
Inside GOV.UK: chaos and nightmare as trendy Cabinet Office wrecked govt web - adzicg
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/18/the_inside_story_of_govuk/
======
swombat
Some stuff is much better and some stuff is much worse, as people have said in
other comments.

But what is certainly true is that that's a far better result than the typical
government IT project. Give me the gov.uk "debacle" (which it ain't) any day
over the DWP or the NHS PfIT...

You can't make things better without making choices. Much like Apple products,
that's bound to piss off some people. But once you have something that's
actually good at something, instead of just being mediocre all around, it's
perhaps possible to over time grow that into something that's good at multiple
things.

All other experiences of government websites show sites that are just
universally meh or bad. Gov.uk has been the first government website where I
thought "wow, that's neat."

~~~
adrianhoward
" _Some stuff is much better and some stuff is much worse, as people have said
in other comments._ "

Agreed. And GDS are also very public about what does work and what doesn't
work via their service assessments and self certifications
[https://gdsdata.blog.gov.uk/all-service-assessments-and-
self...](https://gdsdata.blog.gov.uk/all-service-assessments-and-self-
certification/)

See, for example, the rather damning report on the VATMOSS service
[https://gdsdata.blog.gov.uk/vat-mini-one-stop-shop-
service-a...](https://gdsdata.blog.gov.uk/vat-mini-one-stop-shop-service-
assessment/)

This is _leagues_ ahead of the previous approaches to developing governmental
services. Like you I'd happily take gov.uk over DWP or the NHS PfIT. Even
their failures are handled more productively.

------
jackweirdy
I’ve had very little middle ground in my experience with gov.uk. It’s either
been exceptionally useful in the case of student finance, the electoral roll,
contacting local councils and so on - the sections of the site with highly
focussed reasons for landing there - or extremely bad in other cases.

For example, earlier this week I was looking for guidance on what
responsibilities Unincorporated Associations have to HMRC. The site is pretty
much barren, and feels like a link dump with little explanation for what
anything is. And because Gov.UK has wedged itself in front of the old HMRC
site, half of the URLS plastered around the net redirect to a gov.uk index
page instead of letting me view old content.

One specific example that caught me out was a page for finding your local HMRC
branch. It existed on the old site, but that URL now redirects to a generic
`contact us` page for the entirety of HMRC. (See
[http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/local/individuals/index.htm](http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/local/individuals/index.htm))

~~~
dazc
I recently renewed my passport and the process was reasonably impressive.
However, I also completed my tax return at the same time and found the same
jumbled mess as described above.

~~~
jdswain
I applied for a passport online, which all went well at the time, but
yesterday I got a letter from them saying that I didn't fill out all the
information (on a web form?). Included with the letter was a paper application
form which, as far as I can tell, I need to fill out completely, basically
starting again. And it's kind of difficult as I've sent all the original
documentation with the first application so I don't have all the details at
hand.

~~~
justincormack
The passport application is really odd, it is still essentially a paper based
process, with a fake web frontend that basically just prints out paperwork.

~~~
gmac
Yes. I wonder if there's old legislation somewhere that mandates the form a
passport application will take, and they've gone as far as they can without
changing the legislation itself?

~~~
justincormack
Perhaps. Thats why government digital policy needs to be joined up end to end,
ie can make legislation to fix dev issues.

------
cssmoo
Doesn't surprise me. I posted some questions on their self-congratulatory blog
post on why they were using tax payers money to write their own front end
proxy in golang rather than use nginx/apache.

My post was simply deleted. Obviously don't like public criticism.

The whole thing is an NIH stack of crap from a tech POV. Not only that they've
broken the self assessment stuff terribly. It's now a mishmash of two sites
that barely work together. I had to dig out a load of tax code notifications
recently and it was painful.

Posted as a throwaway account as I've brought this up here before and I was
buried.

Edit: This was their third attempt at a front end proxy solution. Even
riverbed/f5 appliances are better value by the time you hit your third
attempt.

~~~
izolate
NIH syndrome runs deep in GDS. They commissioned their own typeface [1] with
tax payer's funds and then refused to make it available to the public.

[1] [https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2012/07/05/a-few-notes-on-
typography...](https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2012/07/05/a-few-notes-on-typography/)

~~~
adrianhoward
" _NIH syndrome runs deep in GDS. They commissioned their own typeface [1]
with tax payer 's funds and then refused to make it available to the public._"

Erm. Not true. GDS did not commission Transport or New Transport.

