United Kingdom has launched the new Government Digital Strategy (GDS), an action plan for redesigning government digital services around user needs, and to improve digital skills within government. It uses a list of principles and concrete actions to build a framework for re-engineering government. Government Digital Service, a team within the Cabinet Office, the UK Government is hoping to save money for taxpayers and make services clearer by moving them online. The Digital Strategy sets out how the Government can make up to £1.2 billion worth of savings by 2015 simply by making everyday transactions digital and £1.7 billion (US$2.7 billion) a year after 2015. A Digital Efficiency Report, released by GDS this month, found that the average cost of a digital transaction can be almost 20 times lower than the cost of telephone and 50 times lower than face to face. At the release of the strategy, Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, stated: “Britain is in a global race and that’s why we need to have modern, efficient, digital-by-default public services that are fit for the 21st Century”, Maude explained that despite the fact that 82 per cent of the UK population is online, most government services aren’t. “Government provides more than 650 transactional services, used about 1 billion times every year,” he said. “But presently, there is only a handful where a large majority of people who could use the online option do so.” Research shows that only 46 per cent of the UK population has used a government transaction online. The current government has already launched plenty of projects that could fit into the new plan. For example, the overall number of government websites has been reduced by 74 in the last year alone. And fewer websites means less money spent. As an example, Maude mentioned a resource dedicated to British mosquitoes. Open Standards, adopted last week, are yet another stepping stone in the Digital Strategy. This set of policies was designed to make public sector IT cheaper, more transparent and better connected through the use of Open Source solutions.