You Get What You Pay For

There's been a bit of a kerfuffle in the media recently about the cost of council websites, headlined by Birmingham's reported spend of £2.8m on a redesign which hasn't even gone live yet.

Still, no-one can accuse NCC of over investing in their website. As I've said before, it frequently falls down outside office hours and SOCITM recently found it woefully inadequate in complying with EU Services Directive obligations.

As if to confirm this the above mentioned costs data reports reveal that NCC has redesigned its website three times in the last decade and spent a heartwarmingly low £4530 on the last one. In completely unconnected news quite large parts of the 'council and democracy' related sections of the website have looked like this for the last two days -

Interestingly they spend over £400k pa on the 'Arrow'. Oh yeah and around £25k pa on Harold Tinworth.

Surely there's a middle ground somewhere between Nottingham and Birmingham where the website just works and...well...just works I suppose.