The Government has come under fire for splashing out £300,000 on the new crime website, police.uk, with critics claiming it could have been built for a fraction of the cost.
The site, which launched yesterday, has not been able to cope with huge Web traffic from UK residents keen to see how much crime is taking place in their neighbourhoods.
But it is the price tag which has developers scratching their heads in disbelief. One blogged: “So that’ll be £100,000 to the ‘consultant’ hired by the Police to define ‘site functionality’, £100,000 to a ‘design studio’, and £100,000 to the firm who ‘wrote’ the site of which £5000 was spent on outsourced (to India) actual programming.”
Another tweeted: “£300k paid by taxpayer funds c/o Home Office for data driven map in the name of open data? Exactly the opp of the whole point.” She added that a Google Maps-powered platform would have cost a fraction of the price, while a third moaned: “That website cost £300K and they didn’t want to pay £500 extra to make sure it works in the first few weeks. F****** bureaucratic nonsense.”
Meanwhile, others have spotted a marketing opportunity. One blogger wrote: “I work a security firm, this site is like manna from heaven for me. I can already hear the cash tills ringing.”
