Friday, 21 January 2011

Another day another £130,000 spent on IT

Yesterday I wrote about the costs of the Pledgebank website. Today I see that the Council are investing another £130,000 on a new content management system for the website. It will allow the council to do new things on the website which may well be a good thing but yet again my question is should this be a priority when front line services are being cut. It seems like there is a big IT budget and people are keen to spend it before the financial year end. The delegated powers report sets out all the details and details of the company they have appointed is here. Judge for yourself if you think it is a priority.
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4 comments:

  1. Anonymous24 January 2011 at 17:27

    £130,000 might be better spent on paying volunteer managers to work in local voluntary sector organisations, to do things like recruiting, training, CRB checks, and supporting volunteers, finding appropriate roles...you know actually doing things rather than hoping people might talk about it.

    More front line services than back office IT boys, who are not even based employing people within the borough.

    Am I being old-fashioned?

    Or possibly to an organisa

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  2. Anonymous24 January 2011 at 17:30

    Sorry - odd last sentence. I was thinking about the cuts to Community Barnet (formerly BVSC) which recruited lots of volunteers for frontline organisations.

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  3. Mr Reasonable24 January 2011 at 17:53

    Interestingly Ruth Mulandi, CEO of CommUNITY Barnet, and Beverley Jacobson of Kisharon, are giving evidence to the Budget and Performance Overview & Scrutiny Committee on Thursday 27th January on the impact of the budget proposals on the voluntary sector. I hope they also question why so much money is being spent on IT at a time when voluntary sector budget are being cut.

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  4. Anonymous25 January 2011 at 00:17

    I hope they do. The Council do not seem to appreciate that no-one will ever volunteer for them, because no-one feels sympathetic to a council where the councillors double their allowances and feel comfortable awarding themselves free parking permits. However, they will volunteer for voluntary sector organisations. Even if people were to pledge on pledgebank, there is no infrastructure to organise them.

    This idea is like putting money into a pot and setting fire to it. Completely insane.

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