By Vivienne Russell
25 June 2010
Hundreds of government websites are to be scrapped as part of the effort to find £6.2bn in Whitehall efficiency savings.
The Cabinet Office today said all of the 820 government-funded websites would be reviewed on grounds of cost, usage and whether they could share resources better. The review will report by the autumn Spending Review.
The expectation is that three-quarters of websites will be culled, with the remainder expected to cut their costs by half by moving on to common infrastructures.
Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude said: ‘The government is completely committed to getting the government web back under control. 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 from the Central Office for Information published today found that, across government, £94m had been spent on the construction and running costs of 42 websites, and £32m spent of staff costs for those websites in 2009/10.
The Cabinet Office said there was also anecdotal evidence of government-funded websites fighting each other over both resources and the messages they are trying to put across.
For example, the Department for Energy and Climate Change and the Energy Saving Trust were found to be bidding against each other for Google search terms. The Department of Health’s Change4Life campaign promoting healthier lifestyles was undermined by the Potato Marketing Board’s lovechips.co.uk website.
All proposals for new websites will have to be approved by the government’s efficiency board, co-chaired by Maude and Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander.
