Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Is the Town Council website "Fit for purpose"?

I was looking for some information on the Town Council website. I find this website very frustrating. The missing agendas and minutes are annoying. Being unable to look up even the Council Constitution is wrong. Rather than fixing these problems there seems to be a continuing acceptance as to the bad condition of the SNTC website. Much of this is down to the underfunding of the central administration by the writers of the 2009/10 budget.

Some of the problems are:

Agendas page says: "The Agendas for St. Neots Town Council (2009 - 2010) are split into five sections:" Except there are no Agendas for 2009/10 in this section. (Copy)

Agendas Archive pages says: "Below are Agendas from the 2005 - 2006, 2006 - 2007, 2007 - 2008 and 2008 - 2009 Council meetings". Not so. Yes many agendas are. But many recent 2009 ones are missing. (Copy)

Minutes pages says: "The Minutes for St. Neots Town Council (2009 - 2010) are split into three sections:". True, but many minutes are missing. (Copy)

Minutes Archive says: "The Minutes for St. Neots Town Council (2009 - 2010) are split into three sections:" But this is an archive. This has to do with minutes before the current year 2009 - 2010. Not all minutes are here and minutes for 2009 - 2010 are included in this archive. A total mix up. (Copy)

There are also problems with:
Council Contact Page
Council Constitution Page
Gallery Page

The whole point of Freedom of Information is make the issuance of council held information routine. At SNTC this is not routine. How can people find out about what is going on at Town Council unless the Town Council releases the information? Or is that the reason?

No comments: