The city of Raleigh a while ago had provided information about their $500,000 website that they had agreed to build. Now, from then to today, much has changed including the fact that now the price tag for the new website is $800,000 instead of the half a million. Now, if you were a private company that purchases a website for $800K you would make sure that the functioning of the website would be flawless, right? Not the city of Raleigh. The city’s website was crowded with functionality issues, display problems and also simple mistakes.
According to Justin Moss, reporting for NBC 17: “the City of Raleigh says it is making efforts to address concerns brought up by citizens about its recently launched website.”
According to Mr. Moss, Gail Roper, chief information officer for the City of Raleigh said: “she was not with the City when the final decisions about the site were made. She could not say which person gave ultimate approval on the site design.”
In other words, Mrs. Roper is not aware of which person gave the approval on the site design. This must mean to her that she is then not responsible for the outcome of such decision. It would be like a chef that starts working today in a restaurant and says that he is not responsible for the quality of the food.
I think this is simply outrageous. Not so much for the problems with the website, as a designer I can tell you, every website has its problems. The outrageous part is that it is a website with a price tag of 3 luxury 2011 Lamborghinis. Have you seen a Lamborghini fail the first day that it is bought? Have you seen a Toyota fail the first day that it runs? Hold on, have you ever seen anything that is constructed with a budget of half the cost of a car and when it fails nobody says anything?
I have a problem the moment that somebody purchases something at premium price with the expectation of receiving the highest craftsmanship and engineering, yet when it fails, everybody remains quite. That says something to me.
Look at what Mrs. Roper says according to Mr. Moss: “Roper said no additional funds will be spent on improvements, however existing staff will dedicate time to making the changes on the site.” ARE YOU KIDDING ME? You paid the equivalent amount of a luxury home in the best residential part of Raleigh and you simply say that the existing staff will dedicate their time to make changes to the site?
Friends, I am not a fisherman, but something smells fishy to me here.
The last time that I paid for a nice steak I made sure that it was cooked right. If that wouldn’t have been the case, I would’ve made sure that somebody would’ve known my complaint. If I pay a fair price for perfection, I expect perfection. If the people of Raleigh, through their representatives, paid top price for a website, they should expect top design.
Kudos to Mr. Moss for the article, I hope that he follows through and that the responsible people are held accountable for this. It is outrageous.
Take a look at the video…
http://www2.nbc17.com/news/2011/feb/14/4/nbc17-gets-answers-after-complaints-about-raleigh–ar-783360/
