Councillors have narrowly voted down calls to review a decision to spend £1.8 million on a new website and intranet system for Leeds council.
Conservative councillor Matthew Lobley and Liberal Democrat James Monaghan urged the council's central and corporate watchdog scrutiny board to 'call in' the spending decision and send it back to the executive board for reconsideration.
Lobley said that while the council's website was 'poor' it was unnecesary to spend such a large amount of money on the project. He said:
"We're in danger of putting the cart before the horse and letting IT drive this project. The rest of the council needs to change the way it does business to take advantage of the new website and I can see no evidence that this has even been looked at by the council. How are other departments on board with this project? The danger is that the decision is being taken in splendid isolation."
Monaghan questioned the wisdom of spending £1.8 million when the council was facing £150 million spending cuts over four years and suggested Leeds' thriving new media sector should be involved rather than attempting to do much of the work in-house.
Leeds council assistant chief executive James Rogers told the meeting that the council's existing website was based on a 10-year-old system that was 'not fit for purpose' and pointed to the fact that www.leeds.gov.uk had been ranked 36 out of 36 metropolitan council websites. He stressed that the council would make savings from the new website by allowing people to pay more bills online rather than over the phone or in person. He added:
"This is so much more than a new website, it is about a new content management system that will allow people to transact with us. There have been a lot of advances in technology in the past 10 years."
But the vote at the Civic Hall meeting was 6 to 5 in favour of letting the decision stand, with chairman Pauleen Grahame (Labour) using her casting vote, saying Monaghan and Lobley 'were going over old ground'.
Councillor expresses disappointment
After the meeting, Lobley said:
"I am disappointed that the scrutiny board chose not to send this issue back to executive board for reconsideration."I accept that the website isn't brilliant, but the report just doesn't put forward a strong enough case for why this work needs to be done now, and how it will result in savings to the council. Why can't the funding be used to support frontline services, which are surely more of a priority to the people of Leeds at this time than websites?
"I also think that the scheme is putting the cart before the horse. There is nothing in the report that explains how the council will change as a business to complement the new website technology. It's fine having an advanced new website, but if services haven't changed as well then we might find we have something that still isn't fit for purpose.
"If we don't look at the big picture, I'm sceptical that the planned savings can be made. It seems to me like a one dimensional solution to a multi-dimensional problem and I think the executive board should have had a chance to look again at this scheme."
As reported last week, Leeds blogger Mike Chitty has set up a blog asking what role the people of Leeds should have in shaping the development of the new web presence for the council.
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