Spinning a costly web in government

A study by a recruitment firm under the Freedom of Information Act suggests in 2008/09 councils paid an average bill for Web site services of £40,917 - compares with a £3,297 bill for what it claims is equivalent work carried out for the private sector in the same year.

 

Norfolk spent £94,220 on its schools website,  Knowsley splashed out £225,000 "to cover the complete redesign and redevelopment of the Knowsley Council web solution" while Cambridgeshire spent £36,000 on a user experience consultant. 

 

And costs are going up year on year. For example, in 2008/9, St Albans District Council spent £193,090 on web contractors, considerably up on the figure of £69,690 for the previous year.

 

Hosting costs paid by councils also tip towards the high end of the scale.  Across the country, that translates to web services budgets for the financial year 2008-09 of £19.1 million compared with £16.1 million the previous year. Topping the list for the years 2007-2009 were Westminster City Council, followed by Barking and Dagenham, Norfolk and Harringey. 

 

Even the simplest and nominally lowest cost activities seem to carry hefty mark ups. Durham Council spent £711 on domain name registration. A domain name registration can cost less than £3 per annum.

 

IT freelance jobs site PeoplePerHour.com says it asked every UK council for details of their spend on external contractors and agencies for web site development and maintenance services. Only 70% replied. The group then compared that data with the pay rates of its 56,000 plus members to arrive at the ten times claim.

 

The group's Chief Executive says he believes the disparity is down to inefficient IT procurement approaches in local government. He also claims the cost imbalance is also poor value as local government sites by their nature should actually be cheaper to maintain than commercial ones. "IT service suppliers to local councils, NHS Trusts and other public services are getting a great deal at taxpayers’ expense,"said Xenios Thrasyvoulou.

 

Ironically the higher level of spending is going on sites that are typically non-complex and non-transactional, often simple static information pages. "[Council] web sites are important but they're not complicated - they're not transactional,” noted Thrasyvoulou.

 

“The content on them is pretty static and so they shouldn't cost any more. Additionally, if you look at the amount of traffic on the web sites, it's very low, meaning that the cost per user is considerably higher than the private sector equivalent. " 

 

But the online gravy train may be coming to a halt. "Whoever wins the election it's clear that IT will be one of the first industries to see significant public sector spending cuts,” said Thrasyvoulou.