New council website - and some free exercise

Birmingham City Council has finally launched its new website after a serious delay (originally due March 06) and a bit of a row about the £2.8m cost. Frankly, after that delay and that much cash, it's hard not to be underwhelmed.

It still looks old-fashioned, there's a few missing sections (did they not manage to run a link checker before pushing that big red button?) and they have failed to take the opportunity to seriously upgrade the services and information offered. My biggest gripe about the site (and Council in general) is its lack of transparency: it's hard to find out what's happening and when and who to talk to about changing anything, and it doesn't look like the new site offers anything different in these areas. Currently both the Council meetings and "Democracy in Birmingham" pages are broken,both linked to from the Democracy index, which promises "Decisions are published here on a daily basis, with easy access to agendas and reports". The only link to reports is in theory from 2003-4 (though the link is just http://old.birmingham.gov.uk/ which I can't imagine is really supposed to just give results for democracy from 2003-4), which gives ... no results.

One other irritating omission - the Council recently launched a scheme to make gym and swimming free to local residents, but you can't find out more info on the site - gym4free's broken [UPDATE: it's now working] and the swim4free page doesn't mention it. Is it a secret? If you're interested, here's the information from Google's cache (ignore the Heart of Birmingham PCT trust link because that implies only their residents qualify). You'll need a Leisure Card (again, that's the cached version of the page), but don't try applying online - it's not currently working :(.

UPDATE: looks like all the online forms are currently borked, so you won't be able to pay your council tax online either ....

Council customer service

Last year, Jon Bounds set up a Birmingham City Council area on the Get Satisfaction site, which provides an online space for people to discuss problems with organisations. This is particularly interesting in the context of the Council's own rather opaque complaints system (what would you call a "Leadership Line" for? I called it to find out, and got a recorded message saying "This line has now been decommissioned" ... awesome) and lack of online discussion facilities.

The Council seems to have shifted its view of its constituents to see us all as "customers", but has failed to make a corresponding shift to provide a better level of "customer service". The Council has a responsibility to be transparent about its decisions and spending in order to make us "customers" feel like we're getting value for money and that our views are being heard. At the moment, it's far too difficult to try and extract that information from their clumsily cluttered website (they've turned their search off until they launch a new site, but no date is given, and you only get the warning on the front page. Super helpful). This is particularly mysterious after they won an e-government award in 2007 for simplifying citizen's access to information, including "Customer First – ensuring customers receive basic, fast and accurate services with a single, friendly and professional contact point for all queries". Where is it? Oh, via google, there it is - they don't seem to have implemented it, and don't give a date for its launch. *sigh*.

Our own Michael Grimes has set up a Selly Oak ward area within the Get Satisfaction / Birmingham City Council area, for everyone to discuss/comment about local issues there - please do add your concerns, questions etc.. I've posted an idea about the Council lending out speed cameras to people who want to log/display the speeds of motorists in their area (a personal topic - I keep nearly getting squished on the Pershore Road).

However, in the context of increasing surveillance across Birmingham, it would be interesting to get some other ideas to resolve the problem: are more cameras (albeit mobile non-fining ones) really a good solution? You might also want to sign the 20 MPH e-petition (a surprisingly 21st Century initiative from BCC).