The United Kingdom's website consolidation initiative, which began in 2006, has a new, aggressive milestone: By September it aims to shutter up to 75 percent of existing sites and cut the cost of remaining sites by up to 50 percent.

"The days of ‘vanity' sites are over. It is not good enough to have websites which do not deliver the high quality services which people expect and deserve," said Minister for the Cabinet Office Francis Maude in a June 24 statement. 

As of June 2010, the U.K. government had 820 websites. Now, all government sites will be reviewed with an eye toward cost and usage, said the statement. The number of open websites as of July 1 was 444, and central government departments have committed to close an additional 243, according to a list of central government websites.

The British government is also testing the concept of a single government website for all online government information, something that was floated as a possibility for the U.S. federal government.

In a July 29 blog post, Tom Loosemore, project director of BBC 2.0, provided findings from alpha.gov.uk. The site served as an experimental platform for the government to publicly test a prototype of a new, single U.K. government website. It also allowed the developers to design and build the site in an open, agile way--incorporating user feedback incrementally.

Since its May 10 launch, the site had over 100,000 visitors, almost 1,000 people left comments and 3,000 people commented on Twitter, said Loosemore. There was a problem with the test site, however.

"The reactions of users of alpha.gov.uk, while incredibly useful, are far from a complete picture. For a start, users were rarely using the site in anger, although it did help me deal with my neighbour's errant burglar alarm. But, even more importantly, the 100,000 users of the prototype were simply not representative of the diverse audiences who need gov.uk to work for them," wrote Loosemore.

Despite these factors, much of the feedback was helpful (outlined in bullet points here), and the move toward a single gov.uk appears to still be in the works. "The really hard work starts now. Of which, more soon," he said in closing.

The White House announced on June 14 that it stopped issuing .gov URLs as part of a cost-cutting campaign; as a result of the campaign, at least half of the domains should be eliminated within 12 months, according to White House Director of New Media Macon Phillips. The federal government currently possesses 1,759 second level domains, according to a list posted online by the General Services Administration June 14.

For more:
- see the U.K. Cabinet Office government website page

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