Is gov.uk actually better than places like Estonia or Sweden? Or is it just that info about it is in English, so HN talks about it more? (Accessible information is important, so I don't want to down play the importance of it.)
Definitely better than in Sweden, where there is no central site similar to gov.uk to begin with. Many individual government agencies have pretty good sites though, and most are actually available at least partly in English. https://www.skatteverket.se/ (tax agency) and https://polisen.se/ (police) are two examples.