WRITTEN ON October 17th, 2006 BY Ella Smith AND STORED IN Uncategorized
I’d like to be able to contact my local council via their website http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/
I had a query about parking and used the email address on the info they sent me – no reply I used the email address they give as a contact on their website justask@edinburgh.gov.uk – no reply
I searched the website for telephone numbers.
The phone numbers on the transport pages put me through to the central switch board, who accidentally transferred me to children and families.
I tried a phone number embedded in the text of the info about parking – line dead.
Eventually I went through central switchboard again to get to the right department.
It’s great to see new and innovative ideas for e-government, but when a council like the City of Edinburgh Council can’t get the basics right…
The Edinburgh web-site is surprisingly slow and has many “broken links” – for example, all links from the “a – z” to parking topics are broken: Presumably someone has started to re-organise the file structure but not completed the task. Also rather unwisely, the URLs of many pages contain capital letters; some contain spaces. (These are very likely to cause future errors.)
Your experience highlights several issues about e-government web-sites & services, including:
1. How easily can first-time & occasional users find information?
2. Should the basic layout of e-Government pages be standardised, especially the home pages?
3. Are contact email addresses & phone numbers shown on pages kept up to date?
4. How quickly are emails answered?
5. Are telephone operators properly trained? Do they have an up to date phone directory?