Gov't plan to close up to 75% of Gov't web sites

[NetworkGuy]

Report says that there are 820 web sites. A COI report says 46 of them cost 94 million on construction, set-up and running costs, and a further 32 million for staff costs 2009-2010.

Sounds like Google were doing well out of different departments bidding to get to the top!

Well I've just used their .childcare.gov website to find details for childminders in my village. I know there are at least 10 but it only gives me details for one CM and she is 30 miles away. So if they're all that crap its probably good to close them.

That'll upset Ms Lane-Fox then, as she is championing the use of the internet for Govt Depts.

Good.

I'm sure that there are useful sites but there are many many more that are just wastes of money.

For example about £80,000 was spent on one site to try and drum up support for the ID card scheme and in buying adverts on Facebook for it.

A complete waste of money.

Childcare one is crap, the pre gov one worked brilliant, gov took over last October and most Cm's fell off it, they know about it, we have all complained, has it been fixed, has it hell!

Good. As long as they are careful about it this is precisely the sort of "efficiency saving" cut which can be done without impacting people in any way at all.

It's going to have an impact on any support staff for 600 web sites... I assume many of them accept questions via the web and provide replies via e-mail or phone.

Without the sites...

Whether the staff are in London is another matter though - I feel London weighting allowance might be something they should tackle by moving 80+% of staff out of London.

Riven I think they need to hire you instead of some of these computer Charlies.

Was going to comment yesterday night but managed to lose that tab...

Riven - you and many can build a website for under 50 quid because

a) you don't employ a PR firm at 25,000 to translate the message into a 'theme'

b) you don't then employ a web design firm for another 25,000 to develop the pages for the site, who then recommend

c) a graphic design firm charging 10,000 for some graphics, and

d) a 'Search Engine Optimisation' service charging 2,500 a week for keeping your site high in the search engines, and

e) a project supervisor who costs 500 a day and recommends spending 100 a day on Google AdWords, while reporting to

f) someone in the civil service, who reports (via his boss) to the Minister, while

e) overseeing 4 more civil servants who are liaison with 30 contract staff to handle phone calls and e-mail

That's how it costs so much !

(But it is only a guess... Maybe we should get 500+ MN members to put individual requests under the Freedom of Information Act, each one asking about a different website and the costs involved to set it up, and the annual running costs broken down into 'internal' costs (civil service staff) + 'external' staff (anyone doing secretarial / support services) + 'consultancy' staff (charging a fortune each day/ week/ month).

How about it ?

My husbands old job was as a website developer at the local council. He was pretty cheap compared to paying someone else to do the sites but the coucil ran 40+ different websites for some weird reason, including a poetry one . When they decided to change the website my husband suggested using an open source content management system which would have been free but instead they spent tens of thousands on a commercial one - which they then didnt like so changed it again a year later. - OH and he had two managers - just him and two managers in his department, not sure that he needed THAT much management!
He quit and now they get contractors in to do the work - which costs them a huge amount but LOOKS like it saves them money because of the way they calculate costs.

I don't know whether there would be problems if he documented the goings on, but I bet the local paper and council tax payers would like to know how they did things.

The other day I came across a site showing Freedom of Information requests where individuals could raise questions giving only their a name and e-mail address (at the website, not needing to show their own personal e-mail address).

See What Do They Know .com and check what previous questions on software / website developments have been made to the council.

Your husband can submit his own 'probing' question via the website, and perhaps phrase it in such a way as to highlight consultancy costs and past software purchases over say 5 years... Then give a local paper a 'tip' that there's something of possible interest on the WDTK website.

Excellent idea. Can we also shut 75% of the BBC and make the licence fee free.

BBC1 + 2 and Radio 1 - 4 and one website with a news summary and telling us what is on the schedule and a link to the weather forecast.

Thats all we need.

I think, BeenBeta, that an army of mothers would lay siege to your house if you succeeded in getting rid of CBeebies.

Not me, I hasten to add. We're so disorganised, we still only have 5 channels. No wotzit box round our way. My DD is deprived, obviously.

Tis true what you say. I was thinking of my childhood. We had no TV during the day at all. We survived lived.

Ah, I remember it well, with ITV starting programmes at 4:30pm with some rousing music and a photo of the White Cliffs of Dover (I was in Sussex way back when). Missed a lot of Monty Python as we only had a 405 line (VHF) TV for a while, then managed to rent a 625 line with BBC 2 and in colour!!

The way things are with the BBC, it seems more likely Radio 1 and 2 could be scrapped as they duplicate much of what can be heard on commercial stations.

As for the website, well, they went over 100 million 'over budget' a year or two back, and they continue to try out fancy services (presumably for the London high speed broadband users) while some parts of the service are creaking badly (Message Boards are far poorer than most any other discussion areas I've seen, with limited 'opening hours' as they were based on some fairly inflexible software and even less flexible working practice).

They put it down to their need to protect themselves against libel etc, but surely MN is on a par - has clearly marked 'Report' facility and probably a smaller number of company staff who investigate complaints, while the BBC chooses to do full moderation on many discussion areas, and as a consequence have large backlogs on any 'topical' discussion (with perhaps 3 to 5 running live at once - I tend to think they actually have only a single topic for discussion in mind, but will give them benefit of doubt about others also being active concurrently).