A significant milestone in the evolution of UK e-government was passed last week – very, very quietly. The Cabinet Office had a Departmental Strategic Objective for the 2008-11 spending round, DSO4 if you’re interested, to ‘migrate more than 95% of the total identified websites to Directgov and Businesslink by 31 March 2011’. Well, Directgov’s Tony Singleton announced via Twitter on 1 April:
Remember target to converge 95% of citizen facing content and service to Directgov by end march 11? Iโm please to say we did it @directgov
The truth is, I don’t think many people do remember it: the Martha Lane Fox review has since upped the ante quite considerably. But it’s a significant milestone to have reached, all the same.
95% of what though?
Fair point: I’m not sure precisely what metric Tony has used to establish his 95% figure; and I’m not sure whether we wanted that 95% of stuff to be migrated anyway. Defra took a ‘junk it all and start again’ approach, and I know others have looked on enviously. I suppose Alphagov is a (although not necessarily the) solution to that.
The 95% was the from the agreed list of government websites held by COI.
The content was not simply cut and pasted from other sites onto Directgov. Each site was subject to an audit and the content migrated typically reduced by 75% – 90%.