FAQ

Q. How many partners does seamlessUK have?
A. There are nine local authorities who form the seamlessUK consortium but the project is involved with 14 national partners, and locally in Essex, 45 partners from local government, voluntary and community organisations.

Q. My authority would like to join seamlessUK. What do we have to do?
A. Interested authorities are invited to become members of the seamlessUK Club by contacting seamless@essexcc.gov.uk for further information.

Q. Can we look at the seamlessUK taxonomy to see if it would help us with our internet/intranet?
A. The taxonomy is now available under licence, involving a small fee for non-members. Please email seamless@essexcc.gov.uk for further information.

Q. Does the seamlessUK taxonomy conform to the Government Category List?
A. The taxonomy already maps to the GCL and a mapping exercise is underway to APLAWS.

Q. I have heard seamlessUK has a metadata creation tool. Can we use it for our intranet?
A. seamless.dot, the metadata creation tool is only configured to work with the seamless taxonomy, based on community information subject terms. It is not currently available for use outside the seamlessUK project.

Q. If my authority joins the seamlessUK club will we get help on joining our data to the system?
A. Consultancy advice will be available to members of the club as part of the subscription. Please see following questions.

Q. How do we link our database information to seamlessUK?
A. Your data must be supplied in the form of plain XML text files which have been "tagged" (marked-up or annotated) with the defined set of tags used by seamlessUK, eg.database fields are mapped to the seamlessUK XML schema as outlined in the Data Preparation Specification. The system uses Z39.50, SOAP and Harvest.

Q. How do we link our web site to the seamless search portal?
A. If your website consists of html pages, information is linked using metadata created by software called seamless.dot which is then pasted to the head of relevant web pages. This metadata is then harvested by seamlessUK and will then be picked up by the search portal.

Seamless.dot provides a template to create seamlessUK metadata for html web pages. The details are verified by the system and metadata produced in the right form ready for pasting to your html pages. Seamless.dot is configured to the Application Profile and produces Dublin Core metadata conforming to the government metadata standard (e.gms).

If your website is run by a content management system, metadata created by the CMS can still be mapped to seamlessUK using mapping as outlined in the Data Preparation Specification.

Q. Can we get advice on how to develop partnerships with local organisations?
A. Members of the seamlessUK Club will have access to help, advice and consultancy on how to develop and foster local information partners.

Q. My authority already has a web portal, how will seamlessUK help us?
A. SeamlessUK has been designed to compliment and add value to initiatives already underway in local authorities. Participating authorities are able to specify their own branding, set up and administer their local information targets and they have the option to provide access to SeamlessUK by adding the SeamlessUK 'portlet' to their existing site.

Please contact us if you would like more information. Email seamlessUK