A.O.B.
O what a tangled web ...
Published: 26 June 2008
Whitehall, especially the Ministry of Defence, is notorious as an appalling waster of the taxpayer’s money. Entire books have been written about the cost over-runs incurred by design faults or changes of mind on aircraft, warships and armoured vehicles.
Local government can be equally feckless, albeit on a lesser scale. We may yet have another entire volume, on the London Development Agency as a textbook example of how not to spend taxpayers’ money on doubtful enterprises.
Now consider if you will the more prosaic matter of public sector websites, local as well as national.
The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee is highly critical of Government websites for their ineffectiveness and poor value for money.
Despite spending £200 million or so, PAC found, one in three public-sector websites falls short of their private sector equivalents. Many fail to meet the user accessibility standards set by the Cabinet Office.
All of which brings me to a gripe about website maintenance and refreshment.
Question: How many heads of communication and chief executives in local government happily boast to their ‘stakeholders’ about their shiny and expensive new website, but squander this investment by ignoring their duty to ensure that the site is constantly refreshed and updated?
Answer: Far more than you might think.
Even the MoD doesn’t park its latest white elephant at the Ministry gates for everybody to see all year round. But what else is an unchanging, out-of-date website if not an advertisement that proclaims: “Look how we’re wasting even more of your money!”?
Peter Hill is a partner in The Governance Partnership.