WRITTEN ON September 30th, 2006 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Uncategorized
I have a hypothesis which may be important:
Official feedback sites get muzzled or perverted. This means they’re not sustainable, and don’t work.
I recall this happening to the Number 10 web site in the Mandelson years where the engagement section became spun and then closed. Miliband had his famous recent blog problem. I found out earlier this year the Barcelona project we saw a year ago has become (I gather, and to the intense disappointment of the officials who started it) subject of political spin and dispute. The Hungarian “target practice” site we wrote about a year ago has disappeared (not sure why, but I still have a slide somewhere). My new Bulgarian friends want feedback, but are smart enough to realise it needs to be independent of a political process.
The Citizen’s Charter and Audit Commission evidence is to me unsatisfactory for a different reason – it was never popular feedback. Same applies to the Eurobarometer which I’ve always seen as an alien instrument of bureaucratic self-reinforcement (if it has got any better I wouldnt know, as I havent looked at ot for years).
If my hypothesis is right, feedback is definitely a job for the NGOs. I’d be very glad of any further empirical evidence.
The official feedback or direct.gov.uk is a case in point. Ministers say it’s great with their X hits per day etc, with no cares for what the users think.
The DVLA car tax site seems to be getting some good (official) feedback according to the officials. Since it cost £38million to build, I’d hope it was outstanding.
When Ministers and civil servants believe that is how much a site should cost to be successful – they do – then there are problems with the feedback and how it’s understood.