I just visited the Carlow website. It's horrific. It's embarassingly bad.
Why can't they do something like Clare or Donegal?
Does a county have to rely heavily on tourism to have a decent looking website?
I'd have thought not.
Earlier this week Carlow decided to have a carfree day before the rest of Europe.
Whether this was a good idea or not isn't important, but if you were a resident it would have been nice to actually have access to some information on it.
I'd have thought the local authority site would have been the place to find the information. Of course there was absolutely no mention of it at all!
Anyone who tells me that egovernment is improving obviously hasn't tried to actually use the local authority sites for Carlow!
That is truly horrific! The worst part is that rate-payers money is being shovelled in to some idiots bank account for maintaining this site.
When Local Authorities, and Government in general get good IT people, it is generally by accident. Their recruitment process favours style over substance (in fact, I would go so far as to say that they discriminate against better qualified individuals, as their middle management lacks the skills to deal with the confidence that competence breeds)- the number of good-looking, gregarious young idiots in the Civil and Public Service is astonishing!
Seeing that they are all moving over to XYZcoco.ie it would be nice if they standardized.
You did not know that all amps go to 11 so there is little point in me just typing ‘beware of the leopard’ so here it is in full…it seems apt
“You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them had you? I mean like actually telling anyone or anything.”
“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a torch.”
“Ah, well the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look you found the notice didn’t you?”
“Yes”, said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of The Leopard”.
(HHGTTG:Douglas Adams)
Francis – I’d be a lot happier if the sites were used to give me basic up to date information. It would be wonderful if they were attractive etc., but functionality would be a starter! An Garda Siochana is another example of a site that seriously fails to deliver (http://www.garda.ie/)
Rahood – Great book, pity about the film 🙂
And a very apt quote indeed!
Michele
I like the updated http://www.wexfordcoco.ie site is excellent (as local authority sites go). They have taken a user-centric design approach ‘What would you like to do?’ in contrast to many other LA sites which are structures by internal dept.
@SerialComplainer: Pity they used the eye-bleeding county colours as-is rather than non-primary and non-secondary tints and shades of them.
@Michele: Counties that depend on tourism have crappy sites too: look at Kerry Co. Co. site.
Keith – I never said that all the counties with tourism had nice sites 🙂
Have a mate leading a county council department who wants to develop his section of the website. His head and the it departments reply is “We won awards for our site x years ago, why would you want to change anything. Also we are not supporting any new tech and we wont let you host your own”.