Cabinet Office has become the ninth department to move its corporate and policy information to GOV.UK.
The Cabinet Office move brings with it the Offices of the Leaders of the Houses of Commons and Lords, two ministerial departments in their own right, bringing the total number of departments sharing the Inside Government section of GOV.UK up to 11.
This is a huge milestone. It's the moment GDS's own parent department makes the change we are asking all other central government organisations to make. More importantly, it's the moment GOV.UK becomes home to the centre of government. Soon the number of departments on Inside Government will outnumber those yet to join, and that's when the real value of bringing government information together in a single place will start to be felt more and more strongly.
New features
As ever, bringing another department on board has focused our development effort on some specific user needs.
In Cabinet Office's case there were only a handful of small changes, such as:
- Improved ministers listings, with ministers now grouped by department rather than alphabetically
- New detailed guidance categories covering emergencies, devolution and the legislative process
- Support for OpenDocument file attachments
- Flexibility about the number of lead civil servants displayed on an organisation page (because Cabinet Office has 3 leaders at the very top level)
New policies
Representing Cabinet Office policy on GOV.UK has involved the creation of 13 policy documents in the new style, bringing the total to 98.
They include many policies which are close to our own hearts, such as:
- Creating an exceptional civil service: less bureaucratic and more skilled, digital and unified
- Improving the transparency and accountability of government and its services
- Transforming government services to make them more efficient and effective for users
With thanks
We are hugely grateful to Amy Khan, Nick Jones, Anthony Simon, Emily da Costa, Louisa Harper and many other of our Cabinet Office colleagues for working so hard to make this happen on time.
What's next?
Next week will bring more departments and, of course, more new features and iteration to the site.
Big ticket things we're working on include:
- Improvements to both the main site search and the filters on Inside Government's document lists
- A worldwide section, profiling HM Government activity in over 200 world locations including translated content in more than 40 languages. We expect this to be feature complete by the end of February to enable a launch in late March
- A 'get involved' page showcasing the opportunities to participate in policy development and society
- An expanded history of government section
- More automation to make the ongoing transition programme more efficient and robust
We're on track to bring all ministerial departments onto the site by the end of April.
7 comments
Comment by Web move for Office for Civil Society | VoluntaryNews posted on
[...] The Government Digital Service blog update about the move is still at the old address, http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2013/02/21/cabinet-office-move-turns-inside-government-up-to-11/. [...]
Comment by Richard posted on
Nice work... but more importantly, how come one is "office-of-the-leader-of-the-house-of-lords" and the other is "THE-office-of-the-leader-of-the-house-of-commons"?? 😉
Comment by Neil Williams (@neillyneil) posted on
Yeah that's a known issue, but you'll forgive us for making it a relatively low priority to fix!
Comment by Andrew posted on
Inside Government seems to become more useful as each department migrates to the site for example it is much easier to find links between organisations and their work.
One question: I note that this blog remains on cabinetoffice.gov.uk, I was wondering what plans there were to provide this sort of blog functionality within .gov.uk. I am also interested in managing stakeholder communities and would be interested to know if there are plans to enable some form of collaborative/community functionality on the site.
Comment by Neil Williams posted on
Hi Andrew - thans for this feedback. We will be supporting blogs alongside Inside Gov soon, and this GDS blog will be one of the first to migrate.
Comment by alexcoley posted on
Don't forget to update your Google sitemap. Currently 404'ing links.
Comment by Amy Khan (@amyjkhan) posted on
Thanks Neil, it's been a genuine pleasure to work on this with you guys!