Richard

UK

Designer

Less "buck passing" would be nice:

eg. The Planning dept. of my local council sends letters to neighbours affected by planning applications;

These contain the wrong web URL for viewing the plans;

The letters displayed at sites are also wrong;

Even the physical address for viewing paper plans is wrong.

Browsing to the URL given in those official letters results in a "page not found" error.

So, I contacted the council planning officer: "Not my problem; that's up to the IT dept."

I contacted the IT dept.: "Yes, but that's done by our external web provider."

These letters are still wrong, deterring ordinary people from taking an interest in their local surroundings.

Wouldn't it be better if individual council officials were to take personal responsibility for ensuring that such simple things were put right?

At present, too many public officials respond that they're "not IT specialists; not familiar with the web" or that letters and web-pages are the responsibility of some other department.