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£32k a Day For Birmingham Council Website

Posted by samzenpus on from the you're-doing-it-wrong dept.

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.'"

3 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. Re:bad story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  2. I'm going to call BS on this article. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. As a resident of Birmingham... by greg_robson · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...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.