WRITTEN ON April 2nd, 2008 BY Richard S AND STORED IN Power of Information, Save Time and Money, What do we want?

Not having received my new biometric bus-pass, I checked the local council’s web-site. This confirmed that the council had already dispatched them and that they should arrive before the end March 2008.

Concerned that my application or “passport quality” photos had been lost, but not knowing which department was responsible, I couldn’t use the council’s online enquiry form or enquire by email.

So, I phoned the council, to be greeted immediately by a recorded announcement that dispatch had been delayed by at least another week. When I asked, the call-centre staff said that it would take more than a week to correct this information on their web-site.

Wibbi: Government and “officialdom” kept their web-sites up to date: So often in recent crises, broadcast announcements have directed concerned people to 0845 or 0870 phone numbers rather than to official web-sites. Surely, a good web-site can handle far more enquiries, far more efficiently than a human call-centre?

Wibbi: These new bus-passes did not require “biometric grade” photos: Many users of bus-passes wear spectacles, but photos usually have to be taken without – presumably to help the digitization process. This means that few users will match their new photos.