The London Borough of Southwark is using software based on Google for internal organisation-wide searching to improve council services.

Under a £100,000 contract with content management and enterprise search company, Jadu, Southwark has implemented Jadu Rupa for Google Enterprise Search, which allows it to index and search all its internal content. The system is powered by Google Search Appliance.

The system will be rolled out in phases, starting with the council’s internet and intranet sites and a single department.

Staff can now search multiple information sources from a single place, says Steve D’Arcy, information management analyst at Southwark.

‘We wanted a quick deliverable and rolling it out to the web site and intranet proved proof of concept,’ said D'Arcy.

Over the coming months, the council will focus on other areas including connection to its SAP data warehouse, he says.

‘We want to maximise Google as much as possible and are considering integrating the search capability into our Citrix environment so it is embedded onto the desktop,’ said D’Arcy.

The programme also includes training for staff to give documents meaningful titles, with key words that improve search results.

‘The vision is to put Google in as many places as we can where users search for information,’ said D’Arcy.