Government Digital Strategy, published in November 2012. You may have read in earlier posts that the strategy set out 14 actions for departments to respond to. It was followed up in December 2012 by departmental digital strategies, where each department set out their own detailed plans and commitments on how they would transform and improve their services to meet user needs better and achieve savings. An ambitious agenda. So...
In 2011, early in my current role, I discussed with the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, the strategy I recommended we adopt...
Mike Bracken speaks to the Select Committee about GDS and it’s role in public engagement in policy-making. Click the image to be taken to...
One digital space for government: GOV.uk Government has today hit the switch to turn off Directgov and Businesslink, replacing them both with GOV.uk. Government’s...
On Wednesday October 17th 2012, our new digital service www.gov.uk moved out of public beta development to replace the two main government websites, Directgov...
17TH OCTOBER 2012 by JAMILLAH KNOWLES The UK Government is finally launching GOV.UK out of beta. From today this website replaces DirectGov and BusinessLink to consolidate the information that people need to get things done. The idea is to create a ‘simpler, clearer and faster site’ and the changes have been in the works since the government’s digital champion, Martha Lane Fox, produced an online review of DirectGov in 2010. It was clear at that time that digital services needed refreshing and redesigning. As Lane Fox pointed out, the original sites needed an overhaul to manage both the transactional services – like paying taxes and student loans, as well as being a place where all government information can be published and easily found. The process of change on this scale is no mean feat. In February this year, the DirectGov site saw over 34 million visits; no pressure to get this one right then. The Cabinet Office’s Government Digital Service (GDS) took on the work in a series of moves that would seem more familiar from a company like Amazon or Google, than a UK...