I asked a few questions of Barnet Council to try and ascertain whether the Leaderlistens.com website is value for money. I'll let you make your own mind up !!!
1. The total cost of operating this blog since it's inception. Please include details of all relevant charges and all time spent by paid council officials on this.
Response: Around £4 5 0 to set up including domain registration and hosting. The staff costs were minimal.
2. As the blog is paid for by the Barnet taxpayers and Councillor Freer indicated that there is an "editorial policy" of publishing comments, what are the criteria for not publishing comments.
Response: These details are available via the following link http://leaderlistens.com/terms-and-conditions/
3. As the blog is a publically funded information service, who is responsible for applying the editorial policy. Is it a paid council official, the Council Leader himself or some unpaid third party? If it is an unpaid third party, what authorisation do they have to edit Council taxpayer's comments and on the basis of what guidelines.
Response: The Social Media Manager in accordance with the terms and conditions as outlined above.
4. Who requested the creation of the "LEADERLISTENS.COM" blog and who approved this decision.
Response: The Social Media Manager suggested the creation of the blog following the posting of the Leader Listens event on You Tube. This was approved by the Leader as well to support his work out around the borough and to widen the conversation beyond those able to make the meeting, allowing them to review the meeting and comment after the event. This was part of a Delegated Powers Report for the whole programme.
5. Please can you provide a copy of all Council correspondence concerning the LEADERLISTENS.COM blog.
Response: All the residents comments are available on the blog and are reviewed prior to publication..
6. Please can you provide any details of an evaluation of the service to show the cost benefits of this blog over a free to use service.
Response: It was decided to go down this route on the basis of the flexibility it provides as well as security that all information is stored securely rather than being hosted by an external provider.
7. Please can you provide all details of any third party outside of Barnet Council involved in the creation, design and implementation of the blog.
Response: The company Yellowpark http://yellowpark.net/ were used for some of the creation, implementation (including training) of this blog.
The in-house design team worked with Yellowpark and created the look and feel for the web pages.
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So there you go.
By the way, I might have a rather interesting exclusive on Barnet Council and how touchy they can get. In the words of the esteemed Leonard Graves-Phillips - "Keep watching the skies".
I did some question asking myself and that load of twaddle you asked cost in the region £150 of staff time and effort - well done!!
ReplyDeleteSo "Andrew", you've cost Barnet another £150 with your then or is it only mine that incurr staff costs. How much do Leader Listen Comments cost ?
ReplyDeleteWould you care to tell us who you really are and save Barnet the £150as otherwiase I guess I'll have to ask the FOI department who you are and why you were asking the questions?
My friend, the point you are missing is that ultimately accountability reduces waste and costs. I know it's a hard concept for you, but that's why the USA is the worlds richest country.
Hey "Andrew", I think you've made a mistake. Mike Freer told a recent Council meeting:
ReplyDelete"Certainly, the Freedom of Information requests that I’m involved in cost about £150 per request to handle."
Now some serious questions have got to be asked about this. How can it possibly take efficient Council staff several hours to email information that is at their fingertips?
To get to £150, for Mike Freer's FOI requests, I'm going to put forward two alternate but not mutually exclusive scenarios.
Firstly, Freer is at the wheel of a monumentally inefficient bureaucracy. The Officers are so disorganised that it literally takes them hours to find information that should be at their fingertips.
Or secondly, Mike Freer, before seeking to answer simple questions makes expensive Legal Officers pour over the FOI legislation for hours looking for loopholes to prevent embarassing information being released.
One or both of these must be true, as it could never be that it would take several hours to find out how much it cost to buy the blog, for example.
Anyway Andrew, why don't you email your phone number to RogT and find some time to grab a beer with him in the Three Hammers? Not frit are you?
Dan,
ReplyDeleteI've just reread the answers. If it really cost £150 to put these together then it is a scandal.
If "Andrew" emails me his phone number I'd love to hear how he arrived at this figure. I'd even buy him a plate of chips to go with his pint at the hammers. It would be well worth the money !
Hey RogT,
ReplyDeleteWell I think it is.
The Council spent the longest time dodging around to then refuse to publish the research BEHIND the purchase of the £1.4 million of the same laptops for every Officer (Soviet Union style). Claimed it was confidential citing multiple FOI exemptions. This was their own work on how they justified spending our money.
Yet when they put out a similar report to buy printers they included an appendix with just the same info I asked on the laptops.
Work that out. Genuine reason for non disclosure, perhaps... Or, possibly spending hours of taxpayers money on lawyers to stop embarassing info on incompetence and waste coming out. You judge!
When will some of the real Conservative party's David Cameron's fierce commitment to Freedom of Information, most notably given at his excellent speech to the 2007 Google Zeitgeist conference, infect the self named and self perpetuating "Conservative Group" in the Town Hall?
Dan,
ReplyDeleteIt seems that there are armies of invisible men (and women) leaving comments on the various Barnet related blogs. When is the penny going to drop? I'd love to have a proper debate with some of them, but they are all scared of their own shadows. Why can this be?