The Tory Troll explains how our ‘Value for Money’ Mayor has taken another great decision: to spend £40,000 on a new London.gov.uk web site, to replace the perfectly functional and usable existing web site.
Accessible and standards-based web design is something of a specialist subject for me so I’ll be interested to see what London gets for its money, but even if the new site meets every possible criterion for a good public service site it’s pretty hard to see why pouring £40k into re-doing something which is already of perfectly reasonable quality represents the kind of value for money Boris claimed we would see under his administration.
It’s extraordinary that with so many ‘number one priorities’ to address, Boris can instead rush through things like this as if they were urgent tasks that had been at the forefront of his manifesto.
And with this representing yet another commitment of taxpayers’ money to a frivolous and unnecessary task, the next TfL fares settlement and GLA council tax precept are looking more worrying by the day.
(Thanks to Helen for first alerting me to this.)
Tags: priorities · value for money · wasting money · web site7 Comments
7 responses so far ↓
Your slogan is “an attempt to enhance accountability to the new London mayoralty”.
Would a better slogan be “an attempt to enhance every negative view of the new London mayorality”?
Perhaps you might consider a balanced view. I know it must be hard…
Don’t you think the website current website looks very dated and basic?There’s substantial scope for improvements, and it would be good to see more “Web 2.0″ elements, and a design befitting one on the leading cities in the world. Whether the money has been frittered away will be a judgement best made when the work has been done, I might suggest?
“Accessible and standards-based web design is something of a specialist subject for me”
Really? I’m not sure Jakob Nielsen would be that impressed with your grey hyperlinks which aren’t even underlined
I sincerely hope the new website will be translated into 40 different Community Languages.
*watches Barnbrook explode*
Given his 1980s stance on peace, climate change, gay marriage and pic- sorry,I mean black people, we should expect something that looks like it was knocked up by some spotty YTS using Notepad. Or Microsoft.
John,
As separate writers, we judge decisions individually - there is no party line at BorisWatch. As must be obvious, we have been largely critical of the new administration, but our criticisms are sincere. When I’ve been pleased by decisions - such as the slashing of the budget for the Beijing Olympics - I’ve made that clear.
We do also try to supply as much information as is possible, so that the reader - whenever he/she pops by - can come to their own decision. If we’re factually incorrect then you can, of course, kick us to pieces in the comment threads.
Cheers,
Ben
John:
“Perhaps you might consider a balanced view.”
I do try to keep most of my comment fair and based on the facts, but of course with a name like Mr. Stop Boris and having tracked Boris’s campaign from the point of view of someone campaigning against it, I don’t imagine anyone expects me to have a particularly positive opinion of a great deal that Boris gets up to.
If “London’s Quality Newspaper” could turn much the same policy (but arguably with less regard for proportionality or indeed on occasion facts) into a business model under the previous Mayor, I figure I can sustain a series of blog posts with it
As Ben says, though, we’re all individuals and he’s pointed out the handful of things Boris has done that he’s agreed with so far. If it gets to the point where the good things actually start to outnumber the bad, I will of course have to rethink my position and acknowledge this, but based on the past nine weeks (and the campaign before that) I’m not holding my breath.
Rob:
(Re web design) Yes, really: I didn’t set up or design this site, which I suspect largely uses a standard WordPress template (a limitation I’m also stuck with myself at Pushing the boundary). If you want to critique my own web design and standards adherence (and I do of course always welcome constructive criticism), StopBoris.org (and much of the attached blog, which I heavily adapted from a standard template) was the last site I created from scratch myself.
As for the general point that this £40k web site plan might not represent a waste of money, I concede that ultimately it may not do, but it just seems very surprising that someone so keen on saving public money, who is also someone who still hasn’t worked out whether he’ll be able to find a way to reinstate half price bus fares for people on Income Support, can conjure up £40,000 so early on for something that wasn’t even hinted at in his manifesto.
After decreeing that the Mayor of London logo had to be ‘bluewashed’, one can’t help detecting a disturbing focus on style and spin ahead of concrete policy decisions, which again is at odds with his oft-aired campaigning complaints about his predecessor’s publicity budget etc.
(Forgive me if I wasn’t as measured in explaining where I was coming from on this subject in my haste to dash something out before leaving for work this morning!)
Hello Mr Stop Boris - Ok, I’m sure you know your stuff, it just seemed a funny comment as this particular Wordpress theme is quite a usability diasaster zone.
Certainly a new site will need to be judged from accessibility and standards perspective. The current site is OK, but a fixed width, table-based layout and use of image maps aren’t exactly setting benchmarks in standard based design
Having looked at the linked PDF, it’s worth pointing out by the way that the £40,000 isn’t for the web design project itself, but it’s the estimated price of a contract to provide copywriting services for the new website.