What happened to blogging on GOV.UK?
At its peak in 2012 and 2013, the Government Digital Service (GDS) blog published over 200 posts a year. Teams wrote about what they were building, what wasn’t working, what they were learning. Government being openly accountable. People outside government paid attention.
I selected 17 digital and DDaT-focused blogs — the ones that sat at the heart of the government’s transformation agenda — and charted their output over time.
Posts published per year — 17 government blogs
Total posts across all blogs, by year
* 2026 is a partial year (data to 20 February 2026)
View data table
| Blog | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026* | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GDS | 3 | 67 | 208 | 215 | 136 | 99 | 79 | 63 | 72 | 54 | 48 | 34 | 22 | 20 | 17 | 17 | 5 | 1159 |
| Inside GOV.UK | — | — | 5 | 157 | 162 | 82 | 99 | 61 | 26 | 16 | 11 | 22 | 22 | 9 | 12 | 5 | 2 | 691 |
| DWP Digital | — | — | — | 6 | 27 | 60 | 67 | 99 | 99 | 100 | 64 | 50 | 24 | 18 | 7 | 3 | 1 | 625 |
| Defra Digital | — | — | — | — | — | 41 | 66 | 97 | 32 | 20 | 27 | 28 | 75 | 59 | 36 | 20 | 2 | 503 |
| Justice Digital | — | — | 1 | 43 | 47 | 27 | 21 | 13 | 16 | 23 | 28 | 38 | 38 | 30 | 17 | 21 | 0 | 363 |
| Technology in Government | — | — | — | 8 | 29 | 23 | 46 | 19 | 37 | 32 | 29 | 13 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 12 | 3 | 264 |
| MHCLG Digital | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 22 | 16 | 19 | 13 | 23 | 22 | 43 | 55 | 9 | 222 |
| Design in Government | — | — | — | 8 | 30 | 20 | 29 | 22 | 14 | 15 | 12 | 15 | 21 | 11 | 8 | 5 | 0 | 210 |
| Home Office Digital | — | — | — | — | — | 15 | 34 | 28 | 20 | 14 | 15 | 15 | 14 | 10 | 7 | 4 | 1 | 177 |
| DVLA Digital | — | — | — | 20 | 36 | 33 | 13 | 7 | 11 | 9 | 9 | 7 | 11 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 161 |
| DfE Digital | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 7 | 15 | 20 | 20 | 17 | 20 | 11 | 9 | 10 | 0 | 129 |
| Defence Digital | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 2 | 18 | 14 | 22 | 9 | 8 | 5 | 1 | 79 |
| Cabinet Office Digital | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 2 | 6 | 4 | — | — | 12 |
| CDDO | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 9 | 39 | 23 | 23 | 1 | 95 |
| Data in Government | — | — | — | 8 | 38 | 43 | 28 | 13 | 11 | 16 | 17 | 22 | 8 | 5 | 4 | 8 | 2 | 223 |
| User Research in Government | — | — | — | — | 42 | 23 | 25 | 15 | 14 | 20 | 5 | 3 | — | 4 | 2 | 1 | — | 154 |
| Services in Government | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 6 | 15 | 15 | 14 | 4 | 5 | 3 | — | 62 |
* 2026 is a partial year (data to 20 February 2026)
The same shape plays out across all 17. Each blog has its own peak. DWP Digital, Defra, and Home Office all built momentum through the mid-2010s, then gradually went quiet. By 2024, GDS was down to 17 posts. Most others were in single figures. Hover over either chart to see the numbers for a specific year.
There are a few exceptions worth noting. MHCLG Digital has actually increased output, publishing 43 posts in 2024 and 55 in 2025 — the orange line heading the wrong way for the narrative. Justice Digital held up unusually well too, staying above 20 posts a year for most of the 2020s. The User Research in Government blog is a different kind of story: 42 posts in 2014, then a steady slide to single figures by the mid-2020s. But these are genuinely exceptional in their own ways. The broad direction is a 90%+ fall from peak across most of the chart.
None of this is hard to explain. GDS shrank in scope and ambition after 2016. Blogging culture faded across the industry. Institutional caution crept in. But the numbers still represent something real — a way of working in the open that used to exist, and mostly doesn’t any more.
Data from 17 GOV.UK WordPress blogs, retrieved 20 February 2026 via WordPress REST API. Total posts across all blogs: 3,473.
Sources and methodology
Blogs were selected from the GOV.UK blog index at blog.gov.uk, filtering for digital and DDaT-focused blogs with a meaningful posting history. Each runs on WordPress, which exposes a REST API at /wp-json/wp/v2/posts. The year-by-year post count for each blog was obtained by querying that endpoint with after and before date parameters for each calendar year and reading the X-WP-Total response header. Data retrieved 20 February 2026. 2026 figures are partial.
A note on Cabinet Office Digital: the blog index reports 162 total posts, but the year-by-year API queries returned only 12 posts across 2022–2024. The discrepancy likely reflects archived content that predates reliable date-indexing in the WordPress API. Only the year-by-year figures are shown in the chart.
A note on Defence Digital: the blog index reports 223 total posts, but year-by-year queries returned 79. The blog appears to have older content not surfaced by the after/before parameters, possibly due to post dates being set inconsistently on import.
- Blog index: www.blog.gov.uk
- GDS: gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?per_page=1
- Inside GOV.UK: insidegovuk.blog.gov.uk/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?per_page=1
- DWP Digital: dwpdigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?per_page=1
- Defra Digital: defradigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?per_page=1
- Justice Digital (MOJ): mojdigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?per_page=1
- Technology in Government: technology.blog.gov.uk/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?per_page=1
- MHCLG Digital: mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?per_page=1
- Design in Government: designnotes.blog.gov.uk/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?per_page=1
- Home Office Digital: hodigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?per_page=1
- DVLA Digital Services: dvladigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?per_page=1
- DfE Digital: dfedigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?per_page=1
- Defence Digital: defencedigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?per_page=1
- Cabinet Office Digital: codigital.blog.gov.uk/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?per_page=1
- CDDO: cddo.blog.gov.uk/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?per_page=1
- Data in Government: dataingovernment.blog.gov.uk/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?per_page=1
- User Research in Government: userresearch.blog.gov.uk/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?per_page=1
- Services in Government: services.blog.gov.uk/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?per_page=1