Protest site compaing Direct.gov.uk and Google Search results

Directionlessgov.com is the result of a small effort by members of the Democracy.org.uk Collective. We got so fed up with the general uselessness of the multi-million pound shambles otherwise known as the Direct.gov.uk portal, that we decided to build something better in under an hour. Sadly, we ran catastrophically behind schedule, but we still finished before lunch. For free. Think of it as a gift. When it comes to searching for relevant UK Government resources, we think it beats Direct.gov.uk hands down. Don't believe us? Just compare the two. In March 2006, Direct.gov.uk launched their new rather clunky local search, so we an easy way to search just your local councils as well. We've now spent a bit more time on it than we spent on the original site. Who are you lot?

Democracy.org.uk is a loose collective of like-minded individuals who believe that there is little wrong with UK society that a healthy mixture of transparency and public engagement won't fix.And if we know one thing, it's that the web does transparency and engagement like no other medium. And it needn't cost much. Between us, we've developed and run a range of not-for-profit websites of a vaguely similar ilk, including TheyWorkForYou.com, PublicWhip.org.uk and FaxYourMP.com. We conceived and developed the original UpMyStreet.com back in 1998. We do all this in our spare time, because we think it's worth doing. And if it's worth doing, we might as well try to do it well. Email us at [email protected] Why do you do this stuff? For all its faults and foibles, our democracy is a profound gift from previous generations. Yet most people don't know the name of their MP, nor their constituency, let alone what their councillors do or say in their name. We aim to help bridge this growing democratic disconnect, in the belief that there is little wrong with UK democracy that a healthy mixture of transparency and public engagement won't fix. So what's your angle - you must be hoping to make money on this? Nope. Running a website, contrary to what most highly-paid 'Net consultants will tell you, can come in very, very cheap. If you can get enough people to volunteer their time and expertise, you can create even quite complex Internet projects for almost no money. A large proportion of how the Internet works is based on volunteer projects like ours.