gov.ie progress report

gov.ie currently has 14 government departments live, plus the Office of Public Works, with the remaining 2 coming in the next few months. gov.ie is also home to many agencies and subsites such as Healthy Ireland and the Commission on the Defence Forces.

gov.ie came about following a government decision to move all government departments and agencies to a central portal. This decision came about after an audit of government communications and international best practice in 2018 criticised existing arrangements for being fragmented and potentially confusing for citizens who – 'would find it hard to ascertain when Government is communicating with them.’

The audit report recommended that ‘the citizen should be at the centre of Government communications – the needs of the citizen should drive all communications’ (Government SCU, 2018, p.4).

A model of best practice was the UK’s ‘All-of-Government website’ – gov.uk – described as a site designed to delivering ‘what the citizen wants to see/access, not what government departments want to publish as the information presented are those most commonly searched for and requested by users...’ (Government SCU, 2018, p.3)

It was then decided that the new site would be built using two central principles:

• content design
• plain English

Content design

Content design is a process where you design the content with the user at the centre of the process. You do this by creating user stories based on real-life user needs. (for example: ‘As a new parent, I want to get the children’s allowance to allow me to spend money getting essentials for my new baby.’)

Content design is how to create content that the user needs – not content you just want to publish for the sake of it.

Users come to gov.ie to find something, not to browse. Content design is how to get the information to the user in the clearest and most straightforward manner.

Plain English

Plain English is using simpler language to get the message across. The gov.ie content team work with each department on their services (for example: get a payment, apply for a grant). This is the content that people rely on every day.

Plain English is a way of presenting information that helps someone understand it the first time they read it or hear it. It involves short clear sentences and using everyday words. It does not involve small print or unnecessary jargon.

These principles involve a new process around designing services the public rely on. This can include payments or grants or anything a member of the public or a business can get from the government.

The content teams in each department ensure that each service is written in plain language so that it is easy for users to understand at first reading.

There are different ways to measure the readability of content (Flesch-Kincaid, Hemmingway App for example) but reading age is one that is particularly important to gov.ie.

The average reading age of services on government department sites before gov.ie was 21.7.

After going through the new process, the average reading age on gov.ie service pages is now 14.1.

The reason that reading age is important is because almost 1 in 5 people in Ireland have literacy difficulties.

gov.ie aims to improve the way the public interacts with government services.

The first government department site, the Department of the Taoiseach, went live on gov.ie on 17 January 2019.

By the end of 2019, 5 departments had migrated to gov.ie.

The total traffic for 2019 on gov.ie was 6.7 million pageviews.

By the end of 2020, 12 departments were live on gov.ie.

The traffic for gov.ie in 2020 was 122 million pageviews.

These traffic figures highlight how big of an audience there is for government content.

But what that traffic tells us when combined with data from site analytics, is that what people really want is concise, text-based content that helps them achieve a goal.

In analysing the data, there are 3 main goals that people are trying to achieve when coming to a government site:

• finding out information about a government service. (for example: how do I get a social welfare payment? How do I apply for an artist’s grant? What is the deadline for a SUSI grant?)
• applying for a service (for example: forms for a social welfare payment or business grant)
• for updates on what the government is doing (in the past 2 years, primarily COVID-19 and Brexit)

To this end, the gov.ie team carried out user testing on a range of users. 94% of users preferred the gov.ie sites to the old departmental sites.

As shown by the traffic figures, gov.ie has seen a massive increase in traffic over the last 12 months (2021 figures for the first 7 months of the year are broadly similar to 2020 - with projected traffic at 125 million pageviews).

In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic has seen a large increase in people coming to the gov.ie site. This has resulted in a different approach for how to create and present information to the public.

When major news is announced by the government, it has not been unusual for gov.ie to see traffic volumes in excess of 2 million pageviews within 24 hours.

The costs of gov.ie to date are €2,446,252. This includes all hosting, development and content migration. However, the cost-savings of the project have totalled €2.92 million to date with further savings yet to be realised.

These savings come from centralising the maintenance costs that departments had for their individual sites as well as the money saved in rebuilding department legacy sites.

There are also many other benefits associated with having a central point of access for government departments - particularly when it comes to public awareness of the site.

The cost per click across gov.ie in 2020 was €0.008. This is far lower than the average cost per click for the individual department sites (which was €0.021 in 2018).

There are also ongoing cost-savings in terms of development, maintenance and achieving accessibility standards.