Cull on government websites scheduled

The Central Office of Information has recently undertaken a review of websites owned and updated by the UK government, and found that one third of all sites available were non-compliant when it came to following the government’s guidelines for internet publishing.

Cabinet Minister Francis Maud has highlighted the fact that of 820 websites owned by the government, many were now obsolete or irrelevant, and should be scrapped. Maintaining the websites is a costly exercise, and it is estimated that last year government departments shelled out over £32m on upkeep, running costs and staffing for online services, and a further £94m on development of websites. Some sites, such as that used to promote the UK Trade and Investment division, incurred costs of £4m, but only achieves around 30,000 hits each month.

New figures suggest that each visitor to government sites costs an average £11.78, yet 16% of departments who owned and maintained web sites had no idea how their sites were being utilised by UK tax payers. A further 25% of departments did not have a firm idea of how much the sites were costing to maintain.

The report follows activities in 2007 which were intended to reduce wasted spending on obsolete sites, when the government announced plans to delete 551 sites.

Francis Maude has issued a public statement addressing the issues currently surrounding the government’s use of online vehicles: “Only 24 sites have been reported as closed and more sites have since been discovered and so the present total number of government websites is 820. The days of ‘vanity’ sites are over. It is not good enough to have websites which do not deliver the high quality services which people expect and deserve.”

Working in conjunction with Danny Alexander (Chief Secretary to the Treasury) and Martha Lane Fox, the government’s Digital Champion, Francis Maude will be taking steps to reduce unnecessary spending and tighten up the processes which have led to wasted sites, ill-spent money and poor information available to the public online.

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