Slashdot Mirror
UK Gov't To Review Hundreds of Websites, Axe Many of Them
krou writes "The UK government is to review all of its 820 websites after the Central Office of Information revealed that for 2009-2010, the government spent '£94m on website development and running costs and £32m on web staff,' which each site visitor representing a cost of £11.78 to the government. 'The UK Trade and Investment website averaged 28,000 users per month but cost over £4m ... 16% of government departments did not know how their own websites were being used by tax payers, and almost a quarter were not aware of the running costs.' There was also anecdotal evidence of departments bidding against each other for search terms on Google. The review is to be carried out by Cabinet Minister Francis Maude, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander, and Digital Champion Martha Lane Fox."
It's a good idea that they're paring things back and hopefully reducing the number of sites that are necessary. Here in the US, WA to be more specific, our state government did that some years back. They cut it back to just one website, with sub domains for various parts of the government. The basic idea was that pretty much any idea should be no more than a handful of clicks away from the front page of the site. And if you couldn't do that you should be able to click on a unified search engine that could find any state resource in minimal time.
Admittedly, it's not perfect, but I've found it to be an efficient way of finding information on state government. And it actually does a better job than many corporate sites do in terms of accessibility.
especially given their terribly below level of quality and usefulness.
Aww, come on, tell me this isn't the best thing you've ever seen.