Transparency Downgrade - Barnet's Rotten Website

On Friday evening, after work, I was going through Barnet's website as a vigilant resident when I noticed that the open data page had changed. This is where you can usually find important data about the council's performance. It includes things like the supplier payments and freedom of information requests.

Below is a screen shot of what you used to see on the FOI page:

A clear summary with a button you could click on to see more information.

What you get now is this:

You can't click for more information and the downloadable file simply down loads the summary as shown on the screen. There was also a disclosure log where you could sort through previous FOI requests but now all you get is:

Moving on to supplier payments this has also changed. In addition to being buried away it is now only downloadable in CSV format whereas previously it was also downloadable in excel and PDF format which are more familiar to most people.

Interestingly the supplier payments for August 2014 which were previously published have now disappeared and it is very difficult to find previous years' supplier payments as there are no links on the current year's page. 

Some may say I am paranoid but I do get a feeling that the changes are being made so that it is much harder for residents like me, the other bloggers and engaged residents to challenge the council on their spending, especially under the Capita contract. 

I have contacted the council so time will tell if they actually do something about restoring the limited transparency we previously received.

Barnet Council's New Website - it doesn't work

Months late and having cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, today Barnet council launched its new website. Sadly as is so much in Barnet, it was BROKEN.

If you get on to the front page of the website, which now has a new web address, http://barnet.gov.uk/ (no www. anymore) you will find lots of broken links that take you back to the old website. Frankly this isn't good enough. The council's IT consultants have had a huge amount of time to sort this out and today it should have gone right first time.

I have written to Councillor Cornelius along with my three ward councillors to tell them it isn't working well. They could have actually turned this into a real PR success but their lack of commonsense and desire to stifle resident engagement has yet again created another problem.

Set out below is my email to Cllr Cornelius

Dear Cllr Cornelius,

The new Barnet council website has gone partially live today. Most of the data appears to remain on the old platform but all council meetings and delegated powers reports are on the new website. Sadly virtually all of the old delegated powers reports have now disappeared; I could only manage to find two on the new website.

At the most recent Chipping Barnet Residents forum I did put forward a question asking if the Council would consider holding training sessions for residents on how to use the new website but sadly my question was ruled invalid and was not even allowed to be considered.

As a simple PR exercise I think it might have been helpful to invite regular website users to a training/briefing session. It might have also helped to build bridges between the Council and the community. Perhaps this is something which you might want to consider as creating such a significant information vacuum will only lead to even more Freedom of Information requests.

Kind regards

Let's wait and see if I get a reply.