Transport is a font from the 50s. New Transport is a refined digital version
of that from Calvert and Kubel. GDS didn't commission it or cause it to be
created in any way. They were just the first web site to use it.

~~~
izolate
I think they edited the article. I'm pretty sure it was previously worded to
imply they funded the created of New Transport (digital variant). It would be
nice to get a clear answer on this.

------
vertex-four
As an individual, I find that gov.uk is _far_ more useful than any of the
sites that preceded it - especially DirectGov. It's sad to hear that they
haven't paid quite so much attention to corporate users of Government
services.

However, much of this article appears to be anecdotes of people in Government
complaining after-the-fact. Why were they not involved during the transition,
when they could best help with the process? I highly doubt the gov.uk team
rewrote entire libraries full of quite technical information on their own -
there was _someone_ on the side of the departments who failed to do their job.

~~~
adwf
I think you've hit the nail on the head there. A lot of GDS's mandate revolved
around modern agile techniques and just _doing_ it.

This doesn't exactly mesh very well with traditional civil service slow
bureaucracy. The civil service tend to like getting every bloody stakeholder
involved and bury you in meetings upto your eyeballs. And then have meetings
about the meetings. And meetings about meetings about the meetings...

That's how we wasted £10bn on the NHS IT system with little to show for it.

~~~
cssmoo
The NHS projects are a little more complicated than gov.uk front end
implementation.

Have you seen any of the care pathway workflows? We're talking 128 page
documents integrating police, social services etc as well, just for a birth.
They're also all or nothing and have reliability requirements. You can't just
agile this stuff; it's space shuttle up front design from day one.

One fuck up in one workflow instance and someone misses that imaging referral
and then that person goes from stage 1 to metastatic cancer. How do you assign
an appropriate cost vs risk trade off to that?

That may make it too complicated to complete to be honest but where do you go
from there? You shelve it with a shit ton of bad PR and pay up the people who
told you it's not happening.

~~~
grey-area
In my opinion the only way they could have made it work was to start small and
iterate. Start with a health record which was: NHS no, name, dob and make sure
everyone is using it first, _then_ start to build APIs which let people add
data from the various services to that record and control access etc.

You simply can't design a system from the top down to deal with something as
complex and multi-disciplinary as a birth or a lifetime of health records, in
fact no one system could probably cope with all those demands, even if it only
catered to a few medical specialties - even just between GPs, Surgeons,
Anaesthetists and Dentists there are huge gulfs in requirements, let alone
bringing in other public services like the police. On top of that people are
happy with existing systems and will resist change to some centralised system
if you try a big bang approach. So I disagree that it is all or nothing, or
even could feasibly be done as an all or nothing project.

------
anon1385
It doesn't surprise me that people are starting to realise this project was a
disaster. My own personal experience is that a lot of useful information that
used to exist on various government websites is just gone. You can look
through really old HN threads about startups/self employment/contracts/eulas
in the uk and often people have posted links to useful information on various
government websites, and virtually all of those links are dead now.

Add to that the fact that you can't visit any uk government site now without
being hit by google analytics tracking (no I do not want google tracking on my
tax returns form!).

For the people who actually read the reports and statements departments put
out (e.g. charities, affected businesses, campaigners, pressure groups) it
seems to be almost universally hated. Lots of complaints about older reports
and press releases being just about impossible to find and a huge reduction in
transparency. For example: [http://markavery.info/2014/10/21/awful-
gov/](http://markavery.info/2014/10/21/awful-gov/)

>I want to make a serious point here. This one single government website is
less informative and less easy to use than its multiple predecessors. If you
were the least bit suspicious of this government then you might think it had
been done on purpose to obscure government actions and policies from the
taxpayers who pay for it and the voters who might well choose another bunch of
politicians in future.

>This government has done away with watchdogs and independent commissions who
had the time and wit to question what government was doing on the environment
and now it has obscured its own actions on its own website.

