Monday, November 20, 2006

We must have a website!

A quick Google search for *.gov.uk certainly throws up a lot. It's amazing what semi-defunct and seemingly pointless wastes of money there are out there cluttering up Government web servers.
  • www.euro.gov.uk - somehow linked to the Treasury but not actually updated since July.
  • www.letsallgeton.gov.uk - sounds very "let's have a group hug" doesn't it? Apparently it's part of the Knowledge Network and redirects user to that link.
  • www.knowledgenetwork.gov.uk - Shows the same "Holding Page" as "Let's all get on". Dropped iniative?
  • www.firekills.gov.uk - I thought fire was friendly. Now that I've read that site I know different.
  • www.drugs.gov.uk - not a place to score.
  • www.e-envoy.gov.uk - see above. Also note that it is now defunct anyway.
  • www.mindbodysoul.gov.uk - WTF?
  • www.lifebytes.gov.uk - ditto
  • www.riddor.gov.uk - Grass on your employer?
  • www.itsafe.gov.uk - Why? What's the point when the commerical sector does a better job? Total waste of time and money.
  • www.dwi.gov.uk - Water quango not the same as Ofwat. Very old looking site.
  • www.og.dti.gov.uk - No updates since June. However the web designer has embedded his email address in the page. I bet he get's lot's of spam.
  • www.cfit.gov.uk - Just because there is a website it doesn't make integrated transport so! The latest press release is priceless. Sounds like what they've been saying for nine years. Funny that.
  • www.lacors.gov.uk - promotes "quality regulation" whatever that is.
  • FP6 UK - EUro babble. Actually sounds rather iffy and sinister.
  • www.motoring.gov.uk - Totally dead site. Why waste the bandwidth costs if it's not valid anymore?
  • www.cleanersafergreener.gov.uk - Interesting, "Cleaner, greener, Safer" was Labour's election slogan last May. Bit of a blur between Government and party politics methinks? Online poll result is amusing though.
  • www.communicationsact.gov.uk - A site dedicated to an Act that became law three years ago. Why is it still online? Why is it not archived?
  • www.salt.gov.uk - a website all about errr... salt. How much did that cost?
  • www.cica.gov.uk - Doesn't appear to work in Firefox due a misconfigured webserver. Works fine in IE because IE is compensating for the webservers poor configuration.
  • www.benchmarking.gov.uk - Public Sector Benchmarking website. The "What's new" section says there is nothing new.

6 comments:

Benedict White said...

I have to say Dizzy, some of those made me laugh!

But then I realised I was paying for them :(

Praguetory said...

Legendary post, Dizzy. I'm going to take your word on most of these. Need to check out www.salt.gov.uk though.

Trevor Ivory said...

Excellent Dizzy, depressing but excellent!

I particularly liked the online poll though and naturally added my vote!

CityUnslicker said...

Doing the work for the future Tory government. Who said there are no easy places to cut government spending!

Excellent.

Jeremy Jacobs said...

Dizzy

You must remember that we have 6000000 pen-pushers in this country working for quangos,local & national government and a whole raft of other organisations which contribute very little to the Chancellors coffers.

They are all justifying their existence.

Unknown said...

Sorry, I don't have a problem with any of these websites. We have lived through an age when the primary means of governmental communication has shifted to a new medium. Inevitably there will be failed experiments and improvements to be made.