This article is more than 1 year old

Chris Chant: We've cut central gov websites

Only 300-400 left after efficiency drive

The Cabinet Office's interim executive director for digital government says that progress has been made on rationalising Whitehall's websites.

Only 300 to 400 central government websites remain as a result of a Cabinet Office drive to reduce their number, Chris Chant has said.

Speaking at the SmartGov Live event in London, he told the audience that the 4,500 central government websites that were previously available had to be reduced because of the "utter confusion" they caused users who were trying to find information that was sometimes held across multiple sites.

He also said that a large percentage of the sites that remain are "awaiting the arrival of single domains".

"In terms of costs, it is pretty amazing. I don't sit around calculating how much we will save with it, but I know that the planned expenditure around the government's digital (work) is in itself is probably around about a quarter of what it was," he explained.

Earlier this month the Cabinet Office revealed that it had missed its deadline for publishing the first quarterly data on the number of central government websites still in operation.

In its structural reform plan progress report for May, the department said that an annual report on websites, including the relevant information, will be published at the end of this month.

This article was originally published at Guardian Government Computing.

Guardian Government Computing is a business division of Guardian Professional, and covers the latest news and analysis of public sector technology. For updates on public sector IT, join the Government Computing Network here.

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