Friday, March 23, 2007

DfT spends £1.6 million on its website

The other week I posted and gently took the mickey out of Depart of Transport for its "Act on CO2" website. At the time I wondered how much much it cost to produce, and I've just learned that it came to a cool £110,270.

However, the geeky web nerds amongst us might also have noticed that the whole Department of Transport website went through a bit of a rebranding and redesign at the beginning of January, and no expense was spared! The total cost for the redesign was £1.5 million quid. Something tells me the hit to cost ratio might be poor!

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is there a source for these figures?

dizzy said...

No. I made them up. Read Hansard.

Anonymous said...

See that wasn't so hard.

Mind you looks like the £1.5m was a bit more than "...rebranding and redesign..." as you put it, so you weren't entirely accurate there were you?

I wonder if this is what they call 'spin'?

dizzy said...

(11:43:43) dizzy: shall I make a prediction
(11:43:55) blogger2: Please do
(11:44:17) dizzy: he will come back and say that spend was justfied and regurgitate the answer and claim that I am being disingenuous
(11:44:24) dizzy: even though all I said was "this is how much it cost"
(11:44:41) blogger2: E-mail that to yourself with a time stamp
(11:44:57) dizzy: have time stamps in this window
(11:45:02) blogger2: True
(11:45:11) dizzy: will cut and paste from here

The Daily Pundit said...

Seen this one yet - KidsDirect.gov?
It's aimed at 5-11 year-olds and enables children to understand clearly the differences between local and central government.

Press release

dizzy said...

Did it on Wednesday

Anonymous said...

Ah, I see why you're called Dizzy now, it must be all that spi...

dizzy said...

Spin? Opinionated arrogance you tit! That's what it says, that's what I do. They spent 1.5m redesigning and rebranding the website, fact.

dizzy said...

Oh yes, and Dizzy is the Egg on the banner. It's a computer game.

Anonymous said...

Infrastructure overhauling and upgrading isn't by any stretch of the imagination 'redesigning and rebranding'.

I'm happy to acknowledge that you're a weak yolk by the way if it makes you feel better.

dizzy said...

oooo now who's spinning by using phrases like "infrastructure overhaul" ... rearchitecture is redesign. However, there is no mention of infrastructure change at all, they installed a propreitary content management system which was fundamnetal to the redesign of the site. The project cost was stupid amount of money for what is a very small and significantly low traffic piece of Internet facing delivery. The 1.5m paid for the redesign.

You are wrong, its ok thogh, you're old and probably don't understand about teh Interweb in enterpise delivery terms. The vast amount of that 1.5m is probably their license cost for whatever system they purchased off the peg plus the consultancy rates of the people tyhat convinced to buy it. It is the redesign cost as a totality though, period.

dizzy said...

The word "upgrade" doesn't appear either. Ironic that you would come in and accuse me of spinning and then proceed to actually make shit up.

Anonymous said...

I'm 151 and I've still got all my own teeth.

I'm sure you never spin. As you say it's in fact "opinionated arrogance". A second cousin twice removed of the irregular verb no doubt.

I'm still intrigued though as to the reference to the "cost to hit ratio" being poor. Are you implying that information should be disseminated cost effectively?

dizzy said...

I'm saying that you shouldn't overspend on websites and assorted systems when the actual output you are producing doesn't justify stupidly high costs. Esepcially when there are many open-source products availabel that will have a total cost of ownership which is lower

Fidothedog said...

Why not save a few quid an post on blogger.com?