Tobias Escher at the OII

For those of you who are unaware of that, the UK government is currently in a six year reform of transforming its public services for the 21st century (read: the Internet and all the rest). The strategy itself reads:  

this strategy’s vision is about better using technology to deliver public services and policy outcomes

Unsurprisingly then it goes to great lengths to say how much money will be saved and how much more effective and efficient government will be once it has seized the opportunities of new technologies.

It’s 18 months into the programme and the Cabinet Office just released its first progress report. The two issues of interest here are:

1. The government plans to shut down at least 550 websites to reduce the overall number of websites (which nobody knew for sure, probably around 2.500). Unfortunately it seems like there is no list of those sites available yet.
2. The relevant content of the closed sites will move to direct.gov.uk which is part of a larger attempt to create a one-stop shop for citizens to interact with government. direct.gov.uk is going to become a super-site holding (allegedly reviewed) content previously held on departmental websites. The same thing with businesslink.gov.uk for businesses.

It is going to be interesting whether or not this strategy will really be beneficial to citizens. While streamlining governments online resources sounds good to my ears, it has yet to be proven whether a joint up (ie. direct.gov.uk) approach is really what citizens are looking for. So here a bit of self-advertisement: We are doing a bit of research that will come out in the first half of this year and which will shed light on some of these issues. Check out Government on the Web which will be updated soon!