One of the government’s lesser known reforms, the GOV.UK website, has just been named as the 2013 Design of the Year. Before the coalition, the public sector was represented online by nearly 1,000 websites. Under the auspices of the Government Digital Service — a newly recruited band of nerds based outside of Whitehall — GOV.UK has been an attempt to reboot the government’s web presence with a slicker site under a single unifying brand.
This award suggests that the project has been a success. Up against tough competition from the Shard and Olympic cauldron, the win is a triumph for the GDS. George Osborne is certainly keen to tout it, telling Coffee House:
‘The fact that a government website has won the Design of the Year award a testament to the radical changes we are making to public services, putting citizens’ needs front and centre.
‘In May 2010, we inherited 750 separate government websites, meaning huge amounts of wasted money and frustration for the public.
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