Also of note, supposedly "arms length" non-departmental government bodies like
Natural England have also been subsumed by gov.uk, without anybody seeming to
notice.

~~~
gmac
This looks rather similar to the Tories' purge of old speeches from their own
party website: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-
politics-24924185](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24924185)

------
adwf
Bear in mind the Register enjoy taking contrary opinions just for the sake of
it.

I've found that most of the Gov.UK stuff has actually been very good. A
welcome redesign of a lot of godawful, confusing old websites that had no
consistent interface from department to department. I still have to deal with
the old HMRC website and it's such a pain in comparison. In order to file some
documents you actually have to fill out a pdf form and submit data from there,
rather than just using a simple webform...

------
petepete
The new gov.uk site is so much better than the previous collection of mostly
appalling sites and applications.

For example, in a recent project I needed a list of bank holidays in the UK.
Not only was it easy to find[0] all you need to do to get at the data in a
usable format is add a '.json' to the URL. Same goes for the list of Courts
and Tribunals[1]. It's a fantastic service and I'm fully behind them replacing
ageing government portals and applications with it.

[0] [https://www.gov.uk/bank-holidays](https://www.gov.uk/bank-holidays) [1]
[https://courttribunalfinder.service.gov.uk/search/](https://courttribunalfinder.service.gov.uk/search/)

~~~
vertex-four
Hell, I was interested in where the military practice in the UK, and it came
up with a huge list of places I could visit when the military aren't
practising: [https://www.gov.uk/public-access-to-military-
areas](https://www.gov.uk/public-access-to-military-areas)

There's a lot of nicely laid out information on all sorts of arbitrary things
on there.

------
nailer
My experience with .gov.uk has been quite positive: I recently needed to check
Companies House: they had a horrible 'XML gateway' service from the mid-2000s.
Someone from .gov.uk got in touch and put me on the beta for the official
Companies REST API that replaces the XML gateway.

Also regards to The Register's 'trendy' accusation: GDS chooses what works
over what's trendy for everything critical: their apps work without AJAX and
CSS too.

~~~
Spearchucker
" _GDS chooses what works..._ "

Erm no. One GDS project requires end users to connect to a number of devices
over USB from their Windows PCs. The logical choice is to write a .NET app
that does it.

GDS chose to write the USB interop code in Java, wrap that up in a Windows
Service, install a _web server_ on the PC, write an HTML/CSS/JavaScript app
that runs in the web server, which calls the Windows Service and talks to the
USB device.

That sort of thing (the above is not an isolated example) happens at GDS for a
number of reasons - one is what the Register alluded to: they're good at webs
sites, so they try to shoe-horn everything into the browser. Another is that
they're despotically obsessive about "user need", so don't understand that
user needs need to be balanced with business needs (reduce call centre costs),
system needs (we've invested _x_ in Windows, for better or worse), and
operational needs (supporting a single, self-configuring .NET .exe on 2,000
desktops through WSUS is a _lot_ cheaper and easier than installing,
configuring and maintaining a Windows service, a web server and an HTML
application on 2,000 desktops).

~~~
7952
A little off topic but I wonder if there could be a middle ground for this
kind of app. Run the actual UI on a web server and give users a central URL to
go to. Then have a service installed on the local machine that has an API
exposed with CORS.

~~~
Spearchucker
You certainly can. But when things go wrong you go from one to three places in
which you have to look for the problem - the service, the network, and the
server. Also, instead of a single package containing a single .exe you're now
deploying to all desktops, and to a server.

This in the context of developers finish the system, leave, and ops don't have
the skills to fix a Ruby/node/whatever tech issue.

While none of the options that work are technically wrong, it might be worth
considering the differences between the best solution design, and a successful
one.

------
simonbyrne
The article seems to mirror my experience: simple and common tasks are
streamlined, but anything less common can be an exercise in frustration.

In particular, looking for information (say, on immigration rules) can be
almost impossible: between the seemingly random "see also" links, overuse of
pdfs (and pdf landing pages) and lack of coherent indexing, I've wasted a lot
of time trying to find what I needed.

------
MistahKoala
End user here. In general, I've found GOV.UK to be an improvement on what went
before. There are still 'old' sites that I have to use - HMRC, for example -
which are diabolical in their usability and function. I love that some stuff
is more findable from a search engine than it used to be.

There are certainly aspects of the new sites which need improvement from my
perspective. GDS seem to be weak on taxonomies/organising large amounts of
information, for example: [https://www.gov.uk/business-finance-support-
finder/search](https://www.gov.uk/business-finance-support-finder/search) \-
even their drop-down filters can be unwieldy.

Likewise, the users who are unhappy are the wonks, the experts, the niche
users etc (certainly including a select few who have the advantage of their
own platform to amplify their disdain) and they certainly need catering for.
But there's nothing to indicate that their needs won't be satisfied. Are they
the highest priority when the 'Digital by Default' policy is also borne in
mind? Some of those users will be unnecessary casualties and care should have
been taken to recognise their user needs, but it wouldn't be the first time in
history that someone screwed up by not doing so.

I'm anticipating continuous improvement of these sites, rather than the "this
is going to be the website for the next ten years" approach. There's a
realistic chance that things will gradually improve. The piece seems to imply
that the job is done on these sites, when the likelihood is that the job will
never be 'done'.

Some points to bear in mind about the piece itself. One, it's Andrew Orlowski.
I like him and I tend to go to his stuff when I want to read a divergent
opinion, but I bear in mind that he's not much of a fan of things that
occurred after the turn of the millennium. Two, it's not hard to find people
in Whitehall and out in the country who have their own agendas and/or empires,
and are well-connected with sympathetic hacks (who might also have their own
agenda). Some of them might even live in glass houses.

