Thanet District Council, Cllr Simon Moores and leisure on the internet.

I have just been reading the local blogs and found Simon Moors mentioning my name: “It's very simple Peter, Lord know I've explained it enough times here to answer Michael and other's questions. I really can't be asked to explain it all again…” see http://birchington.blogspot.com/2011/07/spitfire-museum-special-event-14th.html

I think this may be my fault for not explaining things properly, as Simon certainly hasn’t come up with an explanation of the way the council website promotes leisure, that I can understand.

This time I will use a picture of the council’s homepage (taken today) – click on it to make it bigger – to explain, as best as I can, what is wrong.

The council promotes events in three different places on the homepage of its website, so I will go through them one at a time, I have ringed them with different colours for clarity.

In the green ring the header banner, to get into this prime spot on the council’s website the council has to have spent a lot of money on the event, the event should also be in Margate.

In the red circle is a section called events, further investigation of this part of the council’s homepage shows that it is generated automatically by an even more bizarre part of the council’s website http://communityportal.thanet.gov.uk

In short this particular piece of council IT is so dreadful that it means that events in October, November or even next year are promoted on the council’s homepage, while the main event this week is often missing.

I recommend that you click on the link to the community portal and try out this site, it is an excellent example of a bad website, and an appalling breach into the council’s homepage. If you join it allows you to write content onto the council’s website homepage.

You may ask why it is there at all, my guess is that a lot of funding has been spent on it, there may even be people in some TDC offices somewhere being paid to administer it.

The blue circle, right at the bottom of the page takes you the tourism site, one wonders how many tourists get as far as this.

The main problem with the tourism site is that it doesn’t prioritise events by their importance, so if you manage to navigate to their browse events page at http://www.visitthanet.co.uk/thedms.aspx?dms=12&groupid=1&areaid=355&nd=All you come to a jumble of events.

I may expand on this issue if I get time.  

Thanet District Council and the Internet a Review part one searching the council’s main website.

If you are reading this blog then it is obvious that you are an internet user and it is likely that you will try to use the council’s website to access information, if you do this you will probably realise that the council seems to have a number of different websites.

http://www.thanet.gov.uk/

http://www.visitthanet.co.uk/

http://communityportal.thanet.gov.uk/home/

http://tdc-mg-dmz.thanet.gov.uk/

http://www.ukplanning.com/thanet

http://twitter.com/thanetcouncil

http://www.youtube.com/user/ThanetCouncil

http://www.thisismargate.co.uk/

There may be more I don’t really know.

The big difference between the council’s websites and the other local websites like this one is that we all contribute towards paying for the council’s websites.

The other big difference is that you may be using the council’s websites for official information, rather than just searching the internet in general to find out about something, like a local development or a local issue, so you may wish to search the council’s sites only.

I think the idea of the council’s website is to save them money by making information available without using up officer’s time, the trouble is that it doesn’t always work this way.

I have tried to get the council to cooperate with me on my intention to review various aspects of their websites, so far I would say that no one wants to.

My last major attempt to get the council to improve their website related to its search facility, what I tried to was to get them to use the free Google one like the one on the sidebar of this blog. I have moved it up to the top while I am doing this review.

After my comments they decided to replace the search facility that they had, this was the one that didn’t really work at all, with one the purchased from Microsoft, so I will start by giving this a go to see if it works.

I will use the search term Pleasurama.

First the council’s old search box that still appears at the top of the majority of the council’s webpages including the start page of their documents site http://tdc-mg-dmz.thanet.gov.uk/ This returns an error page.

Next the council’s new one, this appears on their main homepage http://www.thanet.gov.uk/ and some other council webpages and I believe they are paying Microsoft for this. This search facility returns 11 results for Pleasurama.

Next the free one on the sidebar of this blog this returns 47 results for Pleasurama.

Next I suppose one has to assume that here in Thanet some people may not be able to spell and some may produce the occasional typo, I can lay claim to both of these problems.

