[t]http://imgkk.com/i/29zb.jpg[/t]
[url]http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/17/gov_uk_replaces_directgov/[/url]
[quote=The Register]The government's new £4.6m-and-counting public services single domain website GOV.UK officially replaced Directgov this morning.
Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude confirmed in late 2010 that New Labour's garishly orange-coloured site would be killed off in favour of a new online service that followed Martha Lane Fox's recommendations of "putting digital first".
While Directgov came under fire for the number of TV adverts released that promoted the public services site, GOV.UK - in contrast - has had none.
Instead, the Cabinet Office has mainly been relying on short announcements from the Government Digital Services team on social media sites such as Twitter to get the message across that Directgov was about to be permanently closed down and replaced.
In mid-September, a banner appeared on the Directgov site that pointed out that it would no longer be active as of, well, today. Maude has long claimed that GOV.UK will save taxpayer money. He repeated that assertion on Wednesday morning:
[quote=Francis Maude]GOV.UK is focused on the needs of users, not the needs of government. It has been planned, written, organised and designed around what users need to get done, not around the ways government want them to do it – providing only the content they need and nothing superfluous. Not only is the result simpler, clearer and faster for users, it will also cost taxpayers up to £70m less per year than the services it replaces. We anticipate further substantial savings as more departments and agencies move on to the GOV.UK platform.[/quote]
Within months of the Tory-led Coalition being formed in 2010, Lane Fox started her campaign to get more people in Blighty to use the interwebs. At the time, it was estimated that some 9 million taxpayers had never been online. That figure had apparently fallen to about 8.2 million as of April this year.
The Cabinet Office is clearly hoping for a smooth transition over to the new service, which has recently started to look a lot more like its predecessor.
But it will be interesting to see, now that GOV.UK is the port of call for anyone wanting to access Britain's public services online, if awareness of the site exists outside of the media/London/luvvie Twitter bubble.
As for Directgov's presence across social networks and video-sharing sites, The Register was told:
[quote]The [Directgov] Facebook and YouTube accounts will be 'frozen', but not deleted, to prevent misuse of the name and brand, and in case users are still searching for them. There will be a clear message to users, saying that Directgov has been closed down, and signposting them to GOV.UK.[/quote][/quote]
[url]https://www.gov.uk/[/url]
The new website looks like one of those 'buy this webpage' sites that come up when you misspell an address
And also really boring and grey
It's about time, I always thought Direct Gov looked very outdated, although the new one is a bit empty it looks easier to navigate
Fuck this, looks awful.
Much preferred the older one.
[QUOTE=Arsonist;38077508]The new website looks like one of those 'buy this webpage' sites that come up when you misspell an address
And also really boring and grey[/QUOTE]
What did you expect, the government are and always have been boring and grey...
[sp]Except Boris Johnson, he is awesome![/sp]
It might not look quite as nice as the old one, but I just tried searching for a few of the things I've used on the DirectGov site in the past and I found them really easily.
Who cares about the looks if it gets shit done.
I personally hated directgov, was too messy. New ones looks okay, not great though.
[QUOTE=Arsonist;38077508]The new website looks like one of those 'buy this webpage' sites that come up when you misspell an address
And also really boring and grey[/QUOTE]
All it needs is
[img]http://domainnamewire.com/wp-content/enom-parked.jpg[/img]
[QUOTE=Arsonist;38077508]The new website looks like one of those 'buy this webpage' sites that come up when you misspell an address
And also really boring and grey[/QUOTE]
So its a lot like London.
[QUOTE=BowedYapper;38077584]What did you expect, the government are and always have been boring and grey...
[sp]Except Boris Johnson, he is awesome![/sp][/QUOTE]
Oh, he's awesome.. awesome every time:
[MEDIA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8c4MjKnlbU[/MEDIA]
holy shit the new site is terrible
directgov looked 1000x better than this
[editline]17th October 2012[/editline]
seriously the hyperlinks are blue and underlined
and they're probably convinced this was all they needed to reform to better the benefits system.
we're saved
[QUOTE=Arsonist;38077508]The new website looks like one of those 'buy this webpage' sites that come up when you misspell an address
[/QUOTE]
wow you really wern't kidding, holy shit it's terrible.
It's clean and looks updated which is nice. Also getting around the site seems to be far better in general. All information you need is on the right, instead of getting half the shit that the search system they had threw at you.
But fuck those hyperlink colours hurt my eyes.
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