UK council waste policies

Reading a press release on council IT spending that landed in my inbox recently made me smile in an ironic way. More of a grimace actually.

Thinking back to the election debate last week and the week before - Brown and Cameron were arguing about cutting waste in the public sector - with Brown harping on about how finding 'biwwions' of cuts in the public sector will cost hundreds/thousands of jobs.

Well according to figures from PeoplePerHour.com, UK councils spent an average of £40,917 per annum on their web sites in 2008/9 compared to the average private business spend of £3297 a year.

WHAT?!

What on earth are they spending that on? Gold plated keyboards to view the web sites on?

There is one glaring overspend for you to cut Gordon/David/Nick or whoever else happens to be involved.

Now I know I am a channel advocate - but if any channel company is actively encouraging this kind of ridiculous and frivolous way of spending of tax payers' money - then quite frankly they deserve to lose the business and the associated income.

This is a disgraceful example of the sheer extent of waste and out-of-control spending we have in the public sector and something needs to be done to bring it under control once more.

I'm sure there are plenty of channel firms out there that can help SAVE that much money a year on unnecessary web site updates - I just hope they all start to reap the rewards of their money-saving strategies.