'Get yourselves over to the Playspace consultation tool site here and pretend to be an 11 year old to get their figures up.'

Isn't that just asking for trouble in today's paranoid society?

At least the hardware could be re-used again for something else, so I doubt the final cost will come out as £6 per visitor - still, knowing our government, it probably will...

It seemed more like another bit of government propaganda, the questions certainly push you to a certain way of thinking.

In general government consultation seems to work like this:

We're thinking of doing A:

Q1; When we do A will you be:

a. Happy.

b. Ecstatic

Q2. How many people you know are desperate for us to do A?

a. All the people you know.

b. Even people you don't know.

Q3. Obviously the alternatives to us not doing A are worrying. Are you:

a. Frightened.

b. Terrified.

Finally, for those who stil can't understand that we're going to do A anyway: Please provide us with an evidence based argument as to why we shouldn't do this (no more than two words).

lol...

has anyone tried it ?

Asks you 1001 questions while you plod things across screen erm not at all any use to anyone... tax money spent well..

>> £50,000 plus VAT to build

On the plus side the government raised almost £9,000 through VAT.

£50,000 for a questionaire, it really is obscene.

BTW, I love the way that on the image on the main page the wall at the back is covered in grafiti/art - whereas in the 'game' the same scene has a rainbow painted on the wall.

They actually expect kids under 8 to understand those questions? Or even stay focussed long enough to read the words? Took me a couple of read-throughs before some of them made sense! I don't think this was about consulting children, this was more about making it look like the big bad government was actually kinda soft and cuddly. It doesn't take a genius to see that children are getting bored and need better, safer facilities to congregate/play/get drunk. How many yoof clubs have closed in recent years? I guess 60k wouldn't have gone a long way towards actually building/maintaining these new sites, but it really was a waste of time.

They could have built a Facebook app to do the questionaire, reached 1,000 times more kids and saved £50,000.

They've nicked that tune, right?

if I knew when the site went live, it might inform my opinion as to whether the viewing figures were any good or not.

Ok, I trawled the site in question - 3 months old then. You could have said...

Run it through the W3C validator for a laugh.....or not considering we paid for it. Similar scenario to the Olympic logo.

Ill do a really shit website for £500K

Like most govt IT projects the crappier it is the more you can charge,

or was it in Labours manifesto that you pay more & get less...

"The UK Government's Foresight programme, alongside the Horizon Scanning Centre, uses science based methods to provide visions of the future."

http://www.foresight.gov.uk/index.asp

A fine example on this site is the use of Future Arcs, a technique that has been used "to help London Underground assess strategic risk; to help a key Government Department test their strategic crisis response and disaster recovery planning; and to help Transport for London develop a new strategic vision for an internal team."

(towards the end of this page, at 'The Fan Club':

http://www.foresight.gov.uk/Horizon%20Scanning%20Centre/FanClubNews/Feb2008.asp)

"Thinking in arcs supports the development of non-linear and adaptive strategies that are robust across the broadest range of plausible futures; visualising the organisation on multiple arcs at the same time helps create the elusive ‘strategic agility’ that is often talked about but difficult for organisations to realise. Future Arcs includes tools for anticipating and creating future options, identifying decision windows and managing human cognitive and psychological tendencies such as confirmation bias."

... there is a pocket park about a mile from here that has a way- cool climbing structure (it has a panel that resembles a rock- climbing surface, rope swing, and stuff *I* never had back when *I* was a boy ...) and, according to various gossip- mongers, the parks department has a manual that teaches kids how to play on it. I can see having someone point out the cool/ safe features that might not be obvious at first glance, but "how to play"? Have the kidlets had ALL their imaginations sucked away? (Not sure I want the answer to that just yet.)

> £50,000 for a questionaire, it really is obscene.

Shh. Do you want them to figure it out?

Mugs that "could do it cheaper" just make less money for themselves..and often as not go out of business.

Perhaps one day I'll be asked by our glorious leaders to develop a tool, and, frankly, the £50,000 would buy me a lot of stuff.

I don't think that, either other taxpayers spending the money instead of giving to the government [to give to me], nor the government spending the money on other people [like themselves] would be using the money for any better purpose. YMMV of course if you get the same opportunity.

:)

Yeah, come on 50K is nothing when you figure in all the bureaucracy that would have been involved, all the toing and froing, that was probably two people lives for 6 months, I think they got it for a song. So, it didn't work out, if it was multi millions perhaps there would be some cause for concern, but that figure is paltry.

It is not cheap to do stuff on the web, just less expensive than physical reality. How much would it have cost to send out questionnaires and get people to collate the results? Probably substantially more than 50K.

Im more concerned the site links to Facebook/digg it etc when they are sites clearly not aimed at under 13s (despite the fact they use them in reality).

Plus try to view the explanation for adults and you get:

"**

An Error Occurred #title#

A system error has occurred, we apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused."

the problem is now that kids seem to lack imagination.

when i was a nipper a cardboard box and soem selotape would keep me happy building bases for my lego and star wars... kids these days just sit and stare at things.

the mrs was doing some stuff with kids recently and they couldnt figure out how to make anything new out of lego - they could only build from the manual. complete lack of imagination.

wtf is happening to society? is it just that thick people outbreed the rest of us?

anyone seen the film idiocracy? seems we are going that way!

As a matter of interest, is their a public/FoI-type thingie to find out what has 'been blown on creating'/'gets blown on running' such Govt./quango sites and how this all equates to actual usage?

http://www.jobserve.com/WA952A10D232B7969.jsjob

"The person would need inept knowledge and experience of SQL Server 2000 and experience working in the NHS."