Sample Web Sites: Hart Council

As well as designing a promotional web site for the council, we also used the Minutes Manager software to publish the council minutes direct to the web. A first for the UK, no other council had done so before.

This proved an interesting exercise as it highlighted the conflict between council process and user expectation. Web users expect information to be up to date. Yet council minutes are often not published until weeks or months have passed due to the internal processes and meeting schedules of the committees. This conflict became apparent as local consistuents starting emailing the council asking why minutes were taking so long to become available.

Certainly it has been worthwhile setting up the publishing process, and indeed many other councils have followed in their footsteps. Better to be aware of these kinds of issues of perception and address them, than not publish at all.