30 redundant public sector websites to be scrapped
Government Digital Services (GDS) has called for the removal of the sites after carrying out an audit of gov.uk domains over the past year.
The audit aimed to identify public websites that breached guidance by being inaccessible, not functional or leading to a non-government domain, which can have a negative effect on perceptions of the gov.uk presence.
The GDS is now persuading councils to retire old domains and amalgamate different services under one main website.
Evans Bissessar, chair of the GDS Naming and Approvals Committee (NAC), said: “When it comes to local authority websites, users don’t care about the name of a campaign. They just want a simple, online presence to pay, report, request, apply or understand something. Local authorities having multiple websites can confuse users.
“Some gov.uk owners don’t realise that defensive registration on gov.uk is not necessary and have a small stockpile of domains (which they probably owned the since internet began!).”
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