So lets choose Hartsdown for this test, I think it fair to assume Heartsdown is a miss spelling that some people could use, you get no results for the councils search box and none for the Google one on this blog. There is however a big difference the council’s one just leaves you out of options whereas the one on this blog says. “did you mean Hartsdown” and then goes on to give you 118 matches.

I suppose one could say that the council have made some progress on this issue.

Thanet District Council Snub Broadstairs Water Gala

It is Broadstairs Water Gala today and I have been badgering the council to promote it in some way that is noticeable on the council’s website.

I know that I keep going on about this but it is very important, in this age when most internet sites are about intense advertising and promotions based not on what is good but on who has paid the most, dispassionate local government sites are an important source of local information.

In a general sense going to a district council’s website should be an accurate way of finding what’s on in that area, in Thanet this just isn’t the case.

With the council’s website hompage what is there, that is much worse that no information, is wrong incomplete and misleading information.

On the right hand side of their homepage http://www.thanet.gov.uk/ they have a section called “Events” the top event is “An evening with World Tree Music 27 August 2010” this event has actually been cancelled. It has been rescheduled for 22nd October, although this information isn’t available on the TDC website.

There is no mention there of the main TDC funded event this week “Dunkers and Dippers” and no mention of today’s main Thanet event Broadstairs Water Gala.

Dunkers and Dippers does come up on their header banner, providing you have installed the right software and are prepared to wait long enough for it to appear.

Before I go into what the council has done wrong, I will outline what they could do right, with a couple of hours work using free internet facilities, something that would both save them money and make the site work properly, giving much more accurate and up to date information.

First the search box that doesn’t work properly, this needs replacing with the free Google one, like the one on the sidebar of this blog.

TDC as a “government agency” qualify for a free one without advertising.

Next the press releases, these need to be published directly by the press officers, a blog embedded in the TDC press releases page, with all the press officers “team members” and either comment moderation or comments turned off would do this for free, as would plenty of web publishing freeware.

Next the “what’s on” the same solution for the press releases would work fine here, obviously the tourist information team would need to be the ones with direct access to the web publishing. After all they go to all the main Thanet events and erect their information tent, something that must be considerably more expensive than putting the information on the web.

Now what has gone wrong.

The business with the search facility is ongoing I have tried to use it on and off for the last few years and occasionally pointed out to them that it doesn’t work properly, sometimes they fiddle about with it but it is obvious that they lack the resources and experience of Google in the web search business.

They have several options with Google search facilities, the basic one that is free performs about twenty times more efficiently that the TDC in house solution does on the occasions that it is working at all.

Press releases, I had a long and rather tedious attempt to get them to sort this problem out last year and they have come up with a sort of half solution.

I don’t think they liked the idea of embedding a blog and just letting the press officers get on with it, the solution was free worked properly and meant that the IT officers never had to bother about the press releases again.

The problems that I identified last year were that the pictures that the council take to accompany releases either just vanish or only appear as thumbnails, that sending the information off from the press release department to the IT department for publication caused delays and mistakes and that the releases didn’t have feeds. The only thing that really seems to have improved is that they now have feeds.

Events there are many solutions here, plenty of them are free, but in the end all that is required is just what’s on for the next few days listed in date order.

What the council IT bods have tried to do here is produce an automated system to list events, using it the phrase that comes to mind is “beam me up Scottie”.

The first problem here is that computers just can’t differentiate, by this I mean that they can’t easily tell the difference between a quiz night where 50 people may turn up and something like Folk Week where 50,000 people may turn up.


There is also the business of surrealist events one of the events listed on their homepage Murderers Magicians Madmen & Monarchs 16 September 2010 doesn’t appear to have a location. It says when it is even what it’s about and who the lecturer is but not where, once again this is what happens when a computer lists events.

I am adding to this one in-between bookshop customers, I have put the post up incomplete to remind people that the gala is on today.

Thanet District Council’s website.

Once again a look at the council’s website, homepage, I hope this isn’t going to become a weekly occurrence.

