Nice idea to get a “newspaper” (well “informationpaper”) when you (for example) move to a new area. Surely some form of PDF delivery would ease production costs? Obviously the web / scraper back end costs money, but you could cache output as it would be relatively slow changing.
“Surely some form of PDF delivery would ease production costs?”
and reduce accessibility, councils and the Government know your address so they can post you something without knowing your email address or you having to use the internet. Paper is tremendously immediate in providing information. Obviously there are language access issues too, but as a proof of concept it was fun to make.
The physical paper would certainly be preferable to the Leader’s puff piece that comes through every month or so in Islington.
I hear what you say about accessibility, so PDF only would clearly be wrong for local government.
That said, I think I (and the majority of potential readers) should be able to tell the council to contact me electronically where possible, given that I am connected. I’d see that as a good use of my tax, and would be happy for a low level of contact through email (for example) to tell me that the information had been updated.
How about a first paper mail out with a prominent QR code (or equivalent) which would lead to a delivery / contact options page on the council website?
Absolutely, using the paper newspaper to link back to the web is an important aspect of this, hence the QR code on the paper we made.