The other day
I opened and read it
It said they were suckers
They wanted to know..
Does Government Do Enough for YOUR Business?
..and then went on in a diatribe about the various forms of help we could possibly access through becoming members of the local Chamber of Commerce, booking a meeting with a Business Link advisor etc
Now, that's all well and good. But, another part of government - central government this time - has recently cheesed me off good and proper.
I use a lot of official data in my work. And I mean a lot. Like the other day when I tried to download a national dataset from a well known database and it stopped me telling me I couldn't carry on as I was asking for more than 1,000,000 cells of data. Oops. But I really did want the lot as I was mapping something across the entire UK at VERY high resolution!
Anyway.. I also needed to assemble some schools performance data and it would be easier if I had the latest dataset for the whole country - every single local authority area across 12 or so variables. Not a lot to ask for really (4,380 or so items or cells). I have the data in official Excel tables and a lot more besides for each year since 2000 as I have a friend in the central statistical office who helpfully and cheerily sends me the files. This year for some reason I forgot to ask for them in January when they were refreshed.
So, I browsed the usual website (Department for Culture Schools and Families is its name this month - the government may well decide to change it soon.. they do that you know! gives em something to do and creates new linkages between 'joined up government'). The dataset was not there - unhelpfully the only schools data anyone can get to is individual schools or individual Local Education Authority areas.. not useful if you are working on a national level unless you have a full day and nothing to do but transcribe numbers between web pages and Excel!? Which I am assuming nobody does?
I called DCSF direct. I say direct. But what I mean is I called the company that holds the contract to disseminate DCSF data. Prolog they're called. Unhelpful is not the word. After the fourth call back (first time I was placed on hold for 23 minutes and decided enough was enough, second I got cut off and third the woman was very bad mannered and told me she didn't know what I was going on abarrrrt.. with a long East Midlands drawl of an accent) was told by a very young contact centre agent that the data I wanted didn't exist..
Now I know it exists given that I have it for every year since 2000 and have been using it professionally since around 1994!
I blasted off a request on the Prolog website detailing what it is I wanted.
I got the auto-response saying it was being dealt with after a few hours.
I got a second one saying it was still being dealt with after three days.
I then got another response saying they had dealt with it. They had forwarded my request to another (this time government) department and I should get a response within 15 days. Note should not would?
15 f*king DAYS!!! I am in the real world here people. The private sector. The world where a report takes a few days to write and clients need it to use in their real world decisions. 15 days is just ridiculous!
So, I am still waiting for the response.. Approaching 10 days now.
Lucky I have the intelligence to use the telephone and call that friend in the central department that do know what they're doing. She emailed me the full national tables (all 24 of 'em) within the hour on the day when I was told they didn't exist..
Is this government doing enough for my business?
You decide.
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