Comments on: Irish Government’s New Online News Service – A review

By: Merrionstreet.ie - excessive costs?

Merrionstreet.ie - excessive costs? — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 02:18:17 +0000

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By: Richard Fahey

Richard Fahey — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 18:22:34 +0000

Totally agree with the sentiments above. The Whitehouse.gov site already has an .ics feed available for schedules, an RSS feed for legislation etc. It would be nice if MerrionStreet were to incorporate some of this functionality. I have noticed, however, that they have recently changed some of the licensing on their flickr photos. For example, in the post above I mentioned that the photo set for Government buildings was licensed as Copyright. This has now changed to a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license. Many of the new photos uploaded are all licensed in this way now, which is a real step forward. Also, the Twitter account for @merrionstreet is now following 14 twitter accounts, and has started to post via web and Blackberry as opposed to directly through the API. Still waiting for their first reply to any tweets though!

By: steve white

steve white — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:45:26 +0000

you’re right that the tender was modest, if not some of the press promoting it, but as @handelaar cuttingly points out its, putting the media on flickr and youtube is just cheap storage, maybe making it more findable, they could have held the media content and pushed it from the site itself but it was about getting the gloss of social media while cutting off most of the features that make it social, thats more then irksome, this is simply about them trying to get us to forward their spin on things, usually you allow and hope people forward or use your content but they also may comment on it while they do so, thats the deal that you make with people.

i’d really like a .ics/ical based events calender for statements, chamber activities and legislation, (it be best that oir.ie staff fill the cal themselves rather then me trying to scrape it off oir.ie )

By: Richard Fahey

Richard Fahey — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 20:19:28 +0000

Good point Paul, and I agree that in terms of Government 40k is not so much. For example, I was looking at a recent RFP for a ‘Consultant to Advise on Web Strategy’ for oireachtas.ie. This is is a 90 day contract, which could potentially run over 40k! It seeks advice on:

i) developing a single vision strategy for the Houses of the Oireachtas web presence
ii) ensuring that best industry standards are applied to the oireachtas.ie website
iii) developing the capability to deliver video, downloads, podcasts, virtual
tours
iv) developing the strategy with a view to creating a strong presence among the target audience(s)
v) advise on a protocol for staff to use data such as information flows and for
creating connectivity between social media sites etc.
vi) provide technical assistance to identify and deal with issues with existing
website.

Perhaps the Department of the Taoiseach are going to create a similar RFP to get advice on managing the social aspects of Merrionstreet. It’s a real pity, however, that they could not include all these together on the initial RFP, which would save time and money.

By: Paul M. Watson

Paul M. Watson — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:46:13 +0000

Good constructive review. Your point about the RFP corrects the many negative comments, including mine. We got what the RFP asked for. At 40k I do think it a tad expensive but then any project with an RFP is not going to be as cost effective as two guys in a garage. All the discussions with government people would have sapped a good deal of that 40k.

However, I do think a simple, free (or $100) WordPress template and some WordPress setup would have accomplished most of what MerrionStreet.ie provides. It should be about the content and communications, not a slick visual design.

Next time (they seem to say that a lot in government) a bit of vision and proper engagement before the RFP is written would help. What do we the people want out of our government websites?