Economical with the truth

July 2007 | home thanetonline.com michaelsbookshop.com Click here for books about The Isle of Thanet Dangerous cliff ?

this link takes you to the rest of my Pleasurama site this link takes you to my previous correspondence

My attempts learn about the Pleasurama project have lead me into a dialogue with Thanet District Council about their website and the way they pass on correspondence to councillors. Click on the links above to read the correspondence.

Subject: Re: forward this to all of the councillors Date: 26/10/2006 12:18:54 GMT Standard Time From: Paul.Moore@thanet.gov.uk

Reply To:
To:	MichaelChild@aol.com
CC:	richard@rnicholson3.wanadoo.co.uk, cllr-Roger.Latchford@thanet.gov.uk, leader@thanet.gov.uk, Richard.Samuel@thanet.gov.uk
BCC:
Sent on:

Sent from the Internet (Details)

Dear Mr Child,

Richard Samuel has asked me to respond to your recent email about the

Members' pages on our website. I am grateful for your input, which has

highlighted some valid points. We've been working on improving the

quality and content of our website and the Portal Project was

implemented as a pilot project earlier this year. We knew that there

would be areas that needed development and your note is a timely

reminder of this. I am writing to let you know about the actions which

have been taken so far as you have requested.

Since your e-mail, we have written to all Councillors to remind them

about their web pages and we have asked them to provide us with more

information so that the Communications team can input the details on

their behalf. This should enable more up to date information to be

posted in future.

We are also in the process of setting up e-mail addresses for all

Councillors as we agree with your valid opinion about security. The

Members who already have an @thanet.gov.uk e-mail address have had this

address added to their pages.

We will be holding a Members briefing session in December and these

issues will also be raised with Councillors then to ensure they

understand the importance of these pages and that they use the official

e-mail addresses.

We will also have a new Council from May next year and are already

building into our plans action to ensure a 'full' entry for each

Councillor, shortly after their election.

I hope this responds to your concerns but please do not hesitate to get

in touch again if you require any further clarification.

I have copied this note to Group Leaders, so that they are fully aaware

of your concerns.

Yours sincerely

Paul Moore

Subject:		Re: forward this to all of the councillors
Date:		27/10/2006 14:54:33 GMT Standard Time
From:		Michael Child
Reply To:
To:	Paul.Moore@thanet.gov.uk
CC:	richard@rnicholson3.wanadoo.co.uk, cllr-Roger.Latchford@thanet.gov.uk, leader@thanet.gov.uk, Richard.Samuel@thanet.gov.uk

Dear Mr Moore

The object of my email was 1 to point out to the councillors in a way that even those of them who were not computer literate could easily understand that the councils website makes them appear stupid. 2 That council officers did not appear to be forwarding their mail. 3 To get the website improved. 4 To ensure it was possible to communicate with all of the councillors by email.

It is difficult to reply to your email as though it were a response to my previous email it is as though you are replying to an email that you wished I had sent, saying things you wished had happened, had indeed happened. I note that you are Corporate Director & Monitoring Officer I unfortunately don’t know what this means, the tdc website search facility says Sorry, no pages found containing your search terms when I enter it; well nothing new there.

If the Portal Project was implemented, as a pilot project with areas that needed development, why on earth doesn’t it say so on the site?

I am glad that you have written to all councillors however it is not clear if you passed on to them my previous email below, did you?

I am glad that you appreciate my concerns about security, I have I feel been most restrained in not taking advantage of the situation, however others may not be so charitable especially now I a highlighted the problem.

I really am at a complete loss as to how to reply to you saying Members who already have an @thanet.gov.uk e-mail address have had this address added to their pages.” I looked at the site just now to confirm this knowing as I do from previous communications with TDC that all cabinet members have @thanet.gov.uk e-mail address. Michael Roberts and Zita Wiltshire have no @thanet.gov.uk e-mail while has William Peppiatt no email address at all.

I will charitably assume that you looked at the site rather in the way you read my email or perhaps your whole email is meant to be some sort of riddle.

I do hope that you will read my email again and look at the website again and respond to the issues raised that you overlooked the first time.

Finally I feel I must reiterate, please pass on the email below to all of the councillors if you haven’t already done so and tell me that this has been done.

Kind regards Michael Child

In a message dated 26/10/2006 12:18:54 GMT Standard Time, Paul.Moore@thanet.gov.uk writes:

Dear Mr Child,

Richard Samuel has asked me to respond to your recent email about the

Members' pages on our website. I am grateful for your input, which has

highlighted some valid points. We've been working on improving the

quality and content of our website and the Portal Project was

implemented as a pilot project earlier this year. We knew that there

would be areas that needed development and your note is a timely

reminder of this. I am writing to let you know about the actions which

have been taken so far as you have requested.

