This article is more than 1 year old

Unsurprising report: UK local govt sites remain totally crap

Really? Good lord. Two sugars?

Although tech is often characterised as a fast-paced industry, in local government IT change happens at more glacial speeds, at least according to a report on the councils' websites.

A study by public sector organisation the Society of Information Technology Management (SOCITM) found local authority websites have "failed to evolve significantly" in the last few year.

Just 46 per cent of sites met the body's standard for democracy sections when tested with a local councillor search task.

Of the 164 councils, it said 41 per cent of sites failed specifically because names and parties of local councillors could not be found.

"It is not satisfactory to have to know the name of your ward in order to find your councillor, especially where no advice is given for finding out in which ward you live. Furthermore, it is often difficult to find a simple, clear statement of which political party is in control of the council," said the report.

More than one reviewer observed that problems were sometimes down to poor implementation of the ‘ModernGov’ software that many councils use to manage information on democratic services pages, SOCITM commented. ®

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