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Tameside Second Life Spending

Liam made this Freedom of Information request to Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council

The request was partially successful.

From: Liam

20 June 2010

Dear Tameside Borough Council,

Under the freedom of information act I would like to ask the
following questions:

1. How much Tameside Council has spent building the virtual Second
Life Service. Please include a breakdown of costs including monthly
rent, the number of staff using the project and the cost of their
time etc.

2. Which department took the decision to build a Tameside Second
Life Service.

3. Correspondence, documents and emails relating to the Tameside
Second Life Service.

4. How many people visited the Tameside Council Second Life Service
and how many people submitted questions via the Second Life
Service.

5. 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.

Yours faithfully,

Liam Billington

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From: Christine Handley
Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council

21 June 2010

Liam Billington 21.06.10.DOC.doc
71K Download View as HTML

Dear Mr Billington

Further to your request for information, please find attached an
acknowledgement letter from Sandra Stewart, Borough Solicitor.

Regards

Christine Handley

PA to Sandra Stewart, Borough Solicitor

Address: Tameside MBC Wellington Road Ashton under Lyne OL6 6DL

Telephone: 0161 342 3197

Fax: 0161 342 2747

E-mail: [email address]

Confidentiality: This e-mail its contents and any attachments are intended
only for the above named. As this e-mail may contain confidential or
legally privileged information, if you are not, or suspect that you are
not the above named or the person responsible for delivering the message
to the above named, delete or destroy the email and any attachments
immediately. The contents of this e-mail may not be disclosed to nor used
by anyone other than the above named.

Security and Viruses: please note that we cannot guarantee that this
message or any attachment is virus free or has not been intercepted and
amended.

Monitoring: The Council undertakes monitoring of both incoming and
outgoing e-mails. You should therefore be aware that if you send an e-mail
to a person within the Council it may be subject to any monitoring deemed
necessary by the organisation from time to time. The views of the author
may not necessarily reflect those of the Council.

Access: As a public body, the Council may be required to disclose this
e-mail (or any response to it) under the Freedom of Information Act 2000,
unless the information in it is covered by one of the exemptions in the
Act.

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From: Norman Crawford
Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council

15 July 2010

FOI L Billington 20th June 2010.doc
45K Download View as HTML

Tameside SL Scoping Document1.0.pdf
530K Download View as HTML

Tameside Proposal Issued 301007.pdf
602K Download View as HTML

Tameside SL Pricing basics only.doc
217K Download View as HTML

Tameside SL Scoping Document0 2b.doc
1.3M Download View as HTML

Tameside SL Scoping Document1.0.doc
714K Download View as HTML

Second life EST Feb 08.doc
80K Download View as HTML

Second life EST May 08.doc
1.2M Download View as HTML

Second life vision EST document.doc
83K Download View as HTML

SL to EST 29 may 08.ppt
3.4M Download View as HTML

SL Workshop Tameside Proposal Issued 290108.doc
1.6M Download View as HTML

Dear Mr Billington

Please find attached a response and associated documents with regard to
your recent Freedom of Information request.

Yours sincerely

Norman Crawford

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From: Liam

16 July 2010

Dear Norman Crawford,

Thank you for your response. 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
Council's 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 reduced
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”.

Yours sincerely,

Liam Billington

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From: Norman Crawford
Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council

16 July 2010

Dear Liam
Thank you for your request for further information under FOI relating to
Tameside's use of the Second Life service. We will respond ASAP but in
any event no later than 20 working days from the receipt of your email.
Thank you
Norman Crawford

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