anthropormorphizing it can have some real dangers, especially during the pain of re-branding. I think that although the majority of users are primarily non-technical, they do need a basic understanding of what the underlying technology is and does to be able to use it effectively. There is a good reason why Ask.com dropped Jeeves from "Ask Jeeves" and for "Google" becaming synonymous with "Internet Search". In the end, the intranet is a computer application -- a powerful tool. So simply telling new staff to "Ask Boris" can be confusing for obvious reasons and does not help them where to find the "intranet" or know what it does -- especially if their career ends up taking them to another council. A character is great to introduce a concept, but not to replace it. Anyway, thanks for listening ! James is correct. I have developed the CMS that runs both the Boris intranet and the City of Casey's website -- they run pretty much from the same code base. Have a look at Casey's website and you'll get a feel for how Boris navigates -- of course they are completely different 'flavours' of website, targeted to their audiences differently. Both have evolved over the years and there definitely are pros and cons as James suggests. The benefit is that I can make whatever changes I like as they are required without much expense. But developing can take time. I'm not a full time coder, but develop all aspects of both websites, from