Since your e-mail, we have written to all Councillors to remind them

about their web pages and we have asked them to provide us with more

information so that the Communications team can input the details on

their behalf. This should enable more up to date information to be

posted in future.

We are also in the process of setting up e-mail addresses for all

Councillors as we agree with your valid opinion about security. The

Members who already have an @thanet.gov.uk e-mail address have had this

address added to their pages.

We will be holding a Members briefing session in December and these

issues will also be raised with Councillors then to ensure they

understand the importance of these pages and that they use the official

e-mail addresses.

We will also have a new Council from May next year and are already

building into our plans action to ensure a 'full' entry for each

Councillor, shortly after their election.

I hope this responds to your concerns but please do not hesitate to get

in touch again if you require any further clarification.

I have copied this note to Group Leaders, so that they are fully aaware

of your concerns.

Yours sincerely

Paul Moore

Corporate Director & Monitoring Officer

Thanet District Council

>>> <MichaelChild@aol.com> 10/20/06 2:13 pm >>>

Dear Mr Samuel please could you forward this to all of the councillors

for

me.

As this is a matter that concerns every councillor individually I could

write to them individually at his or her home address and explain to

him or her

that I suspect council officers are not always passing on

correspondence sent

to them via email.

Obviously it would be cheaper for me and better for the environment to

send

all 56 letters to the council offices however if council officers are

prepared to censor their electronic mail, might they not always pass on

their paper

mail?

It may be an uncomfortable situation for some members of the council to

have

me telling them that the way TDC handles councillors websites and email

addresses within the councils own website is unacceptably bad, however

it is now

10 days since I asked for that information to be passed on to all of

the

councillors and I still haven't had an answer to my question has it

been passed

on?

I have however for the time being decided to start by going through the

councils own complaints procedure and if that fails referring the

matter to the

Local Government Ombudsman.

I will now explain the problems as clearly as I can.

1 Within the TDC website each councillor now has their own website,

although

this sounds like a commendable idea, in practice what is published

seems to

have been designed to make each councillor look stupid and computer

illiterate. While I understand that many people in the UK, especially

those with

social problems and learning difficulties have computer literacy

problems, even in

those cases where I know the councillor involved has good IT skills and

has

obviously tried to make their website look presentable; the result is

still a

horrible mess.

For those with no computer skills it may be likened to the following.

Suppose TDC were to produce a glossy book about the council, and

suppose you

are councillor Grey; you find your name in the index and realise that

you

are described on page 33; so you look at page 33, well page 33 is a

mess some

information about you is correct some is missing and some is wrong; at

the

bottom page 33 it says lots more information about councillor Grey,

that he has

written about himself, is on page 34, but when you turn over the page,

page 34

is missing and there is a short note on page 35 saying no one is

allowed to

read page 34.

2 As every councillor now has a website it would be expected, rather in

the

way one expects a car to have a steering wheel, that there would be

some way

of contacting the owner of the website via ones computer. Email address

contact forms are the norm. In other words someone has built you a

house without

a letterbox and it looks silly.

3 For security reasons elected members should always send emails

concerning

council business with a thanet.gov.uk email address as it is important

that

the public are sure that the email has really come from them. This is

Mike

Harrison's email address as an example cllrboggs@hotmail.com I am sure

you agree

that it could be anyone involved in a scams address. This type of

thing is

so patently open to abuse and a terrible temptation to anyone wishing

to make

the council look foolish.

4 Like all important organisations a return email confirming the

recipient

has in fact received the email should be sent automatically. When the

council

does send out a confirmation I doesn't say who received it so I you

email 2

councillors but only one confirmation arrives you don't know which

one you

have contacted.

If you look at the correspondence on

_http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/tdc/_

(http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/tdc/) you can see how hard it is for

member of the public to be certain who, if anyone, in the council they

have

contacted; in some cases even when they have received a reply.

5 The maze of 56 separate websites, one for each councillor means that

it is

very difficult to spot mistakes and omissions as I noticed that the

councils

IT department had only made some of the corrections I was promised

they

would make last week I have started to copy the basic information from

each

councillors website to one page at

_http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/tdc/councillors.htm_

(http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/tdc/councillors.htm) if you would all

look at it and tell me about any errors I will endeavour to get them

put

right on the TDC site. Some of the mistakes are obviously mistakes

like Dennis

Hart's email address _havingfun@tesco.et_ (mailto:havingfun@tesco.et)

unless

of course he is using the extra terrestrial branch of Tescos if so I

cant

reach it from aol.

I am sure that you will agree with me that this is about serious

important

matters that are relevant to all councillors and I hope that you will

pass it

on to them. As I am still not certain that my previous email was

passed on I

will also forward it to all the council email addresses I have.

It would also be helpful if any councillor receiving it could let me

know by

email.

Kind regards Michael Child.

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