In 2011, the UK government operated two portals (BusinessLink and Directgov) and about 2,000 different department and government agency websites. The portals were slow and expensive to maintain, and content was often duplicated or unnecessary. User needs were ignored in favour of government needs.

The Revolution, not Evolution report by Martha Lane Fox established a mandate for radical change, overhauling the user experience of government online.

The founders of Public Digital, along with many others, helped to set up and build the Government Digital Service (GDS) from scratch.

An alpha of GOV.UK was launched after 12 weeks by a small team, at a cost of £261,000. A full version of GOV.UK went live within a year. Over the next two years, 25 central department websites and hundreds of smaller agencies were moved onto GOV.UK - 1,882 websites were replaced, at less than 30% of the annual cost of the sites they replaced. It now has 14 million users weekly, and handles 1.03 billion transactions a year.

In parallel with developing GOV.UK GDS reformed the Government’s approach to technology. This work meant running spend controls, introducing a Technology Code of Practice, reforming cross-government technology leadership governance, building on the successful procurement approaches of G-Cloud through the digital marketplace, and changing approaches to risk and security, GDS became a catalyst for the creation of multi-disciplinary teams and adoption of digital skills across government.

Later, GDS created a “government as a platform” strategy, and built the first cross-government service platforms such as GOV.UK Notify and GOV.UK Pay.

A GDS Story - one story of the many that comprise GDS’s history 2010-2019.

Digital Transformation at scale: why the strategy is delivery - our book on building digital digital institutions.