fuzzyness

Criminal waste of money

27·Apr·07

Dan Champion has posted about this in great detail, but it’s too important not to have as many people as possible relaying the story.

Dan has been on the UK government’s case for nearly a year regarding the abysmally failed redesign of the DTI website. especially with regards to the poor state of accessibility.

As he mentions, the DTI posted details of a three stage improvement plan back in February, which Dan has dilligently followed up, trying to bring the government to account.

The government’s response is shocking. Please read about it in more detail on Dan’s site, but to summarise:

• The original DTI website cost £200 000. Two hundred thousand English pounds. Sterling.
• They then spent £10 000 on an accessibility audit. Ten thousand extra pounds. Extra.
• They’re now spending a further £60 000 on building (allegedly) newly accessible templates. Sixty thousand pounds rebuilding templates that were promised to have been accessible in the first place.
• An apparently unrelated CMS upgrade is taking place (suspiciously taking place now…) at a cost of over £46 000.
• The same company who cocked up, to the tune of £200 000, are now being contracted to perform the work to rectify the situation! Read that again, and take time to take it in.
• The £60 000 additional cost to make the templates accessible (as first promised) is only part 1 of a 3 part process. The costs for stages 2 and 3 are currently undisclosed.

As Dan points out, the remedial work to rectify the situation will undoubtedly end up costing the same as the original works in the first place.

A disgusting waste of money. Nice work Dan in digging deeper to find this stuff out.

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