[LINK] UK government to create 'super websites'

[Roger Clarke]

>On 10/01/2007, at 10:12 PM, Ivan Trundle wrote:
>>  [Whitehall is to shut down 551 websites to make access to 
>>information easier for citizens and businesses, the minister for 
>>Transformational Government has said]
>>  ....

At 7:16 +1100 11/1/07, Antony Barry wrote:
>I've always felt uncomfortable with too much centralisation ...

Tony was a bit milder than me.

When I saw that late last night, I found it highly depressing, and 
sent it on to some colleagues with the following:

Re: Death of the Entry Point

An unhappy new year, I'm afraid.

Cyberspace was a fad that lasted a bit longer than WWII.

Whitehall has quickly reverted to type, re-discovered centralism, and 
can be expected to shortly re-create the Ministry of Truth.

>Directgov, launched in 2004, receives over 5m visits a month. ...

I got 3.5 million in 2006.  So Directgov beat 1 moderate pre-blogger 
by a factor of less than 20.

And the logic then is:  because individual agencies are more readily 
found than the entry point, we'd better close down the individual 
agencies' sites?

Can consolidation mean anything other than ossification?

Will anyone ever re-discover diseconomies of scale and scope?


-- 
Roger Clarke                  http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/

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Visiting Professor in Info Science & Eng  Australian National University
Visiting Professor in the eCommerce Program      University of Hong Kong
Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW