Lane Fox launches review of Directgov
What say you, the public?
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Digital champion Martha Lane Fox is leading an online review aimed at improving the government's central web portal.
The review will remain open until 3 September 2010 and invites the views of the public on four main areas.
Firstly, how should the government achieve the objectives of using Directgov to publish new information and advice; manage transactions, such as buying a tax disc; provide advice about government policy; and make data more transparent, such as the publication of salary details.
A second question asks what government should do itself, in terms of content, applications and standards, and what would be better done by the wider public sector, businesses, charities and users.
Thirdly, should central government provide a platform for the delivery of digital services by other parts of the public or voluntary sector – for example, local authorities, councils, voluntary and community sector organisations?
The last question covers trends in digital delivery and asks what key trends the government should bear in mind when designing digital services.
Responses to questions can be added to dedicated pages on Directgov (http://directgovreview.readandcomment.com, or emailed privately to directgovreview@betransformative.com.
Lane Fox said the review is independent and that she is seeking general feedback about how Directgov can be "transformed and redirected" to making online delivery of public services more efficient.
"It's not often you get the opportunity to step back and assess how things should be different, so I'm interested in all ideas – particularly the radical and off-the-wall," she said.
This article was originally published at Kable.
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COMMENTS
And this review is costing what?
Most (all?) companies that have a successful web presence seem to do it without employing an quango wannabe. All Miss Lane-Fox needs to do is look at successful websites. Which are sucessfull? Well, go to few and you will see which work and which don't. Learn from the failures as much as from the success. Look at ones that have high ht rates (Amazon, BBC, ebay) - see how they do it and do similar.
Look at bits of your own site that work - for example, the car tax disk order section works well. Keep that, base the rest on how it works. Especially as other parts of the Gov want to close down my Post Office!
Stick to English. Simple, easy, written by people who speak it as their first language. It is the language of the country, after all.
The fact that they have to ask such questions means they don't really know what they want to do. This is just another example of how DirectGov has failed to understand its purpose.
After that, get some one (thats a person, not a consultancy company), pay them well, but on results, and JFDI. Its not that hard.
miss 'i don't have a clue' fox
Considering her only good decision was getting out of Lastminute before everyone found out what a pile of poo that was. I could not believe it when we were bought by them, the entire management had no clue about anything but their share options.
Totally agree
And as the tax-payer has already paid for the BBC, how about just asking them to do it?
Whatever you think of their current changes to their sites, they've already got an infrastructure that can cope with much heavier load than directgov, some very clever tecchies, and lots of experience at it.
Certainly a lot better than what seems to happen at the moment - Directgov gave a set of stoned monkeys a bunch of bananas and a spec, and a truckload of used £20s to their owners. Cost us a fortune for a bloody awful system.
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