Government has halved number of public websites

More than half of the Government's 1,700 websites have closed, following recommendations in the 2006 Varney Report to streamline online public services, research firm Kable reports.

Responding to a request for information from shadow minister Francis Maude, Cabinet Office minister Angela Smith wrote last week that a total of 907 public sites had been shut down, and a further 479 were "committed to be closed".

Maude had requested a breakdown of the numbers of websites operated by various organisations within Whitehall.

Smith's response detailed that as of the end of 2009, a total of 793 central Government websites were in operation, with 182 run by departments and 611 by executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies.

Cross-departmental co-operation was a central theme in Sir David Varney's Service Transformation report (PDF), published in December 2006, which aimed to set in place a roadmap for finding "a better service for citizens and businesses" and "a better deal for the taxpayer".

The report called for the establishment of "a clear performance indicator for citizen and business facing website rationalisation, which focuses on establishing firm targets to reduce progressively the number of websites over a three-year period.

Sir Varney has since called on Government to speed up this transformation process, saying that progress had been made on combining public websites under the twin Directgov and Businesslink banners, but that four (unnamed) departments were responsible for 80 of the sites that had as yet no plans for closure.