

Gov.uk isn’t finished - robin_reala
https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2015/03/06/gov-uk-isnt-finished/

======
toyg
I've met some of the guys working for gov.uk and they know the challenge is
huge. A government is probably the worst sort of institution to try and change
at a fundamental level using technology. They're good people trying their
best.

This said, I don't see the point of such a puff-piece unless it's a
combination of 1) recent bad press from The Register and 2) national election
being in full swing. There is a very high chance that voters will not return
the same government to power, so I guess GDS are trying to preempt an
inevitable wave of "spoil system", considering they were appointed directly
from the cabinet.

~~~
DanBC
> 1) recent bad press from The Register

The Register is scum. I'm amazed anyone pays them any attention. It's kind of
weird that the Register isn't one of the auto-blocked domains on HN. Their
stories are mangled half-truths and misunderstandings.

It's got a lot worse since Guy Kewney died, but even when he was alive they
just weren't very good.

~~~
Spearchucker
" _The Register is scum._ "

How so? I find it quite useful in staying on top of IT news in the UK. Their
reporting is harsh, but to date, from what I know of the industry, appears to
be accurate.

If it's not some examples would help?

~~~
anon1385
I'm not a fan of the gov.uk project (see my other comment on this thread) but
the Register is a pretty awful site, and Andrew Orlowski in particular is a
total crackpot. For example he writes crazy climate change denial articles. To
be fair, it's the same kind of crackpottery that you can find in papers like
The Telegraph most weeks. The Telegraph is trash too, but some people still
take it seriously. I'd put The Register in the same bracket: it still can
product ok coverage of some stories but there are a bunch of topics where
their politics or petty personal feuds leads them to write terrible articles
full of factual inaccuracies.

------
matthewmacleod
I must admit, I had a dim view of what would come out of GOV.UK 3-or-so years
ago. But I have to admit that I've been pleasantly surprised; the task they've
set for themselves is gigantic in proportion, and so far the product has been
pretty impressive.

So this is good, and I hope they continue to improve digital infrastructure in
the UK. I like to think the current projects are the most important step —
general improvements to accessibility, discoverability and usability of
government documentation. But I expect we'll see progressive implementation of
government departments' tools on top of the gov.uk platform as it comes time
to renew them — and so far, it feels like that's a much better option than
what we saw in the past.

------
emodendroket
I think it's interesting to see how well they've done. I think that if the US
were also to employ programmers directly we'd see better products than with
the current system.

~~~
endtwist
Have you seen 18F ([https://18f.gsa.gov/](https://18f.gsa.gov/))? That's
exactly what they're trying to do.

~~~
danohuiginn
They've chosen just about the worst imaginable name...

~~~
tombot
Does 18F mean anything special?

~~~
Someone1234
I found this in an article:

> The name 18F refers to GSA headquarters building, which is located on 18th
> and F streets in Washington.

I agree that 18F is a bad name. They should have just called it "Government
Digital Service" like the UK version of the same.

------
afoot
I really admire the commitment to openness and transparency displayed by the
team on this project. Even though that may be common in the startup world or
open source community, it's still somewhat rare in lots of other types of
projects.

------
vitriol83
This blog post is worryingly vague about anything of concrete value for users.
It suggests a large reengineering effort without any idea of what they really
want to achieve. For example, one of the blog posts it links to, they
introduce the new VAT manual

[https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/vat-government-
and-...](https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/vat-government-and-public-
bodies)

vs old

[http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/vatgpbmanual/index.htm](http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/vatgpbmanual/index.htm)

It's identical, except for a modified stylesheet. This may be
'unapologetically unifying and simplifying the experience of interacting with
government', but this is not very much to show for all the time that has been
spent on GDS.

~~~
Someone1234
> It's identical, except for a modified stylesheet.

They're taking legacy sites and modernising them. They aren't re-writing
HMRC's VAT manual and never claimed they were.

You call it identical, but they've altered the underlying HTML layout and
change the stylesheet to make it work better in modern browsers and made it
easier to interact with using touch devices.

That was their entire spec. That is their job. They've done their job. And
while the content is "identical" by design, they fixed the part that was
broken: bad markup and poor styling.