I have heard in rather a roundabout way that the council’s IT department has been trying to resolve the issues that I have highlighted, so this is for them, and I hope it explains more fully what is going wrong.

First the search box, there is something the matter with this, although just what it is defies ordinary computing and seems to relate to what it does to your browsers cache, I am using Internet Explorer version 8, fully updated. This is what most people are using at the moment, I have tried this on more than one computer.

First off their search box didn’t work at all, returning no results for the word “Thanet”.

Next I tried clearing the browsers cache, after which it worked like it usually does, when it works at all, by this I mean that it returns about 20% of the results that Google returns for the same domain http://www.thanet.gov.uk/

I next tried using the advanced facilities on the councils webpage that comes up when the search box works at all, to be precise I tried searching by “date most recent first” I got one result for this and then tried a different search word “Pleasurama” this took me to an error page url, I have copied this onto a webpage as it is so long click on the link for it http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop810b/id13.htm this link takes you to the copy of the error page just in case it has vanished http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop810b/id12.htm

Next the strip of links called “Events” this is another really bizarre feature of their homepage as it doesn’t seem to list any of the main events happening this week.

I have looked into the coding of this part of their website and this bit seems to work automatically from feeds, in the same way that the recent posts on other blogs links on this blog works.

Since I first mentioned this, these events have been revised so that they now show both when and where they are taking place, this is some improvement.

The real problem stems from the pages that these feeds come from, this is a website within the council’s main website called, “Thanet District Council Community Information Portal” the url for this is http://communityportal.thanet.gov.uk/home/

When it comes to unusual websites this one ranks fairly high, as soon as you arrive and discover that the latest news is dated 13/07/2010 there are only two other news items and one is dated 2008.

Even the link to the TDC homepage doesn’t take you there, it seems that this site is the result of some sort of EEC grant funding. One hears about aspects of the EEC that are just plain crazy and I suppose this one is just another example.

What though is totally bizarre is that selected events than seem to be taken from this site within a site and put on http://temp.thanet.gov.uk/events.aspx?eventid=100 or perhaps they get there automatically, one way or another they produce the feed http://temp.thanet.gov.uk/feeds/EventRSS.aspx that seems to produce the list of links on the TDC homepage.

Following these events through though takes you into a bizarre world where very little makes any sense the first event “An evening with World Tree Music 27 August 2010” has the url for the Minster in Thanet website, http://www.minster-in-thanet.org.uk/index.shtml this isn’t even presented as a proper link but copying and pasting it gets you the site.

Following this through to their What’s on in Minter page you get the information:

Friday 27th August World Tree Music CANCELLED NEW DATE 22nd OCTOBER.

The picture is of a Chatham House production.

Sunday ramble about Thanet District Council’s website.

This is a long old ramble and not much recommended as it is rather depressing, as soon as I can I will get some folk week pictures up on the top of the blog, just a case of it needs saying and I hope that the council will take some notice of it.

This is about the shortcomings of the councils, something I would far rather not be spending my time on, I much prefer the local history and frankly would rather be spending time on that.

The problem with the council is that it is only the bits I see as citizen that I can judge what they are doing from, for all I know the bits that I can’t see may be functioning perfectly ok, however from some of the bits that I do see it is obvious that a lot of our money is going into something and what is coming out is just poor.

Something that I see all to often is their website and frankly despite trying very hard to get them to mend the some of the most basic broken bits it still seems to be something that doesn’t get fixed.

I am still trying on the absolute front end of this, getting them to get the homepage reasonably functional, much of the problem is I think that they just don’t seem to understand what is wrong.

There homepage is http://www.thanet.gov.uk/ I am not going to take it all apart here but just a bit starting at the top.

The search box, you have to try this to believe it, the first time I did I thought it was some sort of temporary glitch, I am sorry to say that it isn’t.

Here are some search words to try in this search box: “Ramsgate” “Margate” “Broadstairs” “Thanet” All these words return the following result: Sorry, no pages found containing your search terms.

