Directgov 'needs to be simplified'

Graham Walker, director of digital delivery for the department, said this has been the conclusion from a review of the site launched by the government's digital champion Martha Lane Fox in August. Speaking at the Beyond 2010 conference in Birmingham, he said: "We've been doing a review of Directgov and most of government on the web. We can see that there is a need to massively simplify it, with a lot more rationalisation and to improve the user experience." Directgov provides the central portal for citizen facing government services. It was transferred from the Department for Work and Pensions to the Cabinet Office in the weeks after the coalition government came to power. Walker said there are still significant barriers to getting people to use more online government services, and there is a need for some "common enablers" to overcome them. "We are starting to talk to service owners about getting 95% take-up," he said. "If we are going to do that we need to provide digital support for some people some of the time." He cited the example of the difficulty in expecting more people to apply for benefits online when many of them do not have the necessary IT skills, and said there is a need to provide the necessary support. "If we don't do that we will be stuck at 60%-65%," he said. "We hope to make public progress over the next month or two."