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Help Me Investigate Birmingham.gov

Another Twitter conversation that has exploded into something much bigger.

@peteashton started it with this.

http://birminghamnewsroom.com/ has reminded me, a new Bham Council website was announced 2 years ago. What's up with that?

I responded and a few messages later @podnosh suggested I try using Help Me Investigate to get some answers. So I have. This is where you can read and contribute further information if you have any. If you would like an invitation to join then let me know and I should be able to sort that out I think.

We seem to have touched a nerve though. The Birmingham Post has (coincidentally) just posted an article explaining the current situation a little bit. It’s great to have this information where we had a vacuum before but the news itself is not particularly encouraging.

On the one hand we are told to expect a new site within the next month. On the other, it’s been built by Capita and already appears to be fraught with technical problems. I guess we should sit tight and not pass judgement until we see it but Jon may have had it right.

it's being built by a capita subsidiary i thinks. we may wish it hadn't arrived when it does

Meanwhile @mikelcu has launched a Freedom of Information request to try and find out more.

An hour or two later and the most recent report has been unearthed from the bowels of the current site by Mike along with some other key documents.

Seemingly as a result of all this interest BCC Web Team are now represented on Twitter. Win!

I then downloaded the files found by Mike and discovered this gem at the bottom of Page 51 of the ‘Customer First – Revision of Full Business Case’ pdf.

Increased Costs due to Increased Complexity

Web – the more detailed design, together with customer survey feedback,
revealed that to develop a compelling web site which would deliver
significant channel shift would require greater investment than originally

£6,875

Further reading shows that this number is in £000s so nearly £7million additional funding requirement was identified here just for the website on top of whatever had been previously agreed.

So, it should be good then?

So that’s an *additional* £7m been added to whatever the budget was before – and that is *just* the website, none of the other IT stuff. I’ve been told via email that the numbers are probably more complicated than that and the £6,875,000 figure probably does include other stuff too. It still reads as ‘website’ to me but this is an investigation not a witch hunt so I feel the need to state that there is some dispute about the costs and we can’t comfortably state a figure until we have more information.

You would think that when spending that amount of money then the site would at least meet it’s legal obligations but apparently this is still up in the air with regard to accessibility. In the ‘progress report’ pdf we discover that:

The underlying code will be much closer to being fully
standards compliant and correspondingly more accessible to people with
disabilities*

Much closer? Let’s take a look at that asterisk

*Note: It is a statutory requirement for the external facing web site to comply
with the Disabilities Discrimination Act.

As far as I remember the wording of the Disability Discrimination Act says that organisations need to “make every reasonable effort” to make their sites accessible. My view, as a professional web developer, is that when you are spending double-digit millions on a wholly new website then “every reasonable effort” is more than the being “much closer to being fully standards compliant”. The site needs to fully standards compliant, the site needs to have been tested and approved by real users with a variety of accessibility needs. Anything less than that would certainly not be “every reasonable effort” when we’re talking about budgets of this size.

This does not fill me with hope about what is about to be presented to us but let’s not be negative at this point. Let’s look forward to a new beginning with hope in our hearts and cross our fingers that it will actually be quite good.

Anyway, it appears that the latest plan is to launch the website in late July or 1st week of August but don’t hold your breath as every reference to a date is smothered in caveats saying “well, maybe not”. But it should arrive soon and with many millions spent on it’s development I’m sure it will be just marvellous.

Particular thanks go to @mikelcu,@brendadada and @bounder for digging in so quickly and to @podnosh for suggesting Help Me Investigate. Have I missed anyone?

Anyway, all the key links are on Help Me Investigate. If you have any other information then please post it there. If you need an invitation to join just let me know or post a comment here.

This is all still developing and I’ll do another follow up post if anything else interesting emerges. Otherwise I look forward to being able to blog about the launch in a few weeks.

UPDATE: It just keeps coming. Paul just posted a link to this Freedom Of Information enquiry by @newsbrooke. Do go look at Help Me Investigate which seems to be working brilliantly.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A press release from Birmingham City Council also appeared today which confirms much of what we now know. The most notable, and praiseworthy, aspect of this is that I found it via the new http://birminghamnewsroom.com website. This is a magnificent step forward for the Council, enabling all of us to subscribe to a range of feeds full of council information. There’s a little way to go to make it great but I do honestly feel that this is real progress and something new for our fine City. Nick Booth has written a bit about it here

Posted in birmingham, twitter. Tagged with .

By Josh
July 3, 2009

6 comments

Moseley Barcamp continues…

So I went to Moseley Barcamp on Sunday and good fun it was too.

Loads of interesting people, lots of great discussion but I just don’t have time to do a proper write up. Real life is taking up all my time this week and I figured I just didn’t have time to blog.

But then, as usual, the conversation continued on Twitter (#mbcamp). Jon Bounds just posted the following tweet

not sure i see much more than a bit of a connection between web design and social media. (any more than between printing & graph. design?)

I tried for about 10 minutes to reply in 140 characters and just couldn’t.

Instead, I am posting my somewhat longer reply here.

@bounder I think the connection between design, content and the production thereof is key.

A content producer like you needs to know just enough about the technicalities to do your job well.

Brilliant graphic designers generally know enough about print technology to know what’s possible – if only so they can push the boundaries.

In the same way a book author tends to have an opinion on how their work should be presented.

So a Social Media Gun For Hire needs to stay sufficiently abreast of the productions side of things (web development) to know what’s possible.

There’s nothing better than a brilliant piece of writing that’s also designed beautifully and printed using special papers by a true craftsperson. It’s the combination that makes it magic.

