Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden said there had been a need to "deal decisively" with the proliferation of government websites.
About £9m a year was expected to be saved over three years by cutting back on "vanity" sites that do not serve a useful purpose.
Some information from the closed sites will be transferred to Directgov, for individuals, and Business Link, or will be put on the remaining sites.
It is intended that there will end up being these two main "supersites", one site for each department and then a very few others such as NHS Direct.
Among those which are being axed are out-of-date sites like Urban Summit 2002 as well as others such as UK Man and Biosphere Programme - a UNESCO project - and the Drinking Water Inspectorate, both of which will now come under the Defra website.
According to Ofcom, when Labour came to power in 1997, only 5% of households had internet access, but that has now risen to 57%.
And the Cabinet Office believes that people prefer to find what they need quickly and easily rather than choosing to surf across huge numbers of sites.
Do you think this is a good idea? Do you have a favourite government website? The following comments reflect a balance of the views received.
About time, it can be a nightmare finding correct information from the government when you are constantly redirected to different sections on different sites simply trying get all of the information. Everything in one place is great.
Ian Shaw, Brighton, UK
At first I was astonished at how many websites the government actually run. Then I stopped and thought about the way the country has been run over the past decade and I wasn't surprised at all!!
Andy Mills, Nottingham
Having fewer sites will mean having fewer website architectures to maintain. That should make it a lot easier to make government websites accessible to people using assistive devices (eg blind people who use the internet). You've previously reported that government is failing disabled web users by having inaccessible website designs. I hope that this will change in 2007.
Sean McManus, Prompt Communications, London, UK
Closing down sites with outdated information is part of the natural evolution of the internet. However I trust the National Archive is taking static copies of these closed sites before they go offline. These sites should be kept for historical reference.
Nathan Friend, Dover GB
The worst website has to be netregs.gov.uk, what does NetRegs mean?
Ricky Martin, Bristol
It's a bit academic how may web sites there are. It's not called the web for nothing; information can be linked from site to site and appear to be quite elsewhere from where it appears. If the government is going to reduce the number of silos with their own web teams then good but if less information is made available to the public then this will not be a good move at all.
Colin Rosenstiel, Cambridge
This is an excellent plan. I have been advocating website rationalisation in the Regional Development Agency for over 2 years, as the multiple cost and the inefficiency of so many below standard and duplicated websites is just so futile. Directgov is a good example of the way ahead, having a website were you can have a single access point to a wide range of focussed information. I have a website strategy review planned which will reconsider the need for a new Regional wide access point for those who require a more localised view. I would be interested to here of other such ideas for rationalisation and closing down of out of date and unproductive websites.
Ken Clark, Birmingham UK
Does this mean the demise of vanity sites like www.number-10.gov.uk perhaps?
Nick MacRae, London
Nowhere on the internet could I find out how much the UK governments spends on the NHS, either in total pounds or as a proportion of the income tax take. They should provide essential info like this. How else can we take political decisions?
David Jefferies, Guildford UK
Excellent news! Then perhaps we can start getting rid of all those non-jobs. 'Anti-Smoking Officer for the Eastern Ports Region' somehow springs to mind. If only the imprudent Gordon Brown could listen up.
John Gaskell, Cambridge, UK
Definitely a good idea Difficult to say favourite govt site One I use most and probably the worst is HMRC
Marcus Phokou, Abingdon
As a web-designer and frequent user of government sites it makes perfect sense. Supersites, if managed correctly can be immensely powerful and easy to use. The BBC site is possibly the worlds most effective, useful and massive website.
Leyton Jay, Crawley, UK
