Why is the Birmingham City Council website so bad?
2nd July 2008 by David North
It’s a constant annoyance to me how bad the Birmingham City Council website. Even with a fairly recent makeover it just doesn’t project Birmingham’s image well (it’s top of Google for “Birmingham” for a start).
I understand the amount of information on the site is massive but surely it could be organised better? Public sector websites of course have strict targets to reach with regard to website accessibility but this is no excuse for a poor design. After all if Birmingham is, as I seem to remember, the largest council in Europe surely it should be able to throw the resource at the website. I’ve given up numerous times trying to find information I need - maybe I’m just lazy but I don’t think I’m the only one to have this problem. An extra bit of investment here might well see costs being reduced elsewhere as the website will be doing it job properly.
Just to prove this challenge isn’t unobtainable take a look at Woking Borough Council’s website which does a much better job of it mixing an excellent blend of simple design, accessibility with usability for visitors.
To be fair to Birmingham City Council they aren’t the only public sector website that fails in fact from my experience the successes are in the minority. However projecting Birmingham as a great city has got to be done across the board and I believe currently this is a bit of a let down.
It’s usually because some suit who has never touched a computer set’s out the visual guidelines that everyone has to follow from the person who orders the letterheaded paper to the person who designs the website
My other half was involved in getting the Warwickshire Archives site online
http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/archivesunlocked
She had real problems getting it to “fit” and had a battle to use the colour blue that is on the site
The Woking site does look good though
Hi David, hope you are well. I actually had the pleasure of meeting the people responsible for the council’s website and someone from ‘Digital Birmingham’ last week. it was a meeting to see how we can help in terms of video, but it was an interesting meeting.
Having worked for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) for 7 years, you would be amazed at how difficult it is to get things changed in a large organisation. I believe that Birmingham Council are in the process of some major changes to their site, i think they recognise that the site has become ‘information overload’ and that it needs to be more flexible and useful.
You are correct when you say that “Public sector websites of course have strict targets to reach with regard to website accessibility”…which is why I had an ‘aloof’ attitude to it in a previous reply…the DWP has such strict guidelines that it was almost to the point of unbearable…plus, i was ‘on one’ that day.
Anyway, I think the users of Birmingham City Council will soon see a new, fresh and more useful website, but the fact of the matter is that an organisation can be so large that it is not necessarily able to react quickly.
Don’t get me wrong, the people I met are very skilled, hugely enthusiastic and want to provide a better service…though I can only speak for myself when i worked for DWP, who spent 32 Million…yes…MILLION…on the cms project and it was…how can i say…err…a system that took Word documents, converted to pdf and outputted html…i am so glad i’m out of the DWP!
Hi Jamie. I’m sure you are right it’s just a site that gets my goat because it’s been this way for as long as I remember. Large public sector organisations do move slow in some cases but I don’t see this as a excuse - in fact if Birmingham is to be taken seriously it should be setting the pace.
Tight accessibility guidelines also aren’t a reason to wriggle out of this as it’s been proven time after time that this isn’t a barrier some developers make out it is.
I’m sure there is talent down there - it just needs to be allowed to flow a bit easier!
As for 32 million to produce a CMS I’m not getting started on the waste of public funds (another rant for another day!).
I look forward to the new all singing and dancing website!