550 gov.uk websites to be closed?

Guido Fawkes passes on the rumour that ‘an official report on “transformational strategy” will confirm that of the 951 state-run websites, 551 in total will be closed.’

I’m not sure where either figure can come from. Certainly it’s the first time I’ve seen a count of 951 ‘state-run’ websites; the most usually quoted figure is usually several times higher than that, although I always felt it was an over-estimate since (I understand) it was based on gov.uk domain names. And I can’t entirely understand how we end up with 400 sites after this cull. I’m pretty sure the Transformation Government strategy (PDF) had a much lower figure in mind.

Mind you, it’ll be interesting to see what ‘closed’ means in practice. Sure, the overall number of stand-alone sites will probably be slashed. But I don’t imagine the content will disappear overnight. It’ll just end up somewhere else.