Broken links will soon be a thing of the past for UK Government websites, as The National Archives launches its Web Continuity project.
The first of its kind anywhere in the world, the project has already enabled millions of people using government websites to find information which would previously have been lost through broken web links.
Officially launching at the House of Lords next month, the initiative links seamlessly with The National Archives’ UK Government Web Archive, which regularly captures and preserves 1500 government websites for posterity.
If someone clicks on a link which is no longer live, redirection software being installed by government departments will automatically take them to where the information they need is held in the web archive. Currently, the service is leading to more than six million redirected hits a month.
Dr Amanda Spencer, Head of Web Continuity at The National Archives, said: “When it was first created, the internet was often regarded as ephemeral. Websites weren’t viewed as records which needed to be preserved.
“However, as the internet has developed to be the predominate source of government information for most people, this has changed. Today, some information only ever exists online and as the experts in preserving the future of history, we have had to adapt.
“Our web archive holds more than 340 million documents from government websites dating back to 1997, and we now archive all central government websites three times a year. The Web Continuity project is a natural progression of this.”
Much More After Clicking
To date six central government departments together with The National Archives have installed the necessary redirection software.
“While broken web links are a problem across the whole of the internet, as pages move, information is taken down and websites change, The National Archives is the first to offer a solution,” said Dr Spencer.
The Web Continuity project is due to be formally launched at the House of Lords on December 2, 2009.
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