Hope VRM and California went well

What you describe – am trying to sell to elected Members as citizen designed public services. 2 x local authorities near here seem interested.

See briefing paper

Purpose

1, To obtain £ 10,000 from NESTA in order to build “ AnyCouncil.gov.uk “ website showing what can be done with web2 technology, and citizen centred design.

Background

2. Scotland has 32 unitary local authorities. Each has a totally different looking website; there is no standard lay-out, content, search mechanism or customer interface. This makes it difficult to search or use them. Local politicians and citizens express their frustration by asking –

 Where are the nurseries for 3 year olds near EH9 postcode?
 Where are Catholic primary schools if I live in Gartcosh?

Issue

3. In England there has been much more focus on the web among councils. All of the councils are audited by SocITM every year. Examples of good sites are Nottingham, Redbridge and Lichfield

Brent make good use of Google maps and GSI e.g. in this search for schools

4. By contrast, in Scotland Edinburgh is Dickensian; no use is seemingly made of mash-ups. This may be because of the restrictions in the BT contract or budget – the reasons are unknown, but the website offers no value to the citizen as it is just a list.

At the top of the league, East Renfrewshire makes use of the Scottish Navigation List, is easy to follow and informative.

6. In England, the I&DeA gives support to councils on how to improve their website offerings in a recession. COSLA in Scotland has no offer whatsoever.

Role of SocITM ( Society of IT Managers )

7. English councils are tested and ranked for web performance :-
SocITM Report – Learning from Better connected 2009
Socitm Insight has published a new briefing based on research in its annual report on council websites. One of its main messages is that customer self-service must move sharply up the agenda if councils are to meet future demand for services against a background of static or falling budgets. However, the briefing also highlights the fact that failure rates for council web enquiries are high – between 10 and 40 per cent – so that many web enquiries become a source of wasteful ‘avoidable contact’ rather than a means of reduced ‘cost-to-serve’.

Challenge

8. In England there have been a number of events to challenge the government’s way of building web interfaces. Typically these are expensive to build, slow and show a complete lack of customer or user input or testing.

9. At events such as the Re-Wired State, users and capable IT people have built Job Centre Pro Plus and other tools in a fraction of the time and expense of public procurement tenders. In this area, time is measured in hours, not months as with OJEU procedure. There was a rewrite of the official Active Places website, which in 8 hours, 3 developers had been able to create a much better website that cost the government over £5m to build, and added accessibility and mobile support.

In a PQ it appears that the FCO web site, built by Cap Gemini, cost £ 19,200,000

Risks

10. These might include:-

 Some local authority officials see this as a threat
 Data to scrape is not made available, or is not in accessible format
 No funding secured to pay for proof of concept
 Web builders too busy or do not see this as a challenge worthy of their time

Next Steps

11. Actions to demonstrate how a council web site might be improved

 NESTA bid made in order to secure award of £ 10,000 as project seed funding
 Citizens and service users lead design of a web site that delivers value
 A team of citizens, web designers, web builders and other interested people convenes to build a site with specific functionality that demonstrates web2 interface and mash-ups, permits collaboration and encourages citizen participation ( and whatever other specification citizens request )
 This is shown to a council who sponsor extension