Moving official notices online will save taxpayer £245k

Tuesday 31 January 2017

Almost a quarter of a million pounds of taxpayers' money will be saved by pulling official notices out of the local newspaper and putting them online, the States Assembly was told yesterday.

Deputy Jeremy Macon had quizzed Deputy Wickenden over changes to the remove the legal requirement to publish official notices in the Jersey Evening Post.

Deputy Wickenden has recently taken on responsibility for digital policy following the resignation of Senator Philip Ozouf, and told the assembly that next month would see the start of an eight-week programme to train staff in putting notices online, rather than via the traditional method of posting them into the newspaper, which will constitute an annual saving of approximately £245,000.

He also suggested that some of the information might appear in the parish magazines following a question from Deputy Montfort Tadier over maintaining some notices in print for islanders that did not have access to the internet; but added that Constables may have to use their discretion when deciding which are most relevant due to the magazines only being published quarterly.

Deputy Higgins had questioned how much the online transfer – expected to come before the States in March this year – would cost, but Deputy Wickenden assured him:

“Fantastic news, Sir, it will be free.”

"Obviously we run the website as it is so there’s no additional cost to the publishing of the Gazette online because it's running on our existing infrastructure. The staff who would normally put things together and put them into the JEP will now just be doing it on a online format.

"We’ve got almost 21,000 islanders subscribed to the My Gov website where they can get this information."

The move to digital publishing was one that was welcomed by the Regulator last year, who maintained that it would be unfair for the newspaper to continue as the sole benefactor of the States-funded publishing of official notices.

In May 2016, Channel Island Competition Regulatory Authority (CICRA) Chief Executive Mike Byrne said:

“CICRA has been advising the States for some time that the current exclusivity given to the publication of Gazette notices is unfair and did not create a level playing field; this is even more of the case in the digital age.

“CICRA is pleased to see signs of progress in this area and looks forward to the final removal of the legal barriers that remain in place to the publication of Gazette notices.”

You can read the Gazette section on the Bailiwick Express website here.