The gov.uk team want to make a site for everyone in the country to use. Making it for some smaller “in” group would not help achieve that goal.
I don’t know what other word to use for launching a website but maybe there’s a better one.
I don’t know what other word to use for launching a website but maybe there’s a better one.
For the general public, you could use: Make website, build website, develop website, update website, create a new page. To an expert those feel wrong because they all mean slightly different things, the jargon is being used incorrectly.
That's exactly how government people feel when you mis-use: "ring fenced budget", "allocate money to", "assign money to", "raise money for". Those all mean slightly different things and using them wrong feels wrong and marks you out as someone who doesn't know what they're talking about.
The "portal" term is deeply overused, because it means so many different things to so many different people. Sometimes it means a special site for a particular topic; sometimes it means a landing page.
That's the problem with jargon. A lot of people hear a term, think they understand it, and then use it. They often have the wrong end of the stick, but they will not let go of their understanding of the word.
My thinking is that if by "launched" we mean "deployed to production" then it's useless for the end user. If it's not deployed to production, then the user has nothing to visit so for all intents and purposes of the end user you haven't built anything (or launched).