Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Haringey Council cited as top five spender for web redesigns
A story in the Telegraph this morning picked up the issue of councils spending large sums on website redesigns.
A redesign and revamp of the technology underlying a council website costs half of the councils which replied to a Telegraph survey less than £15,000, but the paper found 10 examples of councils paying between £100,000 and £600,000.
Haringey Council was in the top five spenders:
Birmingham City Council - £2.8 million (Completed in 2009)
Essex County Council - £800,000
Medway Council - £600,000
London Borough of Haringey - £540,000
Northamptonshire County Council - £450,000
The Telegraph says:
"Haringey Council spent more than £500,000 on a redesign in 2003, which included annual recurring costs of up to £200,000 per year, not including staff salaries.
Haringey has said it intends to cut the cost of some of these services, including a £36,925 per annum contract to provide webcasting and video hosting.
"The council has already started to use YouTube, and has put the webcasting contract out to tender again.
"A spokesperson from Haringey told the Telegraph: "Where real savings can be made without affecting service quality, usability and our legal requirements then we will certainly look to using alternatives".
Haringey also secured a top five place in a piece of research done earlier in the year and covered by the Telegraph.
This study looked at website spending by councils in the 2008/2009 financial year:
Top five councils for website spending:
1. Westminster City Council - £728,584
2. Barking and Dagenham - £335,811
3. Norfolk County Council - £233,961.97
4. Knowsley Council - £220,000
5. Haringey Council - £208,480
The redesign expenditure is now seven years back (and I imagine it comes from decisions taken even longer ago). The more recent spending figures, it seems, may stem from that decision.
We know little about the whys and wherefores of the decision and it's likely that whatever the logic that underpinned it, most of the people responsible are no longer in post anyway. So, I'm not minded to harp on about that expenditure.
What it does point to though is the need for Haringey, along with all councils, to consider what might be the most effective ways to derive the efficiencies of connecting with and serving residents online.
I'd welcome some insight into current thinking from the Council and have asked for comment.
A redesign and revamp of the technology underlying a council website costs half of the councils which replied to a Telegraph survey less than £15,000, but the paper found 10 examples of councils paying between £100,000 and £600,000.
Haringey Council was in the top five spenders:
Birmingham City Council - £2.8 million (Completed in 2009)
Essex County Council - £800,000
Medway Council - £600,000
London Borough of Haringey - £540,000
Northamptonshire County Council - £450,000
The Telegraph says:
"Haringey Council spent more than £500,000 on a redesign in 2003, which included annual recurring costs of up to £200,000 per year, not including staff salaries.
Haringey has said it intends to cut the cost of some of these services, including a £36,925 per annum contract to provide webcasting and video hosting.
"The council has already started to use YouTube, and has put the webcasting contract out to tender again.
"A spokesperson from Haringey told the Telegraph: "Where real savings can be made without affecting service quality, usability and our legal requirements then we will certainly look to using alternatives".
Haringey also secured a top five place in a piece of research done earlier in the year and covered by the Telegraph.
This study looked at website spending by councils in the 2008/2009 financial year:
Top five councils for website spending:
1. Westminster City Council - £728,584
2. Barking and Dagenham - £335,811
3. Norfolk County Council - £233,961.97
4. Knowsley Council - £220,000
5. Haringey Council - £208,480
The redesign expenditure is now seven years back (and I imagine it comes from decisions taken even longer ago). The more recent spending figures, it seems, may stem from that decision.
We know little about the whys and wherefores of the decision and it's likely that whatever the logic that underpinned it, most of the people responsible are no longer in post anyway. So, I'm not minded to harp on about that expenditure.
What it does point to though is the need for Haringey, along with all councils, to consider what might be the most effective ways to derive the efficiencies of connecting with and serving residents online.
I'd welcome some insight into current thinking from the Council and have asked for comment.
Tags for Forum Posts: haringey council website
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Omotn on
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I have used the LBH website facility to submit the following request (ref HC-100667 target date for a response 16th September)
Please summarise your request What is the purpose of the footer added to every email sent out ny LBH?
Please give full details of your request I have just submitted an FOI request to LBH using the website facility. The email acknowledgement I recieved conatined the standard footer appended below. Please can you tell me
1) Is it appropriate to attach this footer to every email - in this case the main content of the email is a question I have just typed. In what way does LBH consider this to be in any way confidential - surely that is my decision.
2) Has LBH ever had occasion to enforce this confidentialiy?
3) Under what laws would the confidentiality be enforced and what would be the penalties for breaching it?
This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential, may be subject to legal privilege and are intended only for the person(s) or organisation(s) to whom this email is addressed. Any unauthorised use, retention, distribution, copying or disclosure is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please notify the system administrator at Haringey Council immediately and delete this e-mail from your system. Although this e-mail and any attachments are believed to be free of any virus or other defect which might affect any computer or system into which they are received and opened, it is the responsibility of the recipient to ensure they are virus free and no responsibility is accepted for any loss or damage from receipt or use thereof. All communications sent to or from external third party organisations may be subject to recording and/or monitoring in accordance with relevant legislation.
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Permalink Reply by Neville Collins on
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Haringey's website is awful! There are far better local authority websites that comply with web standards, can be accessed by many with disabilities, provide a lot of information and are cost-effective. The company hosting the website should be sacked, and the council should employ a couple of people to set up and maintain a proper one.
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Permalink Reply by Mei Wang on
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I have to agree the website should cost less. There must be local people who are IT competent enough to maintain the site without having to pay usurious sums of money to companies who charge a massive uplift on simple things like software training and site maintenance costs.