I agree that web developers and social medians are different groups, different ’scenes’. Each group needs to develop their own ways of sharing. You don’t want to listen to a talk on the merits of different javascript libraries. Web developers are not interested in reading discussing the Big City Plan.

But the intersection matters. The true magic happens when they we all get together and have a natter.

Posted in twitter. Tagged with .

By Josh
June 29, 2009

5 comments

All Bran Loaf

All Bran Loaf

Inspired by Pete’s iPhone for a cake competition I want to talk about All Bran loaf.

I have entered my All Bran loaf into this competition. More specifically, I have offerred a mini wall of All Bran loaves, one for Pete and another 5 for him to give away to friends.

All Bran loaf is simple and delicious. Introduced to me by my mum more than thirty years ago, it’s time to pass it on to others. It’s not a secret recipe, it probably came of the side of a packet in the 60s or 70s but it is incredibly simple and cheap to make.

Just five ingredients, measured in American Cups (big mugs in my case) and almost completely fool-proof.

But there’s a problem. Until people eat it they always, and I mean always, look at me funny. It just doesn’t sound particularly appetising. My other names for it aren’t any better. “Fat Free Fruit Loaf” just makes it sound tasteless and dry when it’s neither of those things (but it is almost fat free).

And, ultimately, the All Bran is the key ingredient and I feel it deserves it’s place in the title.

All Bran Loaf

So I’m taking another approach. Rather than try and find an appealing name for my delicious fruit loaf I am going to show you some of the magic. Because it is magic. It’s a very low fat fruit cake that is so easy to make the you will immediately be able to memorise the recipe forever.

Tempted? It’s amazingly tasty and a doddle to make. Here’s how.

I’ve created 13 steps below which may make it sound complicated. It really isn’t. If you can’t be bothered with all that complexity then follow this:

Throw a mug each of of All Bran, milk, flour, dried fruit and sugar into a bowl. Stir it all up, put in in a tin and cook til done.

It’s easy and delicious and cheap. Go make one. Probably not a competition winner as it’s not a glamorous cake but it is special to me. Bizarrely I have no particular need for a 1st generation iPhone. I already have a newer model than that so in the unlikely scenario where my humble little loaf won then I would, in some way, repeat the exercise.. i.e. move it on again for another cake. I’m more interested in cakes than iPhones really. Anyway, on with the recipe.

How to make All Bran Loaf

  1. Assemble your ingredients and implements.

    Implements and ingredients

    You’ll need All Bran, milk, self-raising flour, sugar and some dried fruit (I prefer sultanas). You’ll also need a mixing bowl, a large-ish mug (or small bowl, whatever) a spoon to mix it all up and a tin of some kind to bake it in.

  2. Fill the mug with All Bran and pour that into the mixing bowl

    A mug of All Bran

  3. Fill the mug with milk and pour that over the All Bran

    A mug of milk

    A mixing bowl full of All Bran and milk

  4. Go have a cup of tea. You need to let the milk sink in for a few minutes (anything more than about 2 minutes is fine)

    A bowl of soggy All Bran

  5. Fill the mug with self-raising flour and pour that into the bowl

    A mug of flour

  6. Fill the mug with sultanas (or your dried fruit of choice) and pour that into the bowl

    A mug of sultanas

  7. Half fill the mug with brown sugar and add to the mix (I find a whole mug of sugar makes things a bit over-sweet. Add sugar according to your own taste).

    Half a mug of brown sugar

    This should leave you with something looking like this.

    A bowl of ingredients

  8. Stir it all up

    All mixed up

  9. Pour this into a tin. I like loaf shaped tins but it really doesn’t matter. Actually I have a fancy porcelain one but really anything will do. Don’t forget to grease it. The easiest way to do that is to find one of those slips of greaseproof paper from the top of most ‘is it nearly butter’ type concoctions and wipe it over the surface of your tin.

    Loaf tin

    If you pour the mixture into a shallower round tin then reduce the cooking time a bit. For the geeks out there, the bigger the surface area the less time you need to cook it.

    Loaf tin full of loaf mix

  10. Stick it in the oven. Lowish – About Gas 4.

    low oven temperature

  11. Leave it alone for about an hour and a half or so to cook.

  12. Check it by taking out of the oven and sticking a knife in it. If the knife comes out clean then it’s done. If not then put it back in the oven and wait a bit longer. Repeat every few minutes or so until you’re happy.

  13. Take out of oven and eat.

    A freshly baked All Bran loaf

    This one came out a little wonky. My old, uneven oven tends to do that but it really doesn’t matter. This cake has no pretensions, isn’t fancy. It’s a quick, easy, delicious, everyday kind of cake.

    A freshly baked All Bran loaf

Really, go make one. I challenge you to have a go. You won’t regret it.

Posted in recipe.

By Josh
June 12, 2009

6 comments

So here I am

Welcome. This is my new personal blog, created because I have more to talk about than I can really shoehorn into the Live Brum blog.

I recently split personalities on Twitter, limiting my @livebrum account to information directly relating to the family of websites that I maintain as a hobby.

Everything else I want to Tweet gets posted to my personal account. This has turned out to work better than I expected so I am doing the same with the blog.

Welcome. Expect cat pictures, recipes and questions. I would expect most posts to relate to the fine City of Birmingham in some way but I don’t really have a plan. Let’s see how it goes.

Posted in meta.

By Josh
June 12, 2009

No comments

Hello world

So here I am.

It’s going to take me a day or two to get anything at all written so please bear with me.

Posted in meta.

By Josh
June 9, 2009

1 comment