In the same way we redeveloped http://liverpool.gov.uk – we did nothing new , we just concentrated on getting what was already there and available done right.

I had no idea Directgov had a consultations page like that. Thank you for pointing it out.

It’s a great idea, but unfortunately it has been very badly executed

1. It is very hard to find – it doesn’t appear in Google. For some reason it is deliberately blocked (see http://consultations.direct.gov.uk/robots.txt). This means you have to click several times from a Google search for “government consultations” to get to it, and carefully read the text on two long Directgov pages and pick out the right links. I bet it has very low traffic.

2. It has no interface for browsing. This means if you don’t know anything about Government consultations and you just want to see what kind of thing there is, there is nothing you can do. You can’t even search for an empty string.

3. The searching interface is very inflexible, like an early web interface. These days it could have much clearer presentation, rather than being an upfront overwhelming form. I’m thinking of things like interactive sorting, and nice calendar widgets for choosing date ranges. Lots of details.

4. It has no alerting system – such as by RSS, Email or Twitter. Nor any easy way for anyone to make an alert on top of its content (because it doesn’t appear in Google). Consultations

Fixing all the issues above is exactly the point of Alphagov. I agree that their alpha prototype hasn’t solved everything there, but I at least have some hope that their final version will, if it is commissioned.

I could write a similar detailed criticism of the “Connect to your council” site.

To start you off, when I click on the “Enter details” I have to manually delete “e.g. SE1 or Lambeth” before I can type my own postcode in. It has been fairly standard on the web for more than 10 years to automatically remove such help text when the text box is clicked in.

So yes, Alphagov is in part “reinventing the wheel”. It is building a much better wheel, suited to how people use the web today, and focussing ruthlessly on the details of the experience of individual citizens trying to get something done.

This is quite hard thing to do for a web designer, and quite subtle. But for the citizen used to services from Google and Facebook it is as plain as day. Millions of people are frustrated every day by difficulty in using Government websites.

Other functions that are on there, such as searching for services by Local Authority are also on there (http://mycouncil.direct.gov.uk/)

What they seem to have done is change/improve the navigation so that it is basically a search of government websites. I think it looks great, but isn’t it just reinventing the wheel?

More generally, information within government is very much held in silos, and these websites represent examples of that.