I’m not sure how helpful the Register article is – I think of Andrew Orlowski as the James Delingpole of tech journalism – sometimes amusing, very often wrong. But there is a huge need for counterbalance in the reporting of GOV.UK and the GDS.

There have been two fundamental problems with .GOV.UK: the low quality of content written for the general public, and the transfer of specialised departmental content.

The content written for the general public – at least in areas where I might claim to have some expertise – has ranged from the merely disappointing to the absolutely shameful (I counted five errors of fact in one sentence – some of which could have left readers seriously mislead). To be fair, there is doubtless a bias here – because erroneous content is more likely to come to my attention. And because I’m so sensitized to finding errors on .GOV.UK that I treat it with far more suspicion than other sources.

I suspect that content designers on .GOV.UK come from a copywriting background: they appear to be greatly exercised by SEO and calls to action, but less bothered about making things true. In the early days of .GOV.UK, I reported many, many errors on the site . With a living to keep from making, I’ve more or less given up on that.

The second problem is the transfer of specialised content from individual departments. This was done in the most ham-fisted, couldn’t be arsed way imaginable. Departmental sites which had a logical structure (some did, honestly!) were macerated and the contents dumped into the primoridal .GOV.UK as long strings of .PDFs. Geocities type frontpages were draped over the resulting mess (DCLG: this is what a house looks like!) Some content didn’t make it over at all. It’s hard to emphasize how frustrating this was.

All this butchery took place under the cover of a relentless barrage of self-promotion. To the GDS, this campaign doubtless felt like a celebration of success and a laudable exercise in openness. To outsiders it looked arrogant and smug.

I think there needs to be a real re-balancing of authority over content between GDS and the departments – but not a return to how things were. Clearly it will be cheaper and easier to improve a common platform. But there needs to be recognition that there are problems – and reflections upon cause.