Government to axe over 500 websites

The government has announced it will shut down at least 551 of its web sites as part of a drive to cut costs and improve information access for citizens and businesses.

In total, 951 sites have been considered for closure, with 90 of these already axed and relevant information transferred to the Directgov and Business Link portals. In future, more online content will be consolidated onto "supersites" like these, according to the government.

The move was announced at the launch of the first annual report on the Transformational Government initiative today, where minister for Transformational Government Pat McFadden reassured everyone that " the quality of our services will not be affected by these changes”.

“This is a bold move by the UK government. With so much content in one place, keeping it updated and relevant is a task of enormous proportions," said Andy Peart of web content management specialist Mediasurface. "Online content is not about quantity, it is about quality, and the key to running systems like these new 'supersites' is effective content management."

Nigel Horncastle of IT consultancy Morse explained that the number of government sites had "got out of control", leading to conflicting content management systems being used and problems enforcing compliance with accessibility regulations.

"Whenever organisations are consolidating large numbers of sites they must make sure they don't migrate all the content into one bigger site," he warned. "They need to look at getting a common look and feel across the sites because people expect to use sites from the same company in the same way."