Quite simply this most basic website function just doesn’t work and hasn’t worked properly for over a year see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2009/05/search-thanet-district-council-website.html

Back in May of last year I pointed this out to the council, found and sent them the script for a search facility that does work, engaged in a long and time consuming dialogue with them and at the same time added the facility to search their website to the sidebar of this blog. This facility returns 370 results for the search term “Ramsgate” from the council’s website.

I do wonder though just how much of our money has been pumped into the councils attempts to write a better web search script than Google can, which from the correspondence I received from them seemed to be the way they have been going for the last year.

Next we come to their Adobe Flash Player header banner, this is promoting some major Thanet events but not the main one this week, once again this is something I tried to sort out with the council last year.

I have tried a slightly different approach this year, this started with my blog post http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/08/thanet-district-council-snub.html I am afraid that I deliberately couched this in terms that the council wouldn’t like hoping to attract some anonymous comment a member of the council. For one reason on or another they don’t usually comment under their own names about this sort of thing, certainly there is very little blogging on councillors own blogs recently.

This was mainly because I knew that if I approached the councillors directly or made some sort of official complaint one way they would use to avoid this issue would be to misunderstand what I was talking about. I would say to most people of reasonable intelligence promoting one major local event on their website while ignoring another is an indefensible position.

Well I did this and got what I needed and sent off the complaint on Friday, here is a link to what I sent http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop810a/id5.htm needless to say they didn’t actually do anything about the problem.

What I did get was an email telling me that I would receive a response within ten working days from customer services and nothing from the cabinet members who I had copied it to.

Coming down the council’s homepage we now come to, news, as I publish the Thanet press releases blog http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/ this interests me, since I started communications with the council about this some aspects of this part of their website have improved.

The solution that I suggested was that the council’s IT department set up a way that the council’s press officers could publish the press releases and associated pictures directly to the internet.

Many of the problems that have occurred during period (over a year now) that I have taken an interest in their press release publication, have been because the IT officer publishing the press release hasn’t written it and doesn’t understand properly what it relates to. These problems are often compounded because of the time they take to put right, that is if they are ever put right.

One way that I suggested that they could resolve this issue was to embed a blog into the council’s website and make all of the officers team members, I really don’t think that they liked this idea as it would have cost absolutely nothing from an IT point of view. Free solutions to otherwise expensive problems seem to be very difficult for councils to comprehend, with the current economic situation, somehow they are going to have to grasp this nettle.

I think the problem here is that it took some time for local government to catch up with the internet, and regulation of what internet facilities they can use seems to have started at some totally random point. As far as I can see the council use Youtube and Twitter but draw the line at Google and Blogger, hence the search facility.

Their approach seems to be putting money into trying to produce in house solutions, instead of using free facilities that already exist, they have got some way with this.

Feeds, these are the mysteries internet codes that allow updated content to be noticed, simply a way of letting people know when something new has appeared on a website, most of us use this on blogger almost without thinking about it as it is built in. the most common use of this is the recent posts on other blogs thingy on most of the local blogs sidebars. This is something that they have now mastered for part of their website, when they put up something new on that part of their website it now appears on the sidebar of this blog. Unfortunately this doesn’t happen when they put up a new document, like the notice of a meeting or some major planning application that effects a lot of local people. This does happen for the press releases though.

The next thing is pictures, sometimes they manage to get one of their very good pictures up with their press release see http://www.thanet.gov.uk/news/latest-press-releases/rainham-school-visit.aspx as an example, for the most part though they only manage a thumbnail that you can’t expand, that is if the photo ever sees the light of day.

This raises the obvious question about the cost i.e. why are we paying for photographs that don’t ever seem to reach the light of day?

Another problem is the amount of time press releases take to appear, on occasions a press release promoting some local event has actually take so long to appear that when it does the event is over. On the whole they seem to be getting better at this although still some of the press releases that I put on my press release blog take ages to appear on the council’s website, the latest one http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/2010/08/changes-made-to-asset-disposal-plans.html appears to fall into this bracket.

