As loyal readers know, things are changing at HMRC as it strives to become a lean mean efficient tax collecting machine.
One such change is the merger of HMRC's website (online presence) with the new gov.uk site by March 2013.
One such change is the merger of HMRC's website (online presence) with the new gov.uk site by March 2013.
Unfortunately, this merger may not be such a positive step forward.
For why?
It seems that since its launch, in the last fortnight, gov.uk has been inundated with criticism. Economia reports that the gov.uk site has been:
"attacked as a “travesty”, a “fiasco” and a “disaster” by critics on the UK Business Forums site.HMRC are undeterred, and have told Economia:
Critics say the errors are so elementary, people who rely on the information on the site could end up being charged penalties by HMRC, or fined for failure to buy compulsory insurance."
“HMRC’s website as well as other government departments and a handful of agencies / non-departmental public bodies will migrate to the new GOV.UK platform, in line with Cabinet Office requirements.Let's see how this goes then!
The plan for these websites is for corporate content and most of the detailed guidance to be on gov.uk by March 2013, with the remainder moved by December 2013.
HMRC has worked closely with the Government Digital Service (GDS) towards the launch of gov.uk, including delivering the smooth transition of businesslink.gov.uk, for which HMRC have been responsible since 2007-08. We continue to work with GDS to transfer additional material across in later phases.”
Tax does have to be taxing.
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In which case, it looks as if the external HMRC site will merely become as useless as the Dept's intranet.
ReplyDeleteThis is full of content which is years out of date, badly organised and with a search engine that you might have found on a startup rival to AskJeeves in about 2002. It's all but impossible for staff to find anything necessary within five minutes, but full of puff pieces from Excom and Daily Star-style press releases regarding recent convictions.
They've been talking about streamlining it and getting shot of the obsolete stuff for at least six years for me to know of, but every time we ask, we get the "We haven't got the resources!" excuse.