Socitm 2009 UK council website review shows "stagnation"

Thanks to headstar.com for this news update:

""A picture of stagnation" is painted by many of the reviewer comments from this year's 'Better connected 2009' review of UK council websites by the local government Society of IT Management (Socitm), published this month.

Despite finding a steady overall improvement in the quality of UK local authority websites, the review says a range of website management issues must be addressed by councils if sites are to offer fully developed 'self-service' options to citizens.

Self-service will be vital if councils are to become more efficient and save money by reducing telephone and face-to-face service provision in tough economic times, it concludes.

The survey ranks all sites as either 'standard', 'transactional' for more interactive and better-developed sites, and 'excellent' for those that meet high criteria across all areas of review.

Eight councils have achieved an 'excellent' ranking in 2009: Allerdale, Barking and Dagenham, Bristol, East Sussex, North East Derbyshire, Salford, South Tyneside and Surrey.

This compares with five excellent councils last year and just one the previous year. However, levels of satisfaction recorded among people visiting council websites are some 10% lower than in 2008, the report finds, detecting just "marginal improvements against most criteria" since the previous year."

A brief review of the top sites cited in this report shows that Jersey and Guernsey's govermental sites have a long way to go to compete at this level. Gauntlet's down - Jersey's on the case!