Gov.uk, the test site of the citizen-facing, new UK government website is now live. It is the first phase in Martha Lane Fox's plan to create a simpler, clearer and faster way to access online government information and services. Longer term, .gov.uk is intended to cover the digital estate currently filled by Directgov, Business Link and other gov.uk websites.

Stop press!!! Cabinet Office acknowledges the importance of using controlled lists (LGSL & LGIL) and the role they play in delivering accurate web services!!!

http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2012/02/14/local-services-and-gov-uk/

Gov.uk is different from Alpha (www.alpha.gov.uk) in that the Alpha was more about the concept and idea, and trying new, quicker and cheaper ways to develop. The Government Delivery Service team (http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/) (GDS), have taken the Alpha feedback and used it to drive improvements in .gov.uk.  

A lot of the editorial content and services on .gov.uk will continue to be delivered by departments and agencies who will publish to a shared platform.

Beta gov.uk's core objectives:

• Design concept centred on meeting users’ needs
• Agile, iterative, multi-disciplinary development process
• Developing tools and content to be easily syndicated
• Developing for the internet not just the web (mobile versions easy and cheap to develop)

Underpinning gov.uk is the Local Government Services List and the Local Government Interaction List.  Web teams from every council in England submit the most suitable landing page to surface when a search is performed.  The Local Authority links (currently England only) used in Directgov and in the beta version of .gov.uk are stored and maintained within the Local Directgov application using a combination of IDs from the Local Government Services List  and Local Government Interaction List to identify the service and level of information requested e.g “paying for Council Tax” or “enquiring about Council Tax”. Web officers in every council have access to the Local Directgov admin interface and can either upload spreadsheets or change links directly via screen updates; both methods take immediate effect.

Every night the links are automatically checked and Web Officers are informed if links are broken. For detail of how this works please see a previous article “Maintaining Directgov local links”.

Giving feedback

You can give your feedback to the Government Digital Service (GDS) by going to http://getsatisfaction.com/govuk, emailing govuk-feedback@digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk or via tweet @govuk