Why is it important to use a local system? What is wrong with using the best system for the job wherever in the world it comes from?

Because it's important that recorded information about my interactions with my government doesn't cross borders and escape from the data protection laws in the UK and the EU.

If it was a traditional software system that actually ran on the servers owned by the government then that would be fine.

With GA, at the very least Google get to know when I visit the site, and likely which pages I visit, simply through the requests my browser makes.

I'm not familiar enough with GA to be able to judge how much else is transmitted to them.

Is there not a separate deal for Governments and Educational Institutes with Google to negate this?

I honestly have no idea, and the page on cookies does seem to say that they don't allow google to use the data or do much with it, but that just raises further questions as to how they could ever enforce that.

I guess I'm just very suspicious when personal data crosses borders.

EDIT - also wondering what you mean by a separate deal? If the data goes to the US it goes to the US and is then subject to US laws (and no longer subject to EU/UK protections, deal or no.

It's called the EU safe harbour certification. I'm not sure how rigorous it is.

Because US can use the Patriot Act to get cloud data about foreign users. That's why.

I've sent site feedback on this issue now.

If I was a twitterer I might tweet about it too, but I'm not so I won't.

Err... Still there when I look at the page source for the front page at https://www.gov.uk

Edit: Ignore this, its wrong. I was looking in the wrong place. Should have been http://gov.uk.

I've just (17:10 utc) at the source for http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/ and http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2012/10/16/gov-uk-the-st... there is only one occurrence of the string "google" in the page, and that is is link to a font called 'cabin':

<link rel='stylesheet' id='linen-accent-font-style-css' href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Cabin:bold type='text/css' media='all' />

Doesn't look like they are using google analytics to me, at least not now.

"We track usage of the site with Google Analytics, using their API heavily to build dashboards"

http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/govuk-launch-colophon/

@andyjohnson0 - it's in there, around line 29 in the source.

    _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-26179049-1']);

We're also referring to http://gov.uk, which is what the OP link refers to, not the OP link itself.

Thanks! You're right and I'm wrong. I've edited my comment to make this clear.

Yep, it's there, forgot to allow scripts (I use NoScript) before using Firebug to check the scripts! Doh!!