You can put together the total running costs for Directgov if you check a couple of sources -
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2009-06-30c.282044.h&
Jim Knight (Minister of State (the South West), Regional Affairs; South Dorset, Labour)
The costs for Directgov in each financial year since 2004 are set out in the following table:| Financial year | £ million |
| 2004-05 | 5.1 |
| 2005-06 | 10.5 |
| 2006-07 | 12.8 |
| 2007-08 | 13.9 |
| 2008-09 | 30.7 |
...
I believe after this the figures were approximately -
2009-10 - £30 million
2010-11 - £23 million
... bringing the Directgov total to £126 million, over seven financial years.
Have I missed any millions here and there? According to Hansard, 'Expenditure on Directgov increased in 2008-9 in recognition to its increased importance in the Government’s strategy for online delivery of public services.' - in other words, the £83 million invested in Directgov since Varney, approved by the Comprehensive Spending Review in 2007, was to achieve the £400 million of savings by converging websites.
So, where's our extra £400 million?
Haha, only kidding, government is a big, complicated thing. You can't expect theoretical savings to appear on actual balance sheets. As Cross pointed out, Varney's figures were 'back of a fag packet' calculations. No-one seriously expected to save an actual £400 million.
Bit of a shame for Gubbins, mind you. Remember, our costs went up when we converged to Directgov. We have our own customer transactions which we maintain ourselves and are paid for out of Gubbin's annual budget. They're painted orange with a Directgov logo at the top, but they're essentially built and maintained by us.
Y'know if Gubbins had pledged to save, say, £5,000 a year by automatically switching our office PCs off every night, HM Treasury would have the right to see these savings somewhere on a balance sheet.
For Directgov, normal accounting practice doesn't seem to apply. As I said in my first post, we have to make special allowances for government websites.
I’d go direct, guv
Directgov's spending was cut in 2010 along with other cuts in the public sector. At the height of Directgov's 'success' they were spending £7 million per yearon marketing. That's the figure I seem to remember, anyway. It's a bit hard to find on Google now.
As recently as February 2010 Directgov were commissioning a £2.05 million TV ad featuring various B-listers, earning the censure of the Daily Mail -
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1253496/How-star-studded-Government-TV-advert-featuring-Kelly-Brook-Helen-Mirren-costs-taxpayer-2million.html
A star-studded Government television advert - featuring the likes of Suggs from Madness and Kelly Brook - has cost the taxpayer more than £2million.
The eye-watering cost of the Directgov campaign includes the production, airtime and hiring the celebrities.
Quite a price tag for marketing a brand which would be closed down within a couple of years. If they do get rid of Directgov. But that's another story.
Hey, look. There's the Directgov problem again from a commentator -
The first time I saw the advert I was shocked by the self-indulgence of it and the ridiculous number of celebrities. I'd rather they spent the money on improving the clunky DirectGov website.
- Chris Z, Warwick, 24/2/2010 23:07
Sorry, I digress. The funny thing about this episode is that the Varney savings were still being cited three years after the Comprehensive Spending Review had started:
But Mike Hoban, the communications director for Directgov, said: "At a time of economic uncertainty it is essential that we give everyone in the UK easy access to important government information about taxes, benefits, job opportunities and education.
"Directgov will save the government £400m over three years. Therefore this is an investment that is important in helping the government save money."
Hang on a sec ... this was February 2010. The web convergence program had already been running for three years. Hoban was talking as if the £400 million savings were going to be made over the next three years.
It would have been an ideal opportunity for Hoban to have shared a spreadsheet of actual savings from the various government organisations who had closed down their websites to join Directgov; seeing as by then, Directgov had already swallowed £96 million of taxpayers money in pursuit of this £400 million.
Digital by default
As far as government white (orange?) elephants go, Directgov is a snip. Compared to £2.7 billion reportedly lost on a replacement NHS system, £96 million on an unloved orange website, and £400 million of vanishing theoretical savings will soon be forgotten by the general public.
The point is, when a government organisation runs its own web services, its expenditure shows up on balance sheets. After each financial year, the government can audit them on what they've achieved with their budget.
When you centralise web services into a government supersite, it becomes more difficult to account for expenditure. The ideals are too lofty, the aims are too vague, and the politicians don't want to be bogged down in the details. It happened with Directgov.
Let's be fair, though. If we haven't saved £400 million, at least we cut down on the number of government websites out there. According to Computer Weekly in April 2011:
http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/public-sector/2011/05/500-rogue-gov-websites-nabbed.html
Sharon Cooper, director of strategy and innovation for the Government Digital Service, told a recent Inside Government conference the unit had achieved Varney's target off shutting all unnecessary public sector websites and subsuming them into DirectGov by March 2011.
It had shut 287 websites by 5pm on 31 March, converging 95 per cent of all public sector information into DirectGov. But it had found another 500 websites that must be axed.
"There are still another 500 out there because we found a lot more in the process of trying to shut them down and that work is still going on," said Cooper.
Oh dear, were they hiding? So, we're still investing public funds to reduce the number of government websites, even though after five years, there is no evidence this causes any savings.
Again, as she mentioned Varney, this would have been an ideal opportunity to share a spreadsheet showing £400 million in savings.
Erm ... I'm confused again. How do you measure 'information' unless you work in quantum physics? They're reported that statistic as if it's a real number.
Real numbers versus Directgov numbers
287 is a real number, mind you. It wouldn't be hard to email 287 organisations and get them to say how much Directgov saved them.
Presumably the total comes to at least £83 million pounds - the running costs of Directgov, post-Varney. That means £289,000 per website.
A professional website can be built for £10,000. I'm no expert on web infrastructure but I imagine the hosting needs of a government organisation would run to roughly the same amount of money. So, a new information-carrying website could have been built in 2008-09 and hosted for three years for £40,000.
Seven such websites could have been produced for each website which was converged onto Directgov. I would expect that if you ran user testing on said £10,000 website it would perform better than the same information being presented on a government supersite.
Y'know, a broke graphic design graduate would probably build you a decent information-carrying website for £100. Maybe I'm being naive about how much websites cost in the public sector? This is all getting terribly confusing.
Remember, Directgov only hosts pages of text. It has no interactive functions, unless you could COTA boxes and the email service. The transactions (people ordering a new driving license etc) are still hosted by the organisations themselves.
So, like the Varney figures, this all sounds ever so slightly fishy.
That '500 websites' number sounds a bit made-up too. Did Varney have 787 websites in mind when he came up with those £400 million of savings? By the sounds of things he forgot to tell Directgov.
Post script
Returning to the Daily Mail article:
But Shadow Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude called Government advertising and marketing spending ‘out of control’.
He added: ‘Labour seem more focused on squandering our money on vanity PR projects rather than actually addressing the pressing problems of the country.’
It's interesting that the £2.05 million on an advert attracted Maude's condemnation at the time; but £126 million on a government supersite didn't influence the direction of government web services under Maude's control after he took power.
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