Watchdog criticises UK gov websites
Directgov more a case of 'Not Me Gov'
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The Directgov supersite has been labelled "Not Me Gov" at a hearing of the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
PAC chair Edward Leigh MP made the accusation at a hearing on the National Audit Office report, Government on the Internet. He questioned the government's plan to reduce the number of websites with an increased emphasis on Directgov and Businesslink, and claimed the functionality of the former could be better.
"I understand that the only thing you can do on Direct Gov is renew car tax, it's more like 'Not Me Gov'," he said. "It's not a very awe inspiring website is it when the only thing you can do is renew your car tax?"
Leigh also suggested that the emphasis on just two sites could lay the ground for another IT disaster in two years time.
Alan Bishop, chief executive of the Central Office of Information, which manages Directgov, disputed this and said the management and back-up procedures at Directgov were such that over the past four years there had been "hardly any outage".
Leigh asked why the government had allowed 10 years of uncoordinated growth, and why so few of these websites link to Directgov, the public services supersite.
Chief information officer John Suffolk admitted that it was actually difficult to identify all the government websites because they don't all end with the gov.uk.
"This is one of the reasons why we are going down the road of website rationalisation, which is about getting a handle on how many websites we have so that... we can concentrate our efforts around two websites, Directgov and businesslink.gov.uk," said Suffolk.
He added that the rationalisation programme is well under way, with 951 marked for closure and only 26 websites have been identified as exceptions which must remain open.
The report finds that a third of departments and their agencies did not know how much their websites cost, while many were also unaware of who is using their sites and for what purpose. It suggests that better information about choosing schools of hospitals would be helpful to the public.
Committee member Austin Mitchell also asked the IT experts why commercial sites are more efficient. He accused the government "over enthusiasm" in following a fashion for the internet. "It is only now that they are getting to grips with this," he added.
Bishop defended the government's position by saying that in a survey of ease of use, the public sector got the same rating as Amazon and came out well ahead of Tesco. But he said the complexity of functions the government had to provide could affect the efficiency of online services. In response, the government is carrying out customer satisfaction surveys, which "allows us to earmark changes", he said.
On customer satisfaction, Alexis Cleveland, director general of transformational government, said that search engines were being improved. "There is no point in putting information on when people cannot find it", she said.
Glasgow South West MP Ian Davidson raised the issue of exclusion, as a result of the large numbers of people in the UK who were unable to access new technology. Chief information officer John Suffolk responded that the government has to provide other access channels "so that our starting point is understanding people's needs".
Davidson was unconvinced by the reassurances that face to face services were being actively promoted, and called for the money saved by putting information online to be channelled into the personal approach preferred by many people.
This article was originally published at Kablenet.
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COMMENTS
Constant change and rotten search engines - incompetence or malice?
The Department of Health changed from doh to dh a few years ago.
I don't know how many of you use it - I'm a GP and I do.
When they changed , they did *not* change the links lower down - and it became, yet again, impossible to locate anything useful without major effort and imagination.
Like "Where would I put this if I *didn't* want it found?"
Most other government websites (apart from those which want to be useable such as car tax and TV licenses) are equally opaque in my experience.
The reduction of numbers of websites won't help: being .gov, they are likely to change the URLs in such a way that the information will be impossible to find - or even to know whether the information needed still exists.
Does anyone know whether the government has heard of forwarding when a website changes?
Spare me
There's an element of truth here, on the other hand
1 - if you deliberately seek to pay less than the private sector you get worse staff. Maybe doesn't matter for doctors and teachers and everyone else who generally has to work for the government, but in IT, you end up with worse IT in government than outside. 2% payrises all round again next year?
2 - commercial websites are set up to sell stuff. That's what commerce is about. Government departments are not set up to sell stuff. In fact, anything which can be done by the private sector is done by the private sector. Government gets left with the tricky stuff that companies can't do. So, government websites aren't as slick at selling as commercial ones, well who'da thunk it?
3 - people can't find information on public sector websites. "I am a taxpayer and you are a public servant so you have to tell me what I wan't"... even if the request is ridiculous. Maybe you can't find the information because it doesn't exist or government hasn't committed to provide it.
4 - you can't do anything on government websites. See 2 and 3. Why does a department have a pointless website - because ministers demand that they have a website whether they need one or not.
5 - government websites are all different. Well knock me down with a feather. Why can't the DVLA have exactly the same style and layout as the ONS, when all corporate websites are identical? No, wait a minute, I've just thought that through...
6 - "and called for the money saved by putting information online to be channelled into the personal approach preferred by many people." Or, the savings could go to meeting the efficiency savings demanded by ministers and saving the Finance Director from a grilling by the PAC. Decisions, decisions...
7 - "Now stop pissing about with websites and get my fucking country fixed" ... is the correct answer. Now give that man a vote and tell him to use it wisely.
Hey, it's past four o'clock and I am a civil servant so I'm off....
Enough with the "choice" crap
FTA: "It suggests that better information about choosing schools of hospitals would be helpful to the public."
I'll save them some design and coding time - I choose to have the same provisions of healthcare and education availabe to all people in all areas. If one school/hospital starts failing, then increase funding/replace management as necessary. Now stop pissing about with websites and get my fucking country fixed.
Also, it's not surprising that government sites are ranked as easier to use than something like Amazon - that site has more functions to be misunderstood. When you don't do anything, you don't do anything wrong either.
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