
Why Britain banned mobile apps for government agencies - robin_reala
https://govinsider.asia/smart-gov/why-britain-banned-mobile-apps/
======
pjc50
GDS have done a fantastic job of what you might call "government UX", by
getting people with the right technical ethos in charge. HN would approve of
their minimalist, functional, responsive approach.

Letting govt agencies who don't know what they're doing go out and tender for
private sector building of internet services would be a disaster; they'd be
oversold six ways from Sunday. Treble the cost to build the same thing three
times for the three mobile platforms? Sure. Given that 99% of the stuff is
simple secure form-filling, it doesn't need to be more than a web page.

I can file my taxes or renew my driving license online. The system works.

~~~
chrismealy
Can you link to some favorite examples?

~~~
Faaak
Overall, gov.uk is really well done; minimalistic but works.

Some things bug me though, as some services are only available during "open
hours" ([https://www.buysellvehicle.service.gov.uk/sell-
private/vehic...](https://www.buysellvehicle.service.gov.uk/sell-
private/vehicle-lookup)): I didn't know that servers needed to sleep.

~~~
twic
I recently came across a system in a bank that is available from 0800 to 1500
and 1530 to 1700. Apparently it not only needs to sleep, but it takes a tea
break in the afternoon.

~~~
aptwebapps
The person responsible for the system can hardly be held responsible when
they're on a break, can they?

------
kristianc
As a Briton, the idea of having to access government services through mobile
apps seems vaguely offensive.

Apps are expensive to build, allow rampant surveillance that it's very hard to
audit under the hood, and mean that customer information is distributed based
on your ability to access a smartphone.

The U.K. government also has a poor record of delivering large scale IT
projects with complex chains of dependencies (the overhaul of the NHS IT
system was cancelled after spending several billions on a Patient Information
system that no one ever ended up using). Given the chance, departments would
have tried to create the 'Everything App' at enormous expense and with zero
interoperability between depts.

The decision to push the GDS methodology across the whole of government was
hugely unpopular within the civil service at the time but they've been
absolutely vindicated in their approach.

~~~
zepto
I agree with most of this except the 'allow rampant surveillance' and 'very
hard to audit'.

How are apps special in these regards?

~~~
chipperyman573
It is significantly harder to audit the security of an app than a webpage,
because with a webpage all the code is visible to you, the end user.

~~~
dave2000
Anyone vaguely skilled can reverse engineer an android app. Modern versions of
android (ie Android 6, which I appreciate only 0.0001% of android users
actually have) let you control which permissions an app can use.

~~~
nitrogen
If "vaguely skilled" is what it takes to audit an Android app, then
"borderline incompetent" is all you need to audit a web app. Other commenters
are talking about relative ease, not absolute impossibility.

------
k__
I deeply believe this is the right way.

The Web is THE open platform of the Internet and if you don't need special
native functionality , always go for web.

~~~
kome
True! Web must stay open, services that are limited to smartphone owners are
just classist.

------
orf
I love that our government created GDS, they get a lot of flack but GDS has
been an unmitigated success.

They've got really great public performance dashboards[1] as well, you can see
how many people are using 'gov.uk' right now[2].

Edit: It's a bit disconcerting 'Give up (renounce) British citizenship or
nationality' is the top trending content!

1\. [https://www.gov.uk/performance](https://www.gov.uk/performance)

2\. [https://www.gov.uk/performance/site-
activity](https://www.gov.uk/performance/site-activity)

~~~
Spooky23
We'll see in a few years if it's an unmitigated success.

When mid level bureaucrats are getting significant facetime in the media, you
should be very wary. Civil servants are supposed to toil in obscurity -- they
exist to glorify King and country. When you see exceptions to that, there's
often a real shitshow behind the scenes.

~~~
tangled_zans
What? Where do all of these conjectures come from? Is there any evidence?

------
iofj
> Key to the GDS’ approach is designing for user needs, not organizational
> requirements, Terrett says. “That is how good digital services designed and
> built these days. That is how everyone does it, whether that’s google or
> facebook or British Airways or whoever.”

> The problem is that public sector agencies tend not to design with citizens
> in mind. “Things are just designed to suit the very silos that the project
> sits in, and the user gets lost in there,” Terrett adds.

Amen. Unfortunately, it is very much not how everyone does it.

~~~
csours
The Iron Law of Bureaucracy: In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the
benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to
the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less
influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Iron_Law_of_Bu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Iron_Law_of_Bureaucracy)

------
Twirrim
To be clear, it's why the British Government banned mobile apps for government
agencies. Good article though.

This actually goes back to Steve Job's original vision for the iPhone. He
didn't intend there to ever be 3rd party apps for the phone, because he saw
the internet as being the perfect platform for them.

~~~
RodericDay
> This actually goes back to Steve Job's original vision for the iPhone. He
> didn't intend there to ever be 3rd party apps for the phone, because he saw
> the internet as being the perfect platform for them.

Do you have a link that lays this out in more detail?

