This paper sets out how we used a technique called “webscraping” to harvest and analyse textual content from the government’s GOV.UK website.
Jump to downloadsIn May 2016, our report The quality of service for personal taxpayers (HC 17, Session 2016-17) examined the value for money of HM Revenue & Customs’ customer service – including the impact of changes in services on taxpayers. As part of this, we used web-scraping techniques to assess the volume and readability of guidance available on the GOV.UK website, both in relation to personal taxpayers and more generally.