I hope we don't forget about the older section of the population who are not IT literate or have access to it. They need to be able to get vital information as much as we do and lately I've been wracking my brains about how we could get it to them. Haringey People for what it's worth serves some (a small "some") of that purpose and the local press, but there's still a need to get information out to them at a ground/neighbourhood level?
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With this sort of waste on website redesign etc, I now understand why the Council's Maintenance Dept cannot afford to redesign/repair/patch the stretch of pavement we have to walk on, despite their written promises in 2007/2008 and December 2009. "The money ran out" is the gist of what I've learnt after five phone calls yesterday and this morning.
So I'll stay at home and admire their 'not bad' website, while rejoicing that I don't live in Birmingham.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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The local response to the Birmingham fiasco was to knock up a DIY version, BCCDIY, in a few afternoons for a few hundred quid.
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Here's a blog calling into question the data that the DT article was based on and its interpretation.
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If you follow the E-mancipator links through you come to a google doc spreadsheet which purports to be the answers to the FOI requests.
The scary thing about this is thatthe Haringey answer contains the words "+STAFF TIME" twice, but in a column headed "in house budget" has the word "No". So the true costs may be much higher and there seems to be a contradiction within the response.
E-mancipator also criticises FoI requests as "They have become the tools of undergraduate and commercial researchers with limited skills and foresight, along with a small number of academic researchers prepared to pressurize overburdened senior council staff with additional tasks". My own attempt to follow up at Haringey I am sure could be improved. It is appended here. Is it worth trying to add skill and foresight to it, anyone?
Details: Recent reports in the press suggest that LBH is a relatively high spender on webiste facilities. Please can you tell me the cost of the most recent website redesign, and when this took place. Also, can you tell me the annual ongoing cost of maintaining the website, and how this is divided between internal and external costs. Can you also tell me what cost is incurred annually by content management, and what amount goes on hardware and software support and licences.
I would also like to know how the benefits of the website are measured. I can see from the statistics the number of visits and visitors. I find it hard to visualise well over a million different people making access to the site. What does "unique visitor" figure actually mean.
Has LBH assessed how much money has been saved by the website, as visitors use its facilities rather than council offices, for example? Has LBH assessed the non financial or intangible benefits of the site? Please tell me ehat these benefit are.
Thanks
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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I raised this with Cllr Joe Goldberg, councillor for finance, copying-in Kevin Crompton, Chief Executive. Below is the briefing sent by Mr Crompton to all councillors, plus a speadsheet with further detail.
I'd also suggested to Joe Goldberg that we consider ending webcasts of meetings or replacing them by podcasts. But as you can see from the spreadsheet, the saving is not great. Plainly having a record of what councillors said can add to public accountability. (Though I doubt that was the main reason for starting them.)
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor)
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2010 2:47 PM
Subject: Haringey Website - costs
(This email is forwarded on behalf of Kevin Crompton, Chief Executive)
I am writing to all Members following recent publicity in the Daily Telegraph. The Daily Telegraph submitted an FOI on web costs to all authorities for the years 2007/08 and 2008/09 and then extrapolated the figures to give an estimated overall spend by each council from 2003.
In our case, they picked 2008/09 when our costs were about £200k. This was much higher than in 2007 because of the launch of a number of new services. They then multiplied this by seven and added the costs of the upgrade, giving the wildly incorrect figure of £2m. The actual cost of running the website since 2003/2004 is £745,311. There was a one-off spend of £500k in 2003 to completely re-design the site, and even if that is added to the running costs, the total is substantially lower than the Telegraph’s inaccurate figure.
The projected cost of running the site in the current financial year is £156k. I enclose a breakdown of the costs since 2003/4.
Many thousands of residents use the website to keep them informed and to access services quickly and at their convenience. Cutting online services would increase costs overall to the taxpayer because we would need to use other, more expensive means of communication such as telephone calls. The relative costs of transactions are: face-to-face - £8.23; telephone - £3.21; and web - £0.39 (based on data from the Society of IT Managers).
We do of course look for savings where they can be made without affecting convenience and usability. An example is the current re-tendering of the web cast service.
Haringey was one of only 76 councils to respond to the FOI request and, in line with our policy of openness we provided a fully comprehensive answer, showing all running costs. I am satisfied that we achieve good value in our website provision when judged on a level field.
Yours sincerely
Kevin Crompton
Chief Executive - Attachments:
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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Alan thank you for posting this information which is interesting. I think the council's website on the whole works not too badly; as something of a paradox, it makes Freedom of Information requests straightforward, which is to the council's credit.
In the same IT vein, can I ask what use the council is making of Open Source software? I ask this in a general sense – and if not, why not?
I may yet pose a formal FOI request about the amount of money that goes out of the council by way of software licensing to a certain multi-national corporation that has a criminal conviction for abusing its monopoly (under US Anti-Trust legislation).
Open Source software holds out the potential for lowering the council's IT costs. It's best known example is the operating system Linux which is based on industrial strength UNIX principles, the same principles on which the Internet was built. The advantages go beyond cost reduction and include better security and the ability to fine-tune the operating system to the particular needs of the organisation that deploys it.
The chances are that the page you are viewing now is being 'served' to you by a server running Linux.
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You'll no doubt be interested in this article then Clive - and it's an interesting addition to this conversation too.
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Most interesting article, Hugh. What I get from it is that there''s little chance of reform from within local authorities: the instruction to move in the right direction has to come from central government.
We can rely on some councils to be parochial and unco-operative about this. Some of the IT staff in local councils know no better than DOS-Windows and, for no better reason than vested-interest, are loathe to move to something that might be less expensive and more secure.
One good link deserves another. This article is written by an Open Source advocate who cautions about implementing Open Source software in large institutions at too fast a pace ...
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