DH website to move to GOV.UK in March 2013
The Department of Health website will move to the new single website for government in March 2013.
GOV.UK is the new single website for UK Government. In October 2012 it brought together government information and guidance from Directgov and Business Link into one place.
GOV.UK will also replace all UK central government department websites. Some departments can already be found in the ‘Inside Government’ section of GOV.UK. Information from the Department of Health will be found there from Tuesday 26 March.
The Inside Government section of GOV.UK has been designed to make government information easier to find and more transparent for the user. You can see what the new website looks like by visiting www.gov.uk/government.
Health content for citizens will remain on NHS Choices.
What this means for dh.gov.uk and our website visitors
If you have a page on our current website bookmarked, don’t worry. Links will continue to work. Our current web pages will either re-direct to the new pages on GOV.UK that contain the same information, or link to an archived version of the page on The National Archives Website.
And there are a number of features that we think will mean the website will be much easier to use, allowing you to find the latest information much faster.
Advanced search
There are new ways to search on GOV.UK including an advanced publications search that allows you to filter by keyword, publication type, topic, department and date. There is a similarly advanced announcements search that covers speeches, news and statements.
Topics
If you are interested in the workings of government you will be able to see information from multiple government departments grouped by topic. For example, you can already see how policies from both DFT and DCLG are contributing to economic growth.
And when DH, Public Health England, DCLG and the Home Office are all live on GOV.UK you will, for the first time, be able to get a comprehensive picture in one place of what the government is doing about alcohol, from reducing harmful drinking, to licensing, crime and disorder.
Policies
We will be re-publishing our policies in a way that more clearly presents the outcome the government is trying to achieve, and the actions it is taking. You can see how DfT policies are presented on GOV.UK pages:
For each policy, you will be able to see all the related announcements, consultations and publications in one list, called ‘latest’. The latest tab makes it easy for you to track what is happening on the policies that interest you, for example all government activity that relates to developing a high speed rail network.
You will also be able to sign up to RSS or email alerts on individual policies, across topics, or for a particular organisation.
More about Inside Government and GOV.UK
So far 8 departments and 14 public bodies are live on GOV.UK. Several hundred arm’s length bodies will move their information to GOV.UK over the next year.
You can find out more about GOV.UK from the Government Digital Service here:
If you are interested in the process of migrating to GOV.UK, the DH digital team have been blogging about it on the digital health site.