I hate it when websites upgrade. Somebody in control thinks they have a better model with better functionality and changes everything overnight. They're often wrong. Upgraded websites may be more efficient and more effective, but they often lose the vital spark that made them worth visiting in the first place. And so it is with my local council website. Tower Hamlets, you've really blown it.
Yes, this is another 'local' post. You might want to ignore the following because it doesn't relate to your council. Or you might read on, in case the Website Upgrade Squad are planning to visit your local council next.
Last month the Tower Hamlets council website was big and white and detailed, with a variety of links to council services and local information. There were links to news items, upcoming events and jobs, as well as direct routes to key services like housing, schools and libraries. It wasn't cutting edge, but it was functional. It looked a bit like this.
Last week the Tower Hamlets website upgraded. This was no mini revamp, this was wholesale overnight transformation. The old structure was swept away and a completely new format put in its place. New layout, new structure, new link hierarchy. It looks a lot like this. And I absolutely hate it.
Visitors to Tower Hamlets are assured of a wealth of history, a richness of culture and some truly fascinating ancient and modern places to explore and enjoy. Whether you want to immerse yourself in history at The Tower of London, immerse yourself in the culture of one of our many museums and galleries, enjoy the hustle and bustle of the borough’s markets or simply experience the area’s vibrant culture, Tower Hamlets has something for everyone.
And that's all. Replace "The Tower of London" with any other tourist attraction and this bland description could refer to any local authority anywhere in the country. It looks as if Tower Hamlets have bought some generic council website text from a company that makes generic council websites, and have adapted it only very slightly. And the text is equally generic (and brief) on the following hub pages...
» Leisure and Culture: There is plenty to do in Tower Hamlets for residents and visitors to the borough, with many services offered by the council including arts, sports, children's activities and library events. » Community & living: Information about how to get involved in Tower Hamlet's communities, and services helping you with your life in Tower Hamlets. » Education & Learning: Tower Hamlet's Children's Education and Social Care services have joined to form the new Children Services. Our aim is to promote achievement through learning for all people who live, work, study and teach in the borough.
Yes, those last two pages really do each contain a dodgy misplaced apostrophe. Just to reiterate, the Tower Hamlets education homepage spells Hamlet's with an apostrophe. Don't tell the Daily Mail, will you? It gets better. The same page also has information about school closures in the (cough) current snowy weather. All schools have worked hard to ensure they will be safe for the children and we hope they will all open tomorrow. However, we are aware that Bishop Challoner (Boys and Girls) and Langdon Park Secondary schools are expected to remain closed. This news is at least a week out of date, but nobody at the council webteam has yet removed it. Pupils at either of these schools might try citing the website as a reason to stay off lessons for further notice.
Let's try a couple of the other main sections listed on the Tower Hamlets homepage. Starting with Latest News. The headline item of latest news is an article encouraging people to Vote for your favourite park. Great, except that Boris's park vote closed last month, so you're too late. There are only eight news stories on the site altogether, because the upgrade has erased several years of news archive. Never mind, eh, fresh slate. As for What's new, erm... "no news articles found". Meanwhile, how about the What's on / events section? Only two 'events' are linked from the homepage. One's a job opportunity in a Newham park cafe (wrong borough, not an event) and the other's refers to Tendering and procurement awareness training (This page is no longer available). On the main Events page it's worse. There's apparently just the one event in the borough for the foreseeable future - a funding workshop for football clubs. Only council-run events count these days, because this is a council-only website.
What else has vanished? The entire archive of the council's East End Life free newspaper. This wasn't all self-congratulatory puff, there were plenty of historical and human interest reports too. All wiped. And the pages about interesting walks to try in Tower Hamlets, they've gone too. Last August, when I compared all of London's 33 borough websites for their walk-friendliness, I gave Tower Hamlets a rare four stars for including downloadable pdfs of several heritage strolls. Not any more. All there is now is a brief exhortation that "walking is good for you". One-star, maximum. The council can't walk for you, so they've no longer any interest in promoting self-guided walks on their website.
And one last example of very-poor-ness. Tower Hamlets is an Olympic Host Borough. That's pretty prestigious, and carries with it a burden of planning, coordination and dissemination. I know this because there used to be a big Olympic section on the council website, complete with timeline, benefits and volunteering opportunities. Where is it now? No idea. I've ploughed through the website's dense new sitemap, but I can't find it. I've also tried typing "Olympics" into the search engine, but all I get is a selection of disjoint unhelpful results. I think, by the looks of it, that the entire Olympics section has vanished. The Olympics isn't a council-run service, so it doesn't merit appearing on the new council-run website. Petty, parochial, short-sighted.
In conclusion, the Tower Hamlets website is now generic, amateur and dull. It's about online government, not community. It's slipped from interesting to tedious, and from characterful to bland. It looks like a website designed to meet targets rather than to inspire. It appears to have been designed by non-local codemonkeys using an off-the-peg database-driven solution. All of the old links which worked last month have broken, and several new links don't work either. The new content is vacuous and brief. Some of the key pages are incorrectly punctuated and out of date. It's probably easier for residents with English as a second language to read, but not to navigate. In short, it's completely lost the human touch. One day all council websites will be made this way. May yours not be next.
6pm update: Ooh, the Education and Learning homepage has now been updated to contain a) some useful information, b) no out-of-date information, c) no dodgy apostrophe. Result! However, there's still a dodgy apostrophe on Community and living if you fancy a laugh.
Last month the Tower Hamlets council website was big and white and detailed, with a variety of links to council services and local information. There were links to news items, upcoming events and jobs, as well as direct routes to key services like housing, schools and libraries. It wasn't cutting edge, but it was functional. It looked a bit like this.
The new Tower Hamlets website is really limited. It's now about council services and nothing else. Want to find out about cutting grass on roadside verges - you're in luck. Want to report flytipping in your street - no problem, there's an online form. But want to find out why Tower Hamlets is a great place to live? Sorry, we don't do that any more. Used to, used to do it in depth, but not now. Here's what the website says now about Tourism and Travel, in full.
Visitors to Tower Hamlets are assured of a wealth of history, a richness of culture and some truly fascinating ancient and modern places to explore and enjoy. Whether you want to immerse yourself in history at The Tower of London, immerse yourself in the culture of one of our many museums and galleries, enjoy the hustle and bustle of the borough’s markets or simply experience the area’s vibrant culture, Tower Hamlets has something for everyone.And that's all. Replace "The Tower of London" with any other tourist attraction and this bland description could refer to any local authority anywhere in the country. It looks as if Tower Hamlets have bought some generic council website text from a company that makes generic council websites, and have adapted it only very slightly. And the text is equally generic (and brief) on the following hub pages...» Leisure and Culture: There is plenty to do in Tower Hamlets for residents and visitors to the borough, with many services offered by the council including arts, sports, children's activities and library events.Yes, those last two pages really do each contain a dodgy misplaced apostrophe. Just to reiterate, the Tower Hamlets education homepage spells Hamlet's with an apostrophe. Don't tell the Daily Mail, will you? It gets better. The same page also has information about school closures in the (cough) current snowy weather. All schools have worked hard to ensure they will be safe for the children and we hope they will all open tomorrow. However, we are aware that Bishop Challoner (Boys and Girls) and Langdon Park Secondary schools are expected to remain closed. This news is at least a week out of date, but nobody at the council webteam has yet removed it. Pupils at either of these schools might try citing the website as a reason to stay off lessons for further notice.
