Government 'not very good at internet stuff' shocker

Reported in Computerworld UK is the sorry tale of UK Government websites. This plague of the www costs the taxpayer a measely 208 million a year.
But never fear,
"a joint team from the London School of Economics and Oxford University says use of the main government websites has risen over time, with some sites now being “widely and repeatedly used”.
Well, the Number 10 petition site I can imagine has seem quite a high throughflow, admittedly mostly from people deeply pissed off with the actions of the Government. And again as more and more people get onto the web, then it stands to reason there will be a rise over time. Even this blog has seen a rise over time, mostly from people accidentaly turning up here via google and other search engines by accident. That of course says nothing about the quality of the site.

Having trawled around a fair few HMG sites over the last few years I can entirely sympathise with the next statment though,
"many sites are “text-heavy and off-putting to the user”, with complex structures that often make information hard to find among large quantities of policy material that users find irrelevant"

Indeed from what I can work out these websites are in their own terms a massive sucess. The information may be there, or it may not, it doesn't matter because joe public ain't ever going to find out.