GDS to grow GOV.UK in nine ways by 2025

With over 1 million visits to the GOV.UK homepage every week, Government Digital Service (GDS) has announced plans to grow the platform in nine ways by 2025 - ensuring that it keeps evolving to meet user needs and expectation.  

It has identified nine programme priorities between 2023 and 2025: developing a GOV.UK app; exploring emerging technologies; growing its presence on social channels; creating new content types; updating the homepage and site search; improving user experience; reducing the complexity of its publishing tool; and expanding GOV.UK brand guidelines.  

“We did this because we want to grow GOV.UK to reach people when and where they need government information, to make it more proactive in helping people and to evolve to match user expectations for new technologies,” said Anna Sherrington, Head of Delivery for GOV.UK at GDS, in a video announcing the strategy. 

The GDS team has already started delivering on these nine priority areas, with the GOV.UK homepage undergoing its biggest design overhaul since 2014. 

“By providing a more proactive, interactive, and relevant GOV.UK user experience, we can help people get the right support and help government communicate and deliver services in the best way possible,” Sherrington said. 

In support of this new strategy, a review of the GOV.UK proposition was undertaken, resulting in a number of changes to align with the evolving multi-channel offer.

Theses changes include: a new explanation as to why the proposition exists and where accountability sits; an updated list of channels and domains the GOV.UK proposition applies to; new wording around what content must, by default, go on GOV.UK; and making applying for an exemption from GOV.UK more accessible.