Dear Mr Billington

Re: YOUR REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

UNIQUE REFERENCE NUMBER: FOI/ICT/LB/02

Thank you for your request for information, which was received by Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council on the 16th July 2010 and which the Council has considered under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I understand this request to be as follows:

“I would like some clarification to my points raised and to expand on my request for information based on your response.

1. First of all, when I asked "How many people visited the Tameside Council Second Life Service and how many people submitted questions via the Second Life Service?". Your response was "The number of visitors was not stored in the Second Life service so we do not know how many visitors there were. The site is no longer in existence. We have no way of knowing how many questions were submitted via second life as we linked to the council website for relevant items and so requests would have come via the website."

I would like to point out that the council uses Google Analytics to track visitors on the tameside.gov.uk website. Having used the Second Life service, I noticed that clicking on an object for example, a piece of dog pooh, it would redirect you to the tameside.gov.uk website allowing the visitor to report dog fowling.

Based on this, could you please tell me:

a) The number of unique visits (excluding visits from Tameside IP address) referred from Second Life.

b) The number of goals completed.

c) Visitor locations by country and city.

2. I asked "How long has the Tameside Council second life project been available and if it has been abandoned, when was this and please include correspondence from staff on this decision?". Your response was "It was a proof of concept project with a finite resource so we did not continue the project. We were looking at innovative and modern ways to communicate with citizens at reduce costs and on-line transactions are the cheapest way to do this. As interest in second life did not expand we decided not to go to the next stage. The site was not retained after the contract ran out on 31st March 2010. There is no correspondence on this decision."

a) Please could you clarify when the Second Life service went live.

b) Wikipedia states: “A proof of concept …is realization of a certain method or idea(s) to demonstrate its feasibility“

If this was a `proof of concept' project then:

i) What research led TMBC to `realise' that second life was potentially a communication tool with the people of Tameside. I would expect to see some form of research into whether people of tameside use or even know of second life. The `scoping document' states that research suggests 7% of overall second life users are from the UK. There is nothing to suggest the locality of those users or if those users would use second life to communicate with their council.

ii) How did TMBC intend measuring the effectiveness of the project if they “no way of knowing how many questions were submitted via second life”.”

I am pleased to advise that the Council can provide the information that you have requested where we hold it. I have summarised the information as follows:

1. Please tell me:

a) The number of unique visits (excluding visits from Tameside IP address) referred from Second Life.

b) The number of goals completed.

c) Visitor locations by country and city.

We do utilise Google Analytics but as Second Life doesn't identify itself to the web browser in any way, we do not believe there is a way of detecting it. If outside of Second Life, it would just use the default web browser, if an in-game browser (which appears to be Mozilla, which is a quite common browser) we can't distinguish which of the hits would be relevant.

2. a) Please could you clarify when the Second Life service went live.

In respect of the service `going live' the service portals had not yet been established at the time that we cancelled the initiative and so there was no launch as such.

b) If this was a `proof of concept' project then:

i) What research led TMBC to `realise' that second life was potentially a communication tool with the people of Tameside.

Please see the reports attached to the response provided to your previous information request on this subject.

ii) How did TMBC intend measuring the effectiveness of the project if they “no way of knowing how many questions were submitted via second life”.

As you will have read in the reports sent along with the previous FOI on this subject, the intention was to establish service portals. These had not been established at the time the decision was taken to stop the service.

The Council will not be charging you for the time taken by council officers to find, sort, edit or redact the requested material.

Please do not hesitate to contact me should you have any queries. Should you be unhappy with the way in which your request for information has been dealt with you may wish to submit a written complaint, to Sandra J Stewart, Borough Solicitor, at the above address providing details of your concerns.

Yours sincerely

Norman Crawford

Norman Crawford

Assistant Executive Director - ICT Services