Cabinet Office move turns Inside Government up to 11

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.