Out of touch with [super] highway reality?
No I am not referring to the IT skills of the tyre business at large. To be fair, in recent years our industry has taken giant steps towards the optimization of its processes using computers and better use of the Internet to reach customers. Just look at the continuing proliferation of tyre information and retails sources online, not to mention the trade’s increasing presence on social networking sites and latterly the emergence of a number tyre price comparison sites. The, of course, there’s EDIWheel but that’s all another article (see October’s e-commerce feature for more on this). No, on this occasion I am talking about the UK government policy, metrocentricity and online tyre browsing – or rather the lack of it in Westminster.
When the Taxpayer’s Alliance petitioned the government for a list of Whitehall’s most visited websites under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI), the association was probably fishing for ammunition to fire at the government relating to the alliance’s own political agenda. The fact that the web addresses of Facebook, Argos and even some role playing games systems figured on the top 1000 only ensured that this was possible. But politics aside, the list provides a fascinating insight into what the many thousands of Whitehall staff do with their Internet connections at work.
As the BBC gleefully reported on Friday 29 July, when the FOI request was published, the web pages of Auntie Beeb dominate the listings along with the presence of many thousands of links to Google Analytics and other sites, which one might imagine are used for legitimate work and research purposes. However, the presence of YouTube, film database imdb.com and ESPN’s cricinfo portal on the list may suggest the computers and Internet connections of Whitehall staff are used for other purposes too.
But the rights and wrongs are not what’s most important here. The apparent imbalance of what they looked at is. The list of the top 1,000 sites contains several references to the different train sites including, as you might expect, a large interest in Transport for London’s page. But thetrainline.com, National Rail Enquiries’ site, East Coast railways, Southern railway, Crossrail and even transport trade journal transportextra.com show the importance of rail and public transport to the civil service. Most major airlines are represented too. But where are the references to cars and – dare I say it – tyres?
The point is that unless we believe the preposterous notion that civil servants (as the list shows) regularly visit the Homebase website, diy.com and Screwfix’s page at work but are saving their tyre and car buying reading till home-time, the absence of the best known tyre sites and even motoring magazines on the FOI list speaks volumes. We know from industry research that most pre-tyre purchase research is done online nowadays. Car buyers do the same. So does the list show betray an anti-car metrocentric bias implicit in the culture of civil servants that live in commuting distance from London and apparently spend more time browsing the questionably artistic “life study” photographic portaits at claire-tully.co.uk (945th; 754 hits) than looking at anything to do with cars?
True highwaysagency.org.uk is mentioned too but, in 380th place and with 27,968 hits, its priority within Whitehall is ranked only slightly higher than role-playing site bearsfaction.org.uk, which came in at 385th with roughly 500 fewer views.
The two lonely references to anything even slightly related to either car ownership or maintenance are Halfords (454th; 21,928) – a visit to which could just as easily be explained by a bicycle related purchase – and parkers.co.uk (637th; 12,761). And regarding Parker’s famous car pricing guide, it could be just as easily be that our nation’s civil servants favour this as a valuable source of the CO2 emissions data necessary for working out one’s company car tax.
My question is: when it comes to considering the implications of legislation such as the recent “consultation” regarding changes to MOT frequency, tyre labelling or other automobile issues, are our government departments best placed to understand the needs of both the motoring public and the automotive industries on which they depend?
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