There is also of course the business of actually attempting to communicate with local people, by this I mean some sort of moderated comments, the only place the council do this is on their planning site, there they have chosen to set the site so that any public comments are not visible to the public.

What comes next, well there are all their links down the left side and I may get to some of them if I get time, on to the right side of the page is “do it online” I will have a go at this some other time as it seems to be about paying things and joining things, something that would make it difficult, the first link precludes my participation as I don’t owe the council any money.

Have your say is something I have had a go at before and I will endeavour to have a go now.

The first link is called “asset management consultation update” it takes you to a page that starts:

“Cabinet meeting
Decisions on the future of 11 sites proposed for disposal as part of the 2010-11 asset management process will be made at a meeting of the Cabinet on Thursday 5 August at 7.00pm.”

It would seem that the update needs updating.

What I can’t find is the results of the consultation, by this I mean what the people who took part in it said, I will try the next links just don’t apply to me so I can’t really test them.

I don’t live in community housing, am not young, couldn’t get to the big event and so on.

Then we come to a section called events, this one is truly bizarre, partly because they already have the visit Thanet site that I believe lists these already and partly because each of these links to events takes you to part of the councils main website where the information is just odd.

Here we go:

1 Millmead Childrens Centre Surestart Summer Fete - 17 August 2010
17 August 2010 Tuesday 17th Aug 11-3

2 Lions Fete at Victoria Gardens 29 August 2010 Fete, stalls selling craft, bric a brac etc Also games such as coconut shy & trap the rat. Refreshments.

I won’t go on from here as you see the second event tells you where it is but not what time, you can follow the rest of these through if you like, why the council should be using their homepage to promote what are mostly relatively minor events arrange in some sort of random time scale, some are not even in this month, while at the same time ignoring this weeks main event, is just beyond me.

Back to the middle and focus on Thanet:

The first link is called “Great events for young people” this takes you to a page that has a graphic on it saying “Why not do something less boring instead read more” I immediately clicked on, read more. This takes you to an error page explaining that the page it points at doesn’t exist. It wasn’t that bad as there was another link on the page that worked.
Next is a link about next years census, I will look at that next year.

The next one seems to be the one about social housing.

Then there is one about council procurement from local businesses, the council used to buy local history books from me for their tourist information offices, this stopped when it became to difficult for the people working in them.

Then there is shop local first, I haven’t got involved in this one as it involves giving discounts, I decided long ago that I would aim to have the best and most keenly priced book stock in the area and a simple problem then comes up which is if you are going to take money off you have to put it on in the first place.

Next is Margate’s Big Event, this is promoting an event held in June it even had a video of the 2009 event, not this years.

Thanet District Council’s website and the Easter events

I hate to be drawing attention to TDCIT messing things up again, but here we go, yawn, is it worth bothering to contact them.

The two main events this Easter are April 2-5 http://www.quexpark.co.uk/default/quex-events/quex-park-events/museum-events/restaurant-and-friends-of-quex-events.aspx and April 2-3 Thanet Easter Beer Festival

Here are the Easter events lifted from EASTCLIFF RICHARD’s sidebar
April

1-13 Thanet Gang Show

2-5 Insect World@Marine Studios

2-5 Victorian Easter@Quex Park

2-3 Thanet Easter Beer Festival

3 Adventures at Tom Thumb

3 Choir concer at Broadstairs

3 Quadrophenia at Carlton Cinema



Here are the events listed on Thanet district Council’s website’s homepage.

Stainer's Crucifixion
Margate Old Town Easter Market
St. Laurence Church Coffee Morning (April)
Dance - Birchington Village Centre Association
St Pancras, Canary Wharf, and Friends.Comedy Playhouse
OPENING of SEASON - Ramsgate Bowling Club
Beach Safety Training
National Blood Service - Birchington Village Centre Association
The Zeal of the Spirit