Poor design and chaotic management by the supposedly crack team at the Cabinet Office’s Government Digital Service (GDS) left huge swathes of the British government in disarray, internal documents seen by the Register reveal. The documents confirm that GDS knew its flagship initiative to move all government websites under one roof, GOV.UK, was destroying useful online services and replacing them with trendy webpages bereft of useful information.
One internal report is particularly damning. The Home Office Visa and Immigration site transitioned [to GOV.UK] without a good understanding of users and needs … there was quickly a flood of negative feedback … coming from all directions,
an insider states for the record. The report details a breakdown in fact checking described by more than one person as
general chaos
and a total nightmare
.
The disclosures paint a picture that contradicts the public image of supremely confident digital gurus modernising the British government’s many websites, and making them more efficient. For all its vaunted skills in website design, GDS had a far poorer understanding of what the public actually needed than the relevant government departments did — this, according to GDS’ own internal analysis — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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