PS - The old site looks absolutely terrible in Chrome 40. It "works" but I
need to zoom to 200%, and with a touch device I keep hitting the wrong link
because they're so close together.

~~~
Spearchucker
" _That was their entire spec. That is their job. They 've done their job._"

The 25 exemplars say otherwise. They're about process re-engineering,
technology modernisation and legacy integration. And they're also nowhere near
complete (only 9 are live[1]).

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

~~~
Someone1234
I could have worded that quoted section better.

People have been complaining that some legacy documents and manuals weren't
available on the new gov.uk site. So now they've started bringing them over,
updating them to work in modern browsers and on touch devices, so in this
context their only spec was to make that content available on the new site.

In the larger context, yes, they've been doing some actual redevelopment. But
how do you re-develop a HMRC manual? Heck up until a few years ago it was only
available as a PDF(!). Even the old site was a marked improvement, and this
one just keeps that document pleasantly available for the future.

------
auton1
A contrary opinion:
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/18/the_inside_story_of_...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/18/the_inside_story_of_govuk/)

~~~
alextgordon
I'm afraid I have to agree. gov.uk has been a reversion to the mean. It's not
nearly as good as direct.gov that preceded it. On the other hand it replaces
many cruddy government websites that had impossible navigation.

So it replaces variance with consistent mediocrity: the McDonalds of websites.

~~~
alextgordon
To those downvoting, let me illustrate:

This was the old directgov site:
[https://i.imgur.com/s7lHXGD.png](https://i.imgur.com/s7lHXGD.png)

This is the new gov.uk site:
[https://i.imgur.com/IgyTCLL.png](https://i.imgur.com/IgyTCLL.png)

Which do you think does a better job of presenting the information?

------
forloop
I was using the job search[1] on the gov.uk domain yesterday, and the UX is
extremely poor!

If the job site was a for-profit, it would probably be put out of business by
competitors! But, since the government can jail people for not handing over
their resources, products aren't held accountable by the Market (big 'M').

I wouldn't even mind if it had an API[2], so I could make a more useful
tool[3]. But instead I have to manually go through a ton of jobs each day so I
can get unemployment handouts from daddy government (if there was no such
thing as VAT, I probably wouldn't need these! Anyway).

Gov.uk looks a bit nice with its san serif typeface[4] and minimalist design;
but it's varnish on a clunky turd.

\---

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

[2] I couldn't find one yesterday. I'm going to have another look.

[3] Currently learning Python and looking for a little side project.

[4] Looking at the CSS, the particular font is 'nta'—and is presumably custom.

~~~
jon-wood
To be fair to the gov.uk team, Universal Job Search appears not to be run by
them. They have a form on gov.uk which submits to the job search application
from direct.gov (the organisation that was bad enough to convince government
to give gov.uk a go in the first place).

~~~
forloop
> They have a form on gov.uk which submits to the job search application from
> direct.gov (the organisation that was bad enough to convince government to
> give gov.uk a go in the first place).

That validates my concern about quality.

~~~
vertex-four
Would you prefer that gov.uk didn't give you any way to access Universal
Jobmatch at all? It's a legacy system that people still need to access. I
assume the Job Centre have contracts that they need to fulfil that would
prevent gov.uk from replacing it.

~~~
forloop
The marginal benefit—above and beyond other options—of Universal Jobmatch is
so low (and probably negative) that it doesn't matter either way. Being
mandated to use a suboptimal tool results in a net loss. Taking that into
consideration, my answer is 'yes! Please'.

~~~
vertex-four
You would be mandated to use it whether or not gov.uk linked to it. gov.uk
isn't in control of that - the DWP is. Maybe, once the DWP's contract with
Monster expires in a few years, gov.uk will be able to make a case that they
should be running it.

~~~
forloop
So your question relates to whether it makes a difference to me if the job
search app is available via gov.uk?

No it doesn't. From the outside it's all bullshit branding. As a user I want
to be able to find jobs, refine searches, use categories, and other activities
based around getting-the-job-done.

