Digital champion Martha Lane Fox has published a report calling for a centralised government internet address to replace 750 websites.
In a review of the Directgov website entitled "Revolution not evolution", she recommended an overhaul of separate government websites to be replaced by a single internet "front door" to public services on the web.
The key proposals include a new central commissioning team to take responsibility for the government's sites, which should publish content on a single government website. Departments should stop publishing to their own websites, and instead produce only content commissioned by this central commissioning team, she said.
Commenting on the report, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said the current system is "inconvenient, expensive, wasteful and ridiculous, and it cannot continue."
Mark Flanagan, former Downing Street head of digital and strategic communications, said a single centralised site would be a more efficient system. "Everyone accepts that government news and messaging aimed at print and broadcast should be controlled from Number 10, so why not online too?"
This would save money in back-end systems and hosting and reduce government costs in public service transactions by hundreds of millions of pounds a year, he added.
Recommendations in the Martha Lane Fox report
23 Nov 2010