While the program’s user base remains at fewer than one in every 200 UK adults, uptake so far has been driven organically via delivery of services and word of mouth
The GOV.UK App has now been downloaded more than a quarter of a million times, despite an ongoing lack of a major public communications drive to support adoption.
The app, which is designed to provide a single point of access to services and information from across government departments, became widely available on 1 July. Government has thus far been coy about its ambitions for levels of uptake, and the first indication of user numbers is contained in recent correspondence from technology secretary Liz Kendall, who cites “140,000-plus” downloads in a letter to the Public Accounts Committee sent last week.
But PublicTechnology understands that this figure dates from early last month and that, as of the start of this week, there have been about 260,000 sign-ups, according to the latest data. It is understood that government attributes this steady expansion to “organic growth” drivers, which could include word-of-mouth and delivery of services or official info via the app.
The technology is still in public beta mode, which means significant development work and testing is ongoing, with more features and functionality planned for the coming months. Around the time the app was unveiled, government characterised the early weeks of availability as a quiet launch period to gradually spread the word and gather feedback via early-adopters.
It was understood that a bigger and bolder launch aimed at the wider citizenry – and backed by a significant targeted comms campaign – would follow in due course. This activity was expected to begin in September, but has yet to do so.
While it has steadily added around 50,000 users a month since its summer unveiling, the total adoption of the app still only equates to a little less than half a per cent of the UK’s adult population – or one in every 211 of the 55 million potential users nationwide.
In lieu of a major uptake campaign, the first five months of the app’s public existence have been primarily targeted at testing new features and potential updates – including via A/B testing, in which different groups of users are presented with different versions of the program, with results and outcomes then compared.
It is understood that all the findings of this and other early-stage research are currently being considered by the Government Digital Service, with the aim of better understanding what users consider to be the most useful or valuable functions of the technology.
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The launch version of the app enabled users to customise their homepage to include links to their preferred combination of topics related to 11 government service areas: benefits; business; care; driving and transport; employment; health and disability; money and tax; parenting and guardianship; retirement; studying and training; and travel.
Since the launch, the GOV.UK Chat service has been added as “an experimental AI feature”. Other potential new additions to the program’s functionality include the incorporation of the planned GOV.UK Wallet platform, and the potential integration of local-government services.
Kendall’s letter to MPs concerned the upcoming publication of a ‘roadmap’ to set out detailed delivery plans for government digital and data initiatives to be rolled out between now and 2029. The aim of the roadmap is to provide an action plan to complement the broader strategic vision set out in the Blueprint for modern digital government published at the start of this year by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the home department of GDS.
The roadmap was slated to be released to sometime this autumn and, in her update to the committee, Kendall wrote that it will be published “soon as possible, ensuring it is aligned with my priorities as the new secretary of state, the Spending Review and upcoming Budget” – which, as of Wednesday, has now been delivered.
“[The roadmap] translates our ambitions into a delivery plan and provides a clear, public-facing, whole-of-government commitment, as well as a means of holding departments collectively accountable for our progress,” she said. “It is designed to help us overcome the barriers to transformation identified in the State of digital government review, meet ever-rising public expectations for simple, accessible and user-friendly government services, and move towards a more productive and agile state.”
Kendall added: “I will be writing to you again prior to the roadmap’s launch. I look forward to continuing to work closely with you and your committees over the rest of this parliament to deliver on our commitments and monitor progress against them, as we leverage digital and data to transform public services and deliver the government’s agenda.”
