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Comment by weekay | Hacker News Reader

What is interesting is the fact that none of the revenue / income from advertising if any, is showing in the accounts of the council. Checked a few at random and none of the account statements mention income from ads. Begs the question then not just of moral bankruptcy but of accounting this. If it's not implemented for income to the council then why ?

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They would be unlikely to report an income stream seperately unless it was material. Materiality is a matter of judgement but most auditors would use about 1% of revenue.

Maybe there is a document somewhere that enforces certain practices when making websites for public institutions?

Unfortunately not, otherwise it would be easier to enforce consistency. The simple truth is that councils like many companies are not specialist developers but are expected to run high-quality web applications. Add in some Consultants who may have conflicting interests or lack of knowledge, semi-skilled staff, a friend-of-a-friend who told you to use X on your site, third-party web developers and a marketing team who need the "analytics" and you end up with this mess.

Like many companies, GDPR seems right down the list. The most troubling part of all for me was that the ICO acknowledged the illegality but didn't follow up. Sums up Britain to a tee!

(I'm a Brit)

> If it's not implemented for income to the council then why

analytics? To better serve you? to think-of-the-children?

Careful, some people may not pick up on that sarcasm.

Did you cross-reference to the councils whose websites are serving ads?

Perhaps the ads are run by 3rd party web hosting providers. Just a guess.

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