Government to axe more websites

Departmental minister Francis Maude has said there are more sites than identified by the previous government in March – 820 compared with 794 – and that he wants to shut down 75% of these. All of the existing sites will be subject to a review looking at cost, usage and whether they could share resources better. No new websites will be permitted without passing through an exceptions process for special cases, and are cleared by the Efficiency Board in the Cabinet Office. A rationalisation of government websites was announced as part of the Transformational Government strategy in 2005, but Maude claimed that only limited progress has been made in reducing the number. "The last government identified 794 sites still open and promised to close 422 of them," he said. "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." Maude said that he also wants departments and agencies to reduce the costs of their websites by up to 50% and to move onto common infrastructures. "This government is completely committed to getting the government web back under control," he said. "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. That is why we will take tough action to get rid of those which are not up to the job and do not offer good value for money and introduce strict guidelines for those that remain." A report published on 25 June 2010 by the Central Office for Information says that across government £94m has been spent on the construction, set-up and running costs of just 46 websites, and £32m was spent on staff costs for those sites in 2009-10. The most expensive websites have been uktradeinvest.gov.uk which costs £11.78 per visit, and businesslink.gov.uk which costs £2.15 per visit. It also claims anecdotal evidence of money being wasted because of competition between departments. It cites an example of the Department for Energy and Climate Change and the Energy Saving Trust bidding against each other for Google search terms.