GOV.UK Digital Blog
digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk · Company blog · on HN since 2011
Blog of the UK Government Digital Service, describing how the GOV.UK site was built with open source software and agile methods.
What HN saysHN commenters hold it up as a model of effective, agile government digital work, contrasting it with healthcare.gov and citing its open source code.
44HN people shared it
25linked it in comments
24stories submitted
259story points
13 years agolast shared
2011people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Spot the job application form on this web page11 people · 4 points · first shared 2011 · 3 comments on HN
- 2Colophon for GOV.UK at launch - the software used to build the gov.uk site6 people · 6 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 3How many people are missing out on JavaScript enhancement?3 people · 11 points · first shared 2013 · 3 comments on HN
- 4No link left behind3 people · 1 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 5GOV.UK: new government site built with open source software, £70 million cheaper2 people · 100 points · first shared 2012 · 44 comments on HN
- 6Estonia's Digital Government - an architectural view2 people · 6 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 7Colophon for the GOV.UK beta2 people · 4 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 8About2 people · first shared 2013
- 9FAQs: why we don’t have them1 people · 59 points · first shared 2013 · 41 comments on HN
- 10Mobile apps will only be considered once core web service works well on mobile1 people · 45 points · first shared 2013 · 28 comments on HN
- 11Coding in the open1 people · 5 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 12Organ donation and A/B testing1 people · 3 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 13Standing on the shoulders of giants1 people · 2 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 14Government Digital Service (GOV.UK) is hiring -- in a big way1 people · 2 points · first shared 2012 · 1 comments on HN
- 15Data Science in GDS1 people · 2 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
ollymorgs · 2013-11-09
The government contractors should of just built healthcare.gov as a data service and asked people like these guys to build an intuitive front-end for it. Then if people don't like the interface, they can do something about it :) This may also help to dissipate the traffic load and present the same data in more relevant ways to different types people. The idea of building apps as single, monolithic system is out-dated.
Even though I'm a Brit, some governments are making moves to modernise and open up their data for others to play with, over here we've got a great government-funded team working on exactly that (called the GDS). (http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/)
Frankly I think this is a massively expensive and missed opportunity for the US Government's digital service team.
fpp · 2013-10-22
Have a look at what's happening in the UK:
https://www.gov.uk/transformation
(fully responsive design pages together with new service backends delivered with Agile / Scrum)
and the teams doing it: http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/
(they are hiring more than a dozen people in the moment)
nbevans · 2013-10-21
They could learn a lot from how UK.gov (http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/) operates these days. It's a true agile shop, that's been ridiculously productive and forward-thinking for at least the last 5 years.
jonespen · 2013-10-10
No idea what it costs, but GDS[1] is doing a pretty good job on http://gov.uk. My guess is that only the savings on closing hundreds of sites [2] justifies it. Maybe it also prevents some of the uk citizens from not going nuts while trying to do gov business online ;)
[1] http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/hundreds-of-government-websites-clo…
chestnut-tree · 2013-09-01
"how cool it would be if somebody started creating an open source framework for EU e-government"
I agree this would be brilliant. I know in the UK the gov.uk site is all open source: https://github.com/alphagov
They recently published a blog post about how the New Zealand Government Online team used some of the gov.uk code.
http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2013/07/26/working-with-govt-nz/
I'd love to see a pan-European initiative to pool resources and knowledge.
jmedwards · 2013-07-09
The UK Government Digital Service still kicks its ass at (a) startup methods) and (b) execution :-)
http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/
https://www.gov.uk/
https://www.gov.uk/designprinciples
fallingbadgers · 2013-01-03
People might also be interested in these postings from our blog http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/?s=Design+
andyjohnson0 · 2012-10-17
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-start/ 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.
dmytton · 2012-10-16
This is an example of how to run a government IT project. Extremely well run team, excellent programmers and designers and using a lot of interesting technology. That's cool for the tech community but for the majority of the users the biggest benefit is a single location for everything. Direct.gov.uk was still a collection of links to lots of external sites but the goal with gov.uk is to have everything on one site. I think this is a great project.
Some background at http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2012/10/16/directgov-a-quiet-histo…
TazeTSchnitzel · 2012-08-30
No, the Government Digital Service (http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/) GitHub account.
They're building a new, single Government website, currently in beta at http://www.gov.uk, to replace the current http://direct.gov.uk and other government websites.
arctangent · 2012-08-24
Here in the UK, the Government Digital Service [1] are doing much the same thing. They're building a single site for all government services and publishing all their code on GitHub.
[1] http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/
jystewart · 2012-04-07
The BBC approach has definitely influenced our work on these principles and there's a lot of great thinking captured in them.
Ben Terrett (GOV.UK/GDS Head of Design) talked about that a bit in one of the blog posts introducing our design principles: http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2012/04/03/design-principles-alpha…
buro9 · 2013-10-22
The US (and rest of world) should take a leaf out of the UK's recent initiative: GDS (Government Digital Services)
http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/
Aside from creating https://www.gov.uk/ which laid down a lot of principles on how to fulfil a government contract (as well as the foundations of what goverment websites should look like and how they should be developed), GDS is also looking at the problem of procurement.
The GDS team essentially are wrestling back from the big contractors the major contracts, breaking the work down into a large number of bitesize contracts and then farming them out to a wide variety of smaller vendors.
So instead of finding a Fujitsu/Siemens JV team, or an IBM Professional Services team, operating a £50m project, the plan is to offer 100 x £250k projects to a large number of smaller suppliers instead. Each project having a clearer purpose that is more able to be fulfilled.
Of course there are obvious overheads in managing so many projects, and of course some of these projects will fail. But... overall the savings will be such that the overheads are cheap, and the failed projects will only have a smaller impact on a major programme initiative than a failure would today.
jamii · 2013-10-23
So, basically you want this - http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/about/
It's worked so far. It remains to be seen how it will age - maybe in ten years time it will be just as buried in bureaucracy as the rest of the offices.
Isofarro · 2013-10-22
Of all the options, the most obvious one seems amiss:
Build it properly the first time with progressive enhancement. Then it will work for all visitors where the JavaScript doesn't kick in for some reason, not just Googlebot and Bingbot.
You know, this: http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2013/10/21/how-many-people-are-mis…
benilov · 2013-09-01
The UK is adopting a similar approach: http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2013/01/17/identity-beyond/
afandian · 2013-07-22
GDS know and have taken a position on this http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2012/03/19/its-not-about-cookies-i…
sevenproxies · 2013-06-20
Related link about some of the technologies used on gov.uk.
http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/govuk-launch-colophon/
jackfranklin · 2013-06-20
They are indeed Government sites! GOV.UK itself is looked after by the Government Digital Service (GDS). A brief history is available on the GDS blog: http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/about/. It's also different in that it's coded in the open. Most of the code behind GOV.UK is on public Github repositories: https://github.com/alphagov.
Flenser · 2012-10-18
"We track usage of the site with Google Analytics, using their API heavily to build dashboards"
http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/govuk-launch-colophon/
cangencer · 2012-10-17
For the curious, here is the tech stack: http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/govuk-launch-colophon/
intranation · 2012-10-17
It didn't test well:
http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2012/10/03/why-weve-changed-the-ho…
bfirsh · 2012-10-16
Here's a list of technology they've used to build gov.uk: http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/govuk-launch-colophon/
mmahemoff · 2012-10-16
Yes. One of the shining lights about this project is their attention to preserving links.
http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2012/10/11/no-link-left-behind/
alex_tea · 2012-10-16
Here's a blog post about the redirection policy: http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2012/10/11/no-link-left-behind/
Cool URIs don't change.