"Birmingham Wired have uncovered that Birmingham City Council spend on average £32,000 a day maintaining a council website (http://www.ukwirednews.com/news.php/89458-32-000-a-day-for-council-website-as-26-000-face-job-cuts) [CC] (http://www.ukwirednews.com.nyud.net:8090/news.php/89458-32-000-a-day-for-council-website-as-26-000-face-job-cuts) that has cost the tax-payer over £48 million to date, while councils nationwide prepare to say goodbye to 26,000 jobs due to budget deficits. Capita, a London based outsourcing company states on their website: 'To date we've invested £48.4m in a combination of staff training, network upgrades, server replacements, hardware and software - and we continue to drive efficiency through innovation.'"

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/09/12/0243240/32k-a-Day-For-Birmingham-Council-Website

Can you imagine a privately owned company paying that much money for such a poor website...

Whoever re-wrote the story for Slashdot is an idiot - or has deliberately lied to try and make the story more scandalous.

The £48 million figure - as clearly stated in the source - is for the council IT systems, and is since 2006.

The council web site - again as clearly stated in the source article - has cost £2.8 million, which includes a new CMS system.

As for the 32k figure - that'd be the £48 million figure, divided by 4 years. A stupid and pointless figure as it will include some one off costs (such as training, buying and installing new equipment etc) that aren't ongoing costs.

And as for the talk of job losses, linking them to costs that have already been spent is just pathetic and pointless. Especially as most of these costs came before the recession even took hold.

As much as I despise the council web site, I despise idiotic (re-)reporting more.

It's Slashdot, the highest rated comments will be along the lines of 'If they switched to Linux it would work for free'

edit, just checked, and I was wrong. My faith in human nature is restored!

http://www.birminghampost.net/news/west-midlands-news/2008/11/03/birmingham-s-voyager-computer-fiasco-slammed-in-report-65233-22174870/

Oh yeah, new system in November 2008 cost £140m.

http://www.birminghampost.net/news/west-midlands-news/2008/11/03/birmingham-s-voyager-computer-fiasco-slammed-in-report-65233-22174870/

Oh yeah, new system in November 2008 cost £140m.

No, no, no.

It doesn't say that the new Voyager system cost £140 million in that article. It says the new system was part of a £140 million "IT shake-up" - which applies to the entire "business transformation" project.

I know pedantry is douchey, but how can we possibly hold the council to account with incorrect or misleading information?

Anyway, why is this interesting now? We've known for some time the web site project went over budget, and the cost of £2.8 million has also been public knowledge for some time. And now we have an article from 2008. So what's new here?