[9] A national TV and radio advertising campaign was launched in January 2010 featuring a number of celebrities including Suggs, Honor Blackman and Kelly Brook.

[11] On 1 April 2011 Directgov became part of the Government Digital Service, overseen by the Public Expenditure Executive (Efficiency & Reform) which was co-chaired by Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander.

The site linked to a number of online transactions and forms such as applying for a passport, buying a television licence, car licensing, registering to vote, and completing a Self Assessment tax return.

From 2006, users in England were able to find out about a wide range of services provided by local councils in their area, from reporting illegally dumped rubbish to renewing a library book.

In a strategic partnership with HM Treasury and the BBC, Directgov hosted the Budget Day documents[15] in March 2010 and June 2010.

A separate website branded as DirectgovKids was designed to help children aged 5 to 11 find out about the world around them, by exploring the places and people in their local community.

The Flash animated site was based around a cartoon globe, with interactive buildings including a police station, a town hall and a school.

Directgov was also available through analogue teletext pages as well as digital interactive television on Freeview channel 106 until 1 July 2010, Sky until 22 December 2010[18] and Virgin Media until 31 March 2011.

Directgov collected the data from the comments feature for use in customer insight and product improvement, and published an overview of monthly ratings online.

In 2005, several internet activists affiliated with mySociety wrote Directionlessgov.com to demonstrate that they could build something better in under an hour, by using a simple web page that linked to the Google search engine.

[23]In an interview with The Guardian newspaper in August 2007, the Chief Executive of Directgov, Jayne Nickalls, responded: Directionless does work a lot of the time.