~~~
MistahKoala
Well if you're going to downvote my contribution, at least offer a half-decent
reason for doing so.

------
adrianhon
Generally speaking I'm pretty happy with the new gov.uk; for commonly-used
queries it's really much easier to find the right information, although there
are some problems where the new bits meet the old bits.

It's telling that HMRC is held up as some paragon of design and user-
friendliness. The Self Assessment website has barely changed in several years,
and that's a bad thing as it's always been extremely confusing to use -
particularly for new users.

------
davidgerard
Orlowski bollocks.

------
tehwalrus
I've found a similar picture to that described by others- some stuff is much
better, and others much worse.

------
Vidocq
(Posting anonymously for obvious reasons.)

The GDS was created because a Government minister (Maude), who was
enthusiastic about digitising the interactions between the government and its
citizens (an entirely laudable goal), was sold a pig in a poke by people who
saw the opportunity to advance or enrich themselves.

Martha Lane Fox is an ex-consultant, whose sole achievement of note was to
have been the co-founder of Lastminute.com, which was lucky enough to IPO
right at the very peak of the dot-com bubble. Since then, she's sat on on the
boards of various companies and charities. Fortunately for her, everyone seems
to have forgotten that Lastminute.com was never profitable and was eventually
acquired for less than half its IPO valuation, so she was able to buy enough
positive PR to convince the government to make her the "Champion for Digital
Inclusion", during which time she commissioned a report from some consultants
- [http://www.go-on.co.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2014/08/pwc_report...](http://www.go-on.co.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2014/08/pwc_report.pdf) \- which claimed that the government
could save £900m if the "digitally excluded" got online.

Mike Bracken had zero experience in government or the public sector before
being appointed as head of the GDS. His previous role was as "Director of
Digital Development" for the Guardian, so his expertise is in running websites
(and the infrastructure supporting apps) for a newspaper.

The GDS started off by creating the Alphagov prototype, which was essentially
a pretty-looking static-HTML portal with zero functionality (all the links
went back to the original websites). They then presented it to the powers that
be, saying "Look, we can digitise the whole of government and make it look
like this, AND save hundreds of millions of pounds!" (pointing to Martha's
report as supporting evidence).

Francis Maude believed them and gave them the budget to recruit hundreds of
Nathan Barley types (with more than a little cronyism and jobs-for-mates),
with puffed-up CVs and a vocabulary full of buzzwords, and gave them grand
titles (and grander salaries - Mike Bracken's base salary is over £150,000).
Their few unqualified successes have been very low-hanging fruit. Most of what
they've delivered has been worse than what was there previously, and in a few
cases (e.g. trying to apply Agile methodology to the Universal Credit project
at the DWP), they've screwed up massively and ended up wasting millions.

If there was ever a proper independent review of what GDS has delivered, there
would be front page headlines about how much money has been wasted.
Unfortunately, the public sector has always been bad at admitting to mistakes
or underdelivery, and the GDS, in particular, is one big gravy train. Any
suggestion that things aren't going well is hushed up and brushed under the
carpet, so that those at the top can hang on to their little empire and their
well-paid jobs. Needless to say, any dissension from within the ranks has the
potential to be severely "career-limiting", so those further down the
foodchain who have any sense have either left or decided to keep the gravy
flowing for as long as possible by keeping their mouths shut and their heads
down.

Meanwhile, Martha Lane Fox was made a Baroness, and Mike Bracken was given a
CBE.

