Government websites.

The Government is going to close down loads of its websites because, well, probably because they're mainly rubbish and nobody ever looks at them, and if they do they can't find anything. (This via Raw Carrot).

Has anyone stopped to think just how much has been spent on putting these sites together? And how much it's going to cost to put their replacement "super-sites" together?

Of course not. It's just another half-examined crudity from New Labour. 

Comments

[Raw Carrot]

I tried to find out costs:

http://clients.voltuum.com/rawcarrot/2006/06/05/e-government-waste-exposed-3/
http://clients.voltuum.com/rawcarrot/2006/02/17/e-government-waste-exposed-2/
http://clients.voltuum.com/rawcarrot/2006/01/31/the-local-e-democracy-national-project/
http://clients.voltuum.com/rawcarrot/2006/01/15/e-government-waste-exposed-1/

But you never quite get to the bottom of it.

Take for instance, "Culture Online" at http://www.cultureonline.gov.uk/

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport spent in excess of £1mn just asking a consultancy firm to find out whether it was WORTH DOING!

According to a Parliamentary written answer:

"The cost of Culture Online (COL) was £6,392,718 in 2005-06."

[Carlotta]

Wish they'd cull their databases as well…eg: Children’s Database. What a waste of cash that it…if they’re looking for a needle in a haystack, (child abuse) why make the haystack bigger, and why infringe the privacy of every family in the country, the huge proportion of which do not warrant investigation?

Anyhow…ARCH blog preposes suing the state for defamation, should they get their database facts wrong which could be fun, and not likely to win the government many votes from tax-payers.

>http://archrights.wordpress.com/2007/01/12/how-libellous-is-your-database/

[Bishop Hill]

Yes, absolutely. I wish they'd stop doing loads of the things they do.

Good news on fingerprinting though

http://www.longrider.co.uk/blog/2007/01/13/school-fingerprinting-a-u-turn/