HMRC website begins to move across to the new Government site
HMRC is working with the Government Digital Service (GDS), part of the Cabinet Office, as plans are made to transfer its information resource onto GOV.UK. This is the new government website that will bring all of government’s services and information into one place. It will become the single government domain enabling access to all departments, agencies and arm’s length bodies’ information and digital services for citizens and businesses. So this is where you will go to find out
Between now and March 2014, corporate information from departments, agencies and arm’s length bodies is moving to the Inside Government area of GOV.UK, including ‘About us’ type information, policies, publications, announcements and news. Interactive tools and transactions on departments’ own web servers will remain there, this is simply about bringing together information publishing in one place.
For some departments, such as the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), this means their previous websites have already been fully redirected to GOV.UK.
For others, including HMRC, you will see corporate information on GOV.UK by March 2013, but moving the majority of content from hmrc.gov.uk will be a much longer process, for completion by December 2013.
We are concerned about how links embedded in our own website material will be redirected, but HMRC explains this should not be a problem:
If someone has bookmarked a page on HMRC’s site, or linked to it, this link will redirect to a page on GOV.UK. In most cases this will take a user directly to the information they are expecting to see.
If a user has followed a link that is not being reproduced on GOV.UK they will see a message that
- Explains the changeover
- Introduces them to GOV.UK, and
- Offers them a link to the National Archives, directly to the information that used to be on the old page
HMRC’s site is archived regularly and will be archived as part of transition
We also asked about HMRC’s tools and online services and have been told that ‘GOV.UK is an access route to HMRC transactions, which remain wholly under HMRC control and will not be affected by the website migration.’
Let’s hope this all works.
HMRC has written an article which we have been asked to circulate to explain more about the new website and how it will affect agents.