WRITTEN ON June 29th, 2007 BY Ruth Kennedy AND STORED IN Political engagement, Transformational Government, What do we want?, Wibbipedia/MindtheGap
One of our top IG correspondents writes to point out the online cack-handedness surrounding the otherwise smooth and authoritative machinery of government changes:
Machinery of Government changes under Tony Blair were famously last minute and invariably came as a surprise to most of his Cabinet colleagues, let alone the unfortunate civil servants charged with implementing them. Surely Gordon Brown, a politician renowned for his mastery of detail, would break the mould as he set about recasting Whitehall this week? After all, with six uninterrupted weeks to prepare once it became clear his bid for the leadership would be uncontested, and with the Head of the Civil Service at his disposal, it seemed that Brown had been given a unique opportunity to prepare not only himself but the civil service for his new administration.
Thursday’s authoritative and polished announcement of the abolition of the Department for Education and Skills and the Department of Trade and Industry, and the establishment of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills; the Department for Children, Schools and Families; and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform appeared to be first confirmation of Brown’s claims to be launching a new style of government. Equally, the Number 10 website kept pace with the breaking news channels with a steady stream of announcements as each piece of the new government jigsaw was set in place. And yet, for all the weeks of preparation within Whitehall and for all the efficiency of the Downing Street communications team, it seems one thing hasn’t changed. During Thursday afternoon, none of the new departments existed in the online world. 24 hours on from their launch, all three of them have managed to put in place the feeblest websites, characterised by a lack of design effort or inspiration.
See http://www.dius.gov.uk/ and http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/ . As for the new “DBERR”, it hasn’t even managed to secure the dberr.gov.uk web address (yet) so their shockingly amateurish as ditchwater site is still at http://www.dti.gov.uk/ . Of course it takes time to build new sites, particularly for new organisations, but WIBBI Whitehall grasped the fundamental importance of an effective web presence, and the need to invest effort in ensuring a new online shop window from day one?
Better still, let’s hope for a new web presence that is an integral part of the process of change – both of focus and culture – so needed in these new ministries.
5 Responses to “Where’s Gordon’s brave new world online?”
The fact that they managed to get the domain names registered and active in the short time they had is a real achievement, believe me. I’ve been quoted all sorts of ridiculous lead in times to do similar before. Shame they’ve all fixed on illogical acronyms though (although don’t know what the alternatives might have been).
Fair enough that money shouldn’t be spent unnecessarily on glossy online presentation but let’s count the days til there’s something useful online for DIUS or DBEER…
I can sympathise with Jeremy’s view on this one. It was probably only at the very last minute that names of departments were agreed.
As to what will appear as content, and how creating new web sites sits with “rationalising” the number. let’s wait and see.
I wonder whether when Shell or BP re-organise the City analysts give them such a hard time and chase down their web presence in the way we do ?
You say that Gordon B has a mastery of detail. He was also responsible for one of the biggest IT-related cock ups of the last few years. Dare I say “tax credits”?
> and the need to invest effort in ensuring a new
> online shop window from day one?
I’d rather they put the effort into sorting the organisation out and then the website would easily follow quickly after that.
To be fair, having 2 sites up and running within a couple of hours (when those 2 had been added to GNN, they both had websites).
While http://www.DCSF.gov.uk is another name for http://www.DFES.gov.uk which makes some sense given the closeness of the two remits, DIUS is a new department from their website pulling in areas from at least 4 previous departments.
Much worse than doing a rename or putting up a placeholder quickly is doing something larger badly – the placeholder site is clearly intended to be replaced. The DCSF site may not be…
While that doesn’t prevent DIUS site from going pear shaped, it does give them a chance of getting it right after careful consideration; especially since their current website seems to be hosted on a patent office server.
WIBII if the website reflected reality, rather than twhat was wished to be perceived as reality; even if that reality wasn’t quite what we would have wanted.