I’m still getting responses from the email I sent to 135 councils at the beginning of the week.

Let’s just be clear about this. The email stated very clearly:

‘Could you please send me the email contact details for the person(s) responsible for e-government and transformation in your authority’

49 have made no response, not even to say that the email has been received and will be dealt with in a set number of days

There have been 2 delivery failures

Three responses have been of a named person and phone number, but no email address

One council has informed me that it does not give out personal emails

There is a curious mix of text in the subject headers including ‘ Do-not-reply-to this-email’

One council seems to have privatised its own identity. An email to Suffolk County Council has to be sent to customerservices@csduk.com (Whatever happened to emotional attachment to place?) This is apparantley a partnership between two councils and BT - but why not keep Suffolk in the title? I like Suffolk, the word conjures up images of Constable and lovely friendly country pubs….whereas on the other hand, BT conjures up…well, not the same things.

I can’t help feeling in all this talk of transformation that it would be really really worthwhile concentrating on the small simple things and getting those right.

Everyone quite rightly says that most people don’t care which part of the council delivers the service, as long as it’s done properly. It should be added that most people do not care much about government buzz-words like ‘transformation’ and ‘efficiencies’ - but might like to get a short and simple email answered with a certain quality and standard of response.