Help Me Investigate Birmingham.gov

Another Twitter conversation that has exploded into something much bigger.

@peteashton started it with this.

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.

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