Biggart Baillie Solicitors

Axe to fall on Unnecessary & Expensive Government Websites

Unnecessary and expensive government websites are set to become the latest victims of the new Coalition Government’s austerity regime.

The Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, has pledged to scrap government websites and slash the cost of the remaining sites in a bid to save millions of pounds following a report published on 25 June 2010 by the Central Office for Information (“COI”).  The COI discovered that £94 million has been spent on developing and operating 46 websites in particular and £32 million on staff costs for those sites in 2009 and 2010.

The Coalition Government has pledged that all of the 820 existing government funded websites will now be subject to review and no new websites will be permitted unless cleared by the Efficiency board co-chaired by Francis Maude and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander.

The review, which will report by the Spending Review in September, will aim to shut down up to 75% of existing sites and then look at getting the remaining sites to cuts their costs by up to 50% and move onto common infrastructures.

Commenting on the COI’s Report, Douglas McLachlan, of Biggart Baillie LLP said:

“The COI’s Report found that the cost-to-visit ratio for some government websites is staggering.  For example the UK Trade and Investment website (uktradeinvest.gov.uk) averaged 28,000 users per month but cost over £4m to build. 

That’s a whopping £11.78 per visit!

Martha Lane Fox, the UK’s new Digital Champion, is going to have her work cut out for her working on the review.  She will have to figure out how best to put key public services online and increase access to the internet without the costs spiraling out of control.”

For more information, please contact:

Glasgow:  Colin Miller or Douglas McLachlan - tel:  0141 228 8000