Cabinet Office closes hundreds more government websites

The Cabinet Office has just published data in the form of its Central Government Websites annual report that claims over fifteen hundred government websites have now been closed since its 'rationalisation' programme began last year.

That now means there are only 444 websites reported as open - compared to 820 last year, with closed sites including the Identity and Passport Service's (ips.gov.uk), courtfunds.gov.uk, publicguardian.gov.uk, hmcourts-service.gov.uk and hmprisons.gov.uk, among many others.

The Department says the cull is all part of the Coalition's project to "make sure that public services are moved online in a coherent, accessible way, whilst cutting unnecessary spending on multiple websites". 

This process has also led, it claims, to savings across Whitehall such as the Department for Education which has closed three websites - Teachernet.gov.uk, Governornet.gov.uk, and Standards.gov.uk - as part of this process, saving over £1.7m. 

All the relevant content from these sites is still available on the Department for Education main site, it adds.

"This announcement shows the significant progress that we're making in government digital services," noted Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office and self-styled 'Government COO'.

"We are cutting costs, duplications and contradictions to make government web services easier to use and cheaper for the taxpayer. This report shows the ambition and drive of this government in the digital arena."

This website rationalisation programme follows the report from lastminute.com founder and 'Race Online' 2012 chiefMartha Lane Fox in November 2010, which found that the government publishes"millions of different pages on the Web, via hundreds of different websites". MLF and her team found that this led to "significant duplication" and a "highly inconsistent" user experience.

Departments have committed to close over 50% of the remaining websites. Overall only 134 websites have been given approval to be retained for the time being, just 16% of the 820 reported last year.