~~~
alexbock
The most succinct quote from Jobs is:

    
    
        There’s no SDK that you need! You’ve got
        everything you need if you know how to
        write apps using the most modern web
        standards to write amazing apps for the
        iPhone today.
    

The full quote and the video in which he said it can be found here:
[http://9to5mac.com/2011/10/21/jobs-original-vision-for-
the-i...](http://9to5mac.com/2011/10/21/jobs-original-vision-for-the-iphone-
no-third-party-native-apps/)

~~~
Marazan
And then you can hear the sucking void of silence of a response from the crowd
and a few months later an sdk was out.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
It was a crowd of Apple Mac OS X developers though, with a great deal of
expertise in Obj-C, not the web, so it shouldn't be taken as an objective
verdict on whether it was a good strategy or not.

~~~
dzhiurgis
I think it was inevitable. And probably planned for a second release too. Not
that web APIs were lacking, but purely from performance perspective. By then,
web was designed for 2GHz/2Gb desktop, not a 200MHz cpu from a dvd player.

------
mmosta
Gov of Canada has a similar initiative with an open source project titled 'Web
Experience Toolkit' [0], focusing on usability and cross platform support.

[0] [https://wet-boew.github.io/v4.0-ci/index-en.html](https://wet-
boew.github.io/v4.0-ci/index-en.html)

------
dmix
> Most Ministers might want there to be sharing options on websites so that
> citizens can easily promote government on Facebook and Twitter. But the GDS
> tested this, and found that only 0.1% of citizens

No shit. Every design job I've had ever.

~~~
davewasthere
Every client seems to request this... But sharing buttons are crap and always
will be... So frustrating!

~~~
tangled_zans
Why do you think that sharing buttons are crap?

------
valhalla
Does anyone live in a city (within the US) that takes a similar approach to
GDS? I live in SF and developers usually create their own apps for services
(Like MUNI/BART) but the city seems to have a mix of good and bad UX when it
comes to municipal services (from my experience, at least)

~~~
kristianc
Not sure about at a municipal level, but USDS was based on GDS
([https://www.usds.gov/](https://www.usds.gov/)).

~~~
zeristor
Strange how it doesn't credit GDS

~~~
kristianc
It doesn't, but more detail here>
[https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/01/16/us-uk-digital-
gov...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/01/16/us-uk-digital-government-
partnership)

~~~
leobakerhytch
Link to [https://data.gov.uk](https://data.gov.uk) on that page in fact points
to
’file:///C:/Users/mcallister_mj2/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/5P3C0P9L/data.gov.uk’

Oh dear.

------
mark_l_watson
+1 for that decision: apps can also cause security issues. I only have a few
apps installed on my cellphone. Web apps are fine for Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Having to install a lot of apps to register to vote, etc. would be maximally
irritating.

------
gr25
This is an encouraging trend. It's inevitable that, within or lifetimes,
legislation and regulations will eventually be tailored to existing software,
rather than expensive snowflake systems being produced to automate arbitrary
processes created by the whims of legislators and civil servants in every
jurisdiction in the world.

------
known
Sounds irrational :)

------
witty_username
Title needs to be improved, replace Britain with Britain GDS, maybe add "and
use websites instead" (but that might spoil the article).

~~~
jobu
Agreed. Terrible link-bait title, and the article is mediocre. Please change
it to something like : "UK GDS bans apps in favor of responsive websites"

~~~
xufi
I third that. The article doesnt provide much in the way of explaining it
clearly enough.

------
retox
What a dumb title.

------
tn13
Let us take the whole thing with a pinch of salt as it is highly one sided
story.

Governments having their services on web is absolutely must but passing a
decree against apps does seem a bit odd to me. Isn't it the case that more
citizens own phones and have relatively poor connection speeds than other
combinations ? Isn't it the case that citizens would be better served by apps
that do one job right and do so more efficiently than web ?

I can understand the cost part but it appears to me that the government agency
has shut down a completely new avenue of innovation for government agencies
with this decree.

------
djdelusional
It's obvious that they never heard of Hybrid Apps, or just never found them to
be secure enough for their applications.

~~~
Kadin
I'm not sure why you'd use a hybrid app over a minimalist, mobile-friendly
website, particularly for something like form-filling.

As a user, getting me to install your app is a huge barrier. If I don't need
to do something every day, I'm probably not going to download and install your
app. So wrapping a webpage in an app seems like a really poor decision.

~~~
ptaipale
Agree. I intensely dislike having to install an app for a task that could be
done by a simple Web page. I don't know what the app does; the amount of
flashlight applications that want to access my files, location and call
information is depressing.

------
flarg
Meh; for their usual scope of work they don't actually need apps (infrequent
desktop use) so it's not a notable decision. Open Society do apps where they
are actually needed (e.g. reporting potholes).

Their decision to use Google as a home page and having all websites as plain
as possible is horrific; with a lot of departments and agencies having
lacklustre homepages that anyway aren't even aimed at the general public (e.g.
arms-length-bodies).

They also made a half-assed job of promoting Agile and UCD through the
government, where Agile is now misunderstood and despised. Probably because
they never really tried to understand civil service politics.

Good ideas; badly executed.

