Wednesday, May 11, 2005

We had a discussion at Committee tonight about Councillors' websites. Sandwell Council is considering whether or not to renew a contract with Councillor.info, a Poptel organisation who provide easy-to-produce websites for elected members. Although Sandwell has 60 councillors signed up to the project, it is doubtful if more than half a dozen ever bother to update their site even irregularly. One of the problems is that the sites have to be fairly anodyne politically because they are funded by council tax payers. I have tried to get round that restriction by putting a direct link to my blog site from my council site, but if you have a non political councillors' website, there is an argument to say: why bother? On balance though I do think they can be made to work, even if only to tell people what is happening locally in their area.