£32k a Day For Birmingham Council Website

An anonymous reader writes "Birmingham Wired have uncovered that Birmingham City Council spend on average £32,000 a day maintaining a council website that has cost the tax-payer over £48 million to date, while councils nationwide prepare to say goodbye to 26,000 jobs due to budget deficits. Capita, a London based outsourcing company, states on their website: 'To date we've invested £48.4m in a combination of staff training, network upgrades, server replacements, hardware and software — and we continue to drive efficiency through innovation.'"

Comments

bad story

[teknopurge]

The summary is disingenuous: the cost is for their IT, not just a single HTML website.

Re:bad story

[Anonymous Coward]

not only that, but the 48m is the amount the outsourcer has spent on improvements to their entire operation, not how much the council has spent.

The whole article is at best, poorly informed, at worst, outright lies.

Re:bad story

[jginspace]

The summary is disingenuous: the cost is for their IT, not just a single HTML website.

Could be:
http://www.capita.co.uk/about-us/Pages/Birmingham.aspx

Service Birmingham is our joint venture with Birmingham City Council, Europe's largest local authority, established in April 2006 to provide the Council's information and communications technology (ICT) services. Substantial investment and innovation have created an all-new platform that underpins the Council's ambitious business transformation programme. To date we've invested £48.4m in a combination of staff training, network upgrades, server replacements, hardware and software - and we continue to drive efficiency through innovation.

The cost of the site itself was covered a few months back - excellent reporting from Heather Brooke and friends:
http://podnosh.com/blog/2010/05/27/the-report-on-birmingham-gov-uk-is-published/
http://helpmeinvestigate.com/investigations/49-when-can-we-expect-a-new-birmingham-gov-website

Re:bad story

[Anonymous Coward]

"Largest local authority", county councils aren't comparable as each district within them has its own council authority.

London, for instance, is split into 32 boroughs. There is no subdivision of the Birmingham area by even-more-local-councils. Like it or not that claim of theirs is true.

Re:efficiently...

[1 a bee]

filling their pockets, you gotta admire the chutzpah of the people who would actually get away with charging that sort of money

Apparently this same chutzpah caused the story to break in the first place. FTA:

Capita, a London based outsourcing company state on their website: To date we’ve invested £48.4m in a combination of staff training, network upgrades, server replacements, hardware and software – and we continue to drive efficiency through innovation.

ICBM Address

[jginspace]

Yes you're definitely on to something:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICBM_address

I'm going to call BS on this article.

[Anonymous Coward]

The 48 million number? Is taken out of context from a company's own website. Context that is lacking is timeframe, actual details of the spending...and you know what, that's enough that I don't feel like going any further.

These numbers may be facts, but they aren't a story. They're just being used to drive emotions.

I say we mod Article Down.

Re:I'm going to call BS on this article.

[Anne Thwacks]

The Labour Party manages to look worse than bad without any help from others.

In fact, the Labour party could not look other than bad: Old labour still believes Marxist economic theory is correct - despite the fact that it was proven stupid in theory and practice, while new labour: Blair was secretly negotiating with Mugabe!

There are NO redeeming features of Labour whatever.

However, if the bankers' "derivatives" ponzi scheme is not stopped soon, even the rich will be in the same situation as flooded Pakistanis.

Re:bad story - I must agree

[Elvis77]

I love a "The Government are Idiots" story as good as anyone but this one just doesn't make sense. Last year the Birmingham Post (http://www.birminghampost.net/news/politics-news/2009/08/04/cost-of-new-birmingham-city-council-website-spirals-to-2-8m-65233-24307674/) stuck it to the council over a 383% growth in the cost of the website... it went from £580,000 to £2.8m. Where does the £48.4m come from? It comes from Capita's case study which IS NOT about the web site (http://www.capita.co.uk/about-us/Pages/Birmingham.aspx) Birmingham Council may or may not be doing the smart thing and Capita might be ripping off the good people of Birmingham... if it's like City Councils where I live then they are probably screwing up badly but this article is a load of crap

Re:bad story - I must agree

[julesh]

Capita might be ripping off the good people of Birmingham

Crapita never do anything without ripping off good people. Here in Coventry, they've installed voice stress analysis software to attempt to detect people lying when they claim benefits... of course the fact that VSA is essentially snake oil hasn't stopped them spending millions on the piece of software this paper was written about. Well worth reading if you want to know the kind of junk our councils spend our hard earned cash on.

As a resident of Birmingham...

[greg_robson]

...I can say that we all waited ages for the site to relaunch, when it finally did we are shocked.

• Poor accessibility, basically the same content under a different template. It took them 2 months to get the "Pay your Council Tax online" feature working again.
• There was no consultation with the target audience (Birmingham City Council covers approximately 1.2 million people).
• All the features we were expected such as here's my postcode...
• • ...where's my nearest school/doctor"
  • ...who's my Member of Parliament
  • ...when do my bins (trash cans for those across the pond) get collected.
• ...were nowhere to be seen despite being common on many other council websites.

So bad is the situation, some local web developers have set up their own community built site:
http://www.bccdiy.com/
And while still in it's early days (design could be improved), it has the useful features and shows events that are taking place in what is a vibrant and modern city.

Re:Shhhhh

[SimonTheSoundMan]

I live in Birmingham, I know people that work in IT at the council.

IT was taken over by Capitia, they also have contracts for many other councils and government departments. I have never known a corporate company to be so wasteful and incompetent.

Biggest news last years was the re-write of the web site. Was first estimated to be cost jut over £600k, and was to be competed in March 2006. However, Capita over-run and completed it mid 2009 at a cost of £2.2 million.

http://www.birminghampost.net/news/politics-news/2009/08/04/cost-of-new-birmingham-city-council-website-spirals-to-2-8m-65233-24307674/

Re:Shhhhh

[Flossymike]

Very curious. Why all the white space in the page source?

It runs on the most expensive software

[devent]

No wonder it's so expensive, it runs on the most expensive software out there. Windows Server 2003 and Oracle-Application-Server-10g/10.1.3.0.0 Oracle-HTTP-Server. . But the side is all wrong in FF3. The menu is in the middle of the side and the content is under the menu blob. Maybe next time they just using a Linux server with a custom Drupal or Wordpress.

Why the government always needs a site to be build from scratch? There are 100 open source CMS systems out there, where you have a) localization, b) forum, c) uploads, d) content management, etc, etc, all already developed. Just spend £1000 on a nice theme and another £3000 on customizing it. I don't think the side will have 10,000,000 visitors per day where you need an Oracle HTTP server with an Oracle DB and a highly specialized website.

Re:It runs on the most expensive software

[devent]

Why would you buy that? Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, etc. are all free and you don't need to buy a Windows server to run it. They also talk you into bying MSSQL server, where just MySQL or PostgreSQL are free.