I’ve just been to drop off mini aracer at band practice. His first time, so I made sure I was a bit early. Except that by the time I’d driven from the school where it said it was on their website to the one it was actually at we were 10 minutes late. Exactly how much effort does it take to update the website in the 2 months since the end of the last school year?

I was already kind of irritated that in this day and age we had to download a PDF, print it off, fill it in and send it in by post (which they then promptly lost) to apply for a place. Of course it’s not an editable PDF, so on second attempt after they lost the paper copy I had to convert it to Word before I could complete it to e-mail it back.

The really irritating thing is that I have some idea how much the council get charged by their IT support services – I’d be tempted to offer my services to do a better job for them, if it was possible to circumvent their normal bidding process. Instead it will just go on being the same rubbish.

I’d be tempted to offer my services to do a better job for them, if it was possible to circumvent their normal bidding process.

Why circumvent it – if you can do a better job for a better price just [whatever the opposite of circumvent is] it.

Instead it will just go on being the same rubbish.

You can’t not-offer-your-services and then decide the blame the council for not using them. 🙂

I feel your pain, but don’t necessarily blame the techies,
I’m working on a project for Scottish councils and there is significant resistance to providing some options which make things easier from the public and council side – “if folk can use an easy online system, what are my staff going to do?”
I wish I was joking 😐

If only you knew someone that cal discuss a solution to thier problem… (Cough)

Paper forms, cheques and cash!?! Haven’t had a chequebook for nigh on ten years now. Thought about using your sort code and account number, cretins?

Except that by the time I’d driven from the school where it said it was on their website to the one it was actually at we were 10 minutes late

Hang on a minute – did everyone go to the wrong school or just you?

Thought about using your sort code and account number, cretins?

The problem with that can be local authorities tend to only have one bank account – so how do they know what the payment you’ve made is for? And and how does the person who needs to know that you’ve paid know that you’ve paid?

The really irritating thing is that I have some idea how much the council get charged by their IT support services – I’d be tempted to offer my services to do a better job for them, if it was possible to circumvent their normal bidding process. Instead it will just go on being the same rubbish.

I’d imagine that the support contract will be just that…

Content on individual websites will have nothing to do with whoever they have outsourced IT to.

Content on individual websites will have nothing to do with whoever they have outsourced IT to.

I’ve worked on a council website in a past life.

I expect they’re all different systems, because I doubt that there’s any joined-up thinking between them. But the tool provided for content delivery was… I don’t want to be mean so let’s say “obtuse.” I can fully believe that your PDF form was there because that was the only way to do it.

(And their IT outsourcing is (was?) probably Capita; I provide this information without further comment.)

If they did have any joined up thinking, it would end up like GLOW, a tool barely fit for use that cost hundreds of thousands, based on RMUnify and MSOffice online tools stuff….gah!

Last year I asked my local council for a copy of a non-confidential report,
Council, “I’ll just print one off and I can either put it in the post or fax it”
Me, “So it’s on a computer?”
“Yes”
Me, “Can you email it?”
“Well…I suppose so”

Our council website is kept up to date and all the communication seems to be through the site now. This would be all fine and well if you could spend all you time on the site to find the latest changes. Not sure how those without internet access cope as I have had to register several of my neighbours car registrations for the our local tip as they changed that telling people through the website. They then turning others away who didn’t know so couldn’t register which lead to road to the tip being full of rubbish as it was dumped there instead.

Well from the email reply it appears it is the techies – they have apparently asked for more urgency with making their updates live

The problem with that can be local authorities tend to only have one bank account – so how do they know what the payment you’ve made is for? And and how does the person who needs to know that you’ve paid know that you’ve paid?

Probably in the same way they cash a cheque having lost the paper form it was attached to 😉

Just imagine how good it would be if online banking included the facility to put a reference or account number identifying the payment? Wow, rocket surgery.

At work (not a council!) someone at another site had copied a spreadsheet off a network folder and saved it to their desktop, so all the changes they’d made weren’t reflected in the main file. So we had to combine that one with the network version that had been updated by other people in the meantime, there were a few thousand rows, with about 20-30 columns of data, but it was a simple copy and paste job to fix it.

Easy enough, you’d think, but I tried to explain copy and paste over the phone with no joy, then tried to explain how to email the file to me so I could do it.

“I’m not a computer person, I don’t know how to do all that stuff, can’t I just print the spreadsheet off and post it to you, that’ll be much quicker”.

😥

Councils have to handle the lowest denominator, i.e. my granny who hasn’t got a computer.

So they have to do a paper service to send and recieve correspondence. To add additional functionality like, heaven forbid, email or an online presence costs money. Thats money that might have been earmarked for a care home or another project. They have to decide if its worth it. And don’t forget, having email means additional administration, security etc. too so it’s not like they can just pop along to hotmail.com and create an account.

Thats the sad truth.

The council’s IT budget probably just about covers the running costs, not improvements/new IT services costs so they’ll likely get done on a shoestring and as long as you can tick a box that a new IT service is there then there’s probably not much incentive for them to spend their ever-decreasing budget on maintaining it properly let alone improving it…

I don’t work on council IT but I do get involved in public sector stuff and so much is about spending the limited budget available to patch an existing mess rather than rip out what’s there and put in something fit-for-purpose. Annual IT budgets and major (i.e. long) projects don’t really mix.

I have a few annual photography jobs with a local council. All go through the same invoicing department. Trying to get paid is a total ballache. Every, single, time. You have to ask the department to raise a purchase order (this usually takes several times of asking and monumental amounts of confusion). Then you have to send an invoice to the department which they fail to forward to invoicing several times. Eventually you send a paper invoice direct to the invoicing department and get a bollocking because, “That’s not how the system works!”.

Councils have to handle the lowest denominator, i.e. my granny who hasn’t got a computer.

Many councils are – because of funding cuts – aggressively pursuing a policy of making it so hard to get hold of anyone by phone, letter or in person, you are compelled to use the website. I suppose those without IT at home could visit the library, if it hasn’t been closed down.

Annual IT budgets and major (ie long) projects don’t really mix.

You’ve also to remember that the public sector works on annual budgets, that if not spent it isn’t carried forward plus they often get capex to buy something but not the opex to support it in subsequent years.