As the austerity drive gets going in the UK, the focus on public sector spend has become razor sharp. Stories are emerging like this one from The Daily Telegraph earlier this week, which looked at how councils are ‘wasting’ budget on website redesigns. One of the most interesting insights was the huge range in the amount different councils spent on “re-design”. Birmingham City Council spent £2.9m in 2009 but the average spending on website redesigns was £100,000 (mean), £15,000 (median). There are considerable disparities here which almost certainly indicate a wide variation in the extent of the “re-design” and implementation of new functionality.
The biggest over spenders quite rightly raise the cry of “waste” and are most likely a result of poor management and ineffective procurement processes. It would be very interesting to see the business case for these projects. From a web professional’s perspective it would be almost as shocking if a similar number of councils were spending as little as £15k per year on their web presence. This would be a continuation of the historical theme that a few bad IT over spends create negative perceptions for all other web initiatives and are often cited to block innovation and efficiency.
Most people have internet access today and by delivering online services and innovation, e.g. reducing paperwork and implementing customer self-service, councils can in fact end up saving money (and very quickly).
It’s time to challenge the bad reputation web spend seems to have in the media; that it’s the VERY LAST THING public money should go towards. On a wider point; our country badly needs to keep pace with new skills and technologies if we are to compete in the global economy. Senseless printing of glossy brochures which are never used will not catapult us ahead for the future.
Many organizations are already benefitting from putting the web at the core of their business. They are transforming customer, employee and partner communications using collaboration and social networking and delivering important and effective online business processes as an integral part of a “social business” environment. Most recently some are using virtual environments for internal and customer events and online services. We see huge and exciting opportunities for the public sector with great benefits for all their stakeholders. It’s time to be ambitious about web functionality not just fanciful presentation.
We will know when public sector online capability has reached maturity because at that point we will be able to get involved. Via a simple and engaging site we will be able to review and contribute to new online plans and ideas, we will be able to comment on and rate the business case and we will have plenty of tools to express our views on all other areas of the council service too.
Let’s look forward to a new generation of press articles amazed at how much has been achieved so cost-effectively and berating the laggard councils who don’t yet have virtual community centres.
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