Westmister CIO: we need more transactional capability on pubsec websites

Earlier this month the Cabinet Office missed its deadline for publishing quarterly data on the number of central government websites - but according to one senior official, significant progress is being made. But do we need to do more than just trim sites - is a different approach to their design more in order? 

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said last June that he wanted to shut down 75% of government websites. "The days of vanity sites are over," he declared. "The last government identified 794 sites still open and promised to close 422 of them. 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."

While official numbers on progress towards a wide-scale rationalisation have yet to be revealed, Chris Chant, executive director for digital government, revealed this week that at central government level the target appears to have been hit, with only 300 out of 400 sites still up and running.

"In terms of costs, it is pretty amazing. I don't sit around calculating how much we will save with it, but I know that the planned expenditure around the government's digital (work) is in itself is probably around about a quarter of what it was," he said.

At local government level, meanwhile, Socitm earlier this year advised that councils should be thinking about sharing services with other public providers to speed improvement of council websites, something that is much needed, according to Better Connected 2011, the local government ICT leadership group's annual report on council websites.

The report suggested for example, that sharing of 'Find my nearest' facilities would help the 44% of councils that are still unable to provide one. "The website is a critical corporate asset," says the report's author, Martin Greenwood. "It needs to perform effectively if channel shift potential is to be reached. Sharing content, applications and resources, whether locally, regionally or nationally, is a strategy that will deliver the change that is necessary at the speed that is now required."

But one leading local authority CIO has a rather different take, arguing that there needs to be less emphasis on websites and more on mobile apps delivery for transactional purposes. "The days of the web transaction are over - it's all about downloadable apps," argues David Wilde, CIO at Westminster City Council. "In local government we focus far too much on web sites and not enough on the power of apps to drive channel shift.

"We in the public sector are still dominated by the web site when the public have moved on," he adds. "Self-service is the right way to go but this does mean empowering people in the right way. If someone wants to report something wrong they don't want to have to go home and log onto a web site. They want to be able to 'click and go' on their phone. 'Always on' and 'right now' are really important aspects."

Wilde says that to his mind websites have failed to develop. "If you look at where web sites will be in a year's time, it's where they were ten years ago - but with much better search engines," he argues. "Take the Government Gateway with its 11 digit log on. That is such old news. It was designed 15 years ago, built 12 years ago, when people were on 56k modems. Infrastructure has moved on significantly.

"The Gateway did a good job in its time, but there is some fundamental rethinking that can go on around how we can better address that. On the tax front, why is there an 11 digit entry needed in order to fill out a complex form in order to give the tax man your money?

"I can see that might be right around benefits. But the [London] congestion charge isn't interested in people going through a complex sign on to pay their ten pounds - they just want you to sign on and pay."