STILL TRUE: Facebook and co to handle taxpayers' ID Cast your minds back to June 2011 when The Register exclusively revealed the Cabinet Office's plans to allow British citizens to sign into public services online via social networking log-ins such as Facebook. Now, if you glance at the national press today, you'd be forgiven for thinking that something new had happened with …
So you get rid of one web site that you don't like and the replacement is just as bad - in fact it turns out to be largely the same as the old one.
Why is this such a surprise? Considering it's being organised by politicians that's exactly what we should expect - like everything else they do.
My guess is that the civil servants and web designers are largely the same and just getting paid for doing the job a second time. Again, no surprise there. It's the same in most policy areas.
In our democracy, you're just voting to change the front man, not the way the country is actually run. To change that, you need to step outside the box and do a bit of protesting, preferably in a way that the politicians really hate.
"My guess is that the civil servants and web designers are largely the same and just getting paid for doing the job a second time. Again, no surprise there. It's the same in most policy areas."
That would almost make sense. In fact, it's another lot, so we're paying twice. And, we've been here before: before gov.uk, ditectgov; before directgov, ukonline. And let's know forget DotP.
I would love to know how many tens of millions have been spunked on government supersites and failed attempt to centralise government web sites. As far as I know it's:
Directgov - £126 million over 7 years
www.gov.uk beta - £4.5 million so far
DotP - £35 million
ukonline - don't have any idea, sadly
Anyway, even that undoubtedly incomplete picture adds up to £165.5 million, which is a lot for running a website. And that doesn't include the costs of the un-assimilated government websites
So, www.gov.uk - 3rd or 4th time lucky? Don't bet on it
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