moderation #159
- support for Scheduling Alert Banners if the Scheduled Transitions module is installed #159
- a new submodule with a full screen alert banner type #133
LocalGov Geo 1.1.0 / LocalGov Directories 1.0.1
Meanwhile, Ekes has been hard at work coding and refactoring the localgov_geo module to support polygon areas as well as points. The immediate use case for this is that directories can include items with areas such as parks or constituency boundaries as well as points on a map.
Significant improvements to the user experience of auto completion of the geocoded address also comes with this release. See LocalGov Geo 1.1.0 which is now included in LocalGov_Directories 1.0.1
