News release: “The Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, has today pledged to scrap hundreds of unnecessary and expensive government websites and slash the cost of the remaining sites to save millions of pounds. In autumn 2006 the Government committed to dramatically culling the number of websites. In March 2010 there were still 794 websites; now, the Government has identified 820. As part of the Government’s efficiency drive, all of the existing 820 government funded websites will be subject to a review looking at cost, usage and whether they could share resources better. No new websites will be permitted except for those that pass through a stringent exceptions process for special cases, and are cleared by the Efficiency board which is co-chaired by Francis Maude and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander. The expectation is the review, which will report by the Spending Review in September, will aim to shut down up to 75% of existing sites and then look at getting the remaining sites to cuts their costs by up to 50% and move onto common infrastructures. A report published today by the Central Office for Information (COI) found that across government £94 million has been spent on the construction and set up and running costs of just 46 websites and £32 million on staff costs for those sites in 2009-10. The most expensive websites are: uktradeinvest.gov.uk which costs £11.78 per visit; and businesslink.gov.uk which costs £2.15 per visit.”