There were several factors that were highlighted by the SE7 in guidance documentation that need to be understood as they form the fundamental precepts behind the development of the solution, and these are that the solution needs to be: * Co-produced with the County Council and parents, carers and young people. * ‘Not just a directory’. * Kept under constant review. * Empowering for parents and carers, young people and professionals * Accessible and easy to understand * Holistic, and cover all areas of information. * Transparent * Sustainable and sustained * Factual and honest.

In order to arrive at the solution that is being published consideration to the points above is paramount, and the co-production has been the key. At all junctures of the process, parents and carers have been very active in giving their thoughts and ideas, and this combined with the local authority knowledge and expertise and the semantic technology (also known as linked data) has provided the glue to cohese the elements together. The information required for the local offer is a large dataset, and spans across many different organisations and departments and topics, where there is not necessarily shared or common knowledge, so in bringing this information together we expect to see large scale benefits for all parties.

A list of the key functionality is as follows: * Automated semantic linking * “3 clicks to anything” semantic navigation * Multi-tier security based on role * Local Offers entered via guided forms * Content approval mechanism * Site search * Search results with easy to use filters * Dictionary of keywords * Area searches * Age searches * Specific needs searches * Clinical Commissioning Group lookup * My book functionality. Add pages to a book to print/save * Tagging system so material can be linked together * Feedback and contact on the Local Offer/Request emails * Ability to publish feedback * Automatic expiry dates for news/events * News pages and filtering * Events listings * Events queries and filtering * Service Provider database/ filtered by site section and relevance * Most popular pages display * What's new display * Solution can be fully skinned. * CMS implementation with WYSIWYG editor * Section, subsection and article hierarchy * Cross border information. * Glossary of terms and jargon buster * Multimedia support - pictures, documents, YouTube etc * Social media integration – Facebook, Twitter etc * Version control and auditing built in * Works on all browsers including mobile

* Core software is Open Source, so there are no expensive license costs for the platform. * Secure and robust – fully tested security with tried and tested functionality. * Multi-platform – can run on almost any server * In built SEO – machine readable by Google, Microsoft etc * W3C accessibility compliant * Scalable – new data can be added and easily fit into the common templates * No technical expertise required to administer the site.