Edit: URLs for unique resources works fine. The gov.uk as a namespace doesn't
help usability. I'm happy to be corrected with _evidence_.

~~~
vertex-four
> No it doesn't. From the outside it's all bullshit branding. As a user I want
> to be able to find jobs, refine searches, use categories, and other
> activities based around getting-the-job-done.

It's not gov.uk's fault that you have a shitty experience doing that. The
Government Digital Service (most well-known as "gov.uk") have never been
involved in the Universal Jobmatch site that was contracted out by the DWP to
Monster without consulting the GDS. I have no idea why you're attacking gov.uk
for it - I repeat, they had literally nothing to do with it.

> URLs for unique resources works fine. The gov.uk as a namespace doesn't help
> usability. I'm happy to be corrected with evidence.

gov.uk is a platform developed by the GDS, not simply a namespace. It covers
everything on the "gov.uk" main website, and a selection of subdomains, but
not all (anything that existed while DirectGov was still a thing is not
maintained by the GDS, essentially).

The majority of gov.uk revolves around a CMS that can manage many types of
content. It provides a consistent interface for the people who create the
content - people from every single Government department - to publish it, and
a consistent backend that allows the developers to build new services that
utilise the existing infrastructure.

Before, we had a pile of independent websites built and maintained by each
Government department with no integrated search or organisation, a _lot_ of
duplicated technical effort as everyone had to maintain their own CMS, and an
extremely poor user experience.

~~~
forloop
> I have no idea why you're attacking gov.uk for it - I repeat, they had
> literally nothing to do with it.

I'm answering your questions as frankly as I can. The questions involve
gov.uk, and so the answers involve gov.uk.

> gov.uk is a platform developed by the GDS, not simply a namespace.

From the outside it's difficult to make the distinction. I'm talking from the
perspective of a user.

> Before, we had a pile of independent websites built and maintained by each
> Government department with no integrated search or organisation, a lot of
> duplicated technical effort as everyone had to maintain their own CMS, and
> an extremely poor user experience.

For the scope of gov.uk, I can appreciate how that's beneficial. The dynamic
I've seen is there's a bad solution to something which isn't even a problem—as
there are already better job sites around. If my premise is correct, then even
if gov.uk solved the UX problem for Universal Jobmatch, it's still solving a
problem which doesn't really need to be solved (a clone of a job website isn't
very valuable). And that government fixes problems which _it_ creates, and
then pats itself on the back. What I've said goes outside of the specific
points I've been making, but that's how I see the context.

I'm not even anti-government, necessarily. I'm still making my mind up. Maybe
the need for inequality is more important than efficiency and maximum wealth?
Some of the things governments do are egregious; but so are some of the things
individuals do. Knowing the answer wouldn't be of much benefit, anyway: the
government isn't going anywhere any time soon, regardless!

~~~
vertex-four
> The dynamic I've seen is there's a bad solution to something which isn't
> even a problem—as there are already better job sites around.

gov.uk did not build Universal Jobmatch. gov.uk did not build Universal
Jobmatch. Universal Jobmatch is not part of gov.uk. Universal Jobmatch is not
part of gov.uk. It is a separate site, operated by separate people, under an
entirely separate Government department, which happens to be linked from the
gov.uk website.

I'm not entirely sure what part of this isn't getting to you. The DWP is to
blame for outsourcing Universal Jobmatch to Monster, gov.uk has absolutely
nothing to do with it any more than, say, the passport office does. What you
are saying is equivalent to blaming the passport office for Universal Jobmatch
- it's crazy, they had nothing to do with it.

If you're angry that Universal Jobmatch exists at all, that's _still_ the
DWP's fault, not gov.uk's. gov.uk doesn't get to decide other departments'
policies for them, it is in charge of developing digital services to fulfil
those policies - and Universal Jobmatch is a legacy system, so gov.uk didn't
even do _that_ for the DWP.

~~~
forloop
> Maybe, once the DWP's contract with Monster expires in a few years, gov.uk
> will be able to make a case that they should be running it.

I'm talking about a hypothetical situation based on what you said previously.

If you read what I've said with that in mind, it should make sense! Why
wouldn't I take account of what's already been talked about?

