

Experimental UK Gov site: alpha.gov.uk - gorm
http://alpha.gov.uk/

======
Pheter
Not the kind of error page that I would expect to see for a government
website! <http://www.alpha.gov.uk/fail>

~~~
nicepaul
Exactly! Revolution not evolution.

But in terms of branding, this error page is for when the entire prototype
fails. It is not part of the prototype, and therefore doesn't adhere to Gov
branding. It's more branded with the team's informal whimsy, and it obviously
wouldn't appear in a live site.

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markbao
Incredible rethinking, atypical of big governments.

This, for the US, now. USA.gov works okay. It could really be better.

~~~
alexsb92
Same thing applies to Canada. It's full of information organized really badly.
<http://canada.gc.ca>

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robgough
I really like this, and I'm excited about the fact this was apparently
developed "in house" rather than by some speculative design firm.

Obviously it needs work, and a few design elements/features need tweaking -
but it's a massive step in the right direction. Hopefully someone internally
will see and understand how great this is and help it move forward.

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jrwoodruff
Holy baloney. I'm just blown away, this is amazing. As a current state
employee, I've seen the insane bureaucracy we have to battle just to redesign
one internal site.

I would love to know how they did this. Are these contractors? Is it a
seperate team? Is the redesign rolling out across all government departments?
What is their CMS?

Oh man, I need details. If you were involved with this at all, please contact
me...

~~~
gorm
Their blog: <http://blog.alpha.gov.uk/> Twitter: @alphagov Their
GetSatisfaction: <http://getsatisfaction.com/alphagov>

This is also interesting read: [http://puffbox.com/2011/05/11/ten-things-
alphagov-gets-right...](http://puffbox.com/2011/05/11/ten-things-alphagov-
gets-right/)

~~~
jrwoodruff
Sweet, thank you. I'm going to be reading for awhile now...

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swombat
Sounds like a great move. Looking forward to see what happens on there.

Again, I must say, this govt seems to actually be moving its ass and doing
things (even if they're not always perfect). Impressive and completely
unexpected.

~~~
seabee
Especially regarding IT, keeping up with technology is a rare thing; there's
no reason we can't have a modern website for all government services. But
impressive as this may be, in other areas I'd reserve judgement as to whether
it's a good thing.

------
JonnieCache
I typed my question into the box, and I had the right information _instantly!_

This is so much more efficient than any other government site I've ever
interacted with, by many orders of magnitude.

------
timruffles
That is absolutely the best government site I've ever seen. It looks like a
person designed it, rather than one hundred committees.

~~~
shrikant
Site credits: <http://www.alpha.gov.uk/humans.txt>

(also check out their very cool error page: <http://www.alpha.gov.uk/fail>)

~~~
arethuza
Typical Scot, blaming the English for the problems! ;-)

[NB I am a Scot]

------
balac
I'd be interested to see what this would actually be able to make it from
alpha to reality. I get the feeling that the dev team want to build some real
use statistics and get as much feedback as possible in order to pressure their
higher ups to allow them to do it for real. I hope they succeed.

------
Luyt
It renders correctly in my customized firefox, unless many sites on the web
nowadays. However, Google, WikiPedia and HackerNews render without problems
too.

My settings are: Zoom Text Only, do not allow pages to choose their own fonts,
Comic Sans MS for all fonts, minimum font size 20pt.

~~~
richardhenry
"Comic Sans MS for all fonts"

... I don't know what to say. At 20pt, too?

~~~
raarky
Maybe a troll with bad taste perhaps?

~~~
cynusx
or dyslectic

------
nopal
According to a tweet [1] from their technical lead, they're using Rails,
Sinatra, Django and more. He says there should be a blog entry outlining the
technologies soon.

[1] <https://twitter.com/#!/jystewart>

------
jdietrich
Coalition governments are _brilliant_.

See also the Open Government License[1] - it might not seem much to Americans,
but compared to Crown Copyright it is a revelation.

[1] [http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-
licen...](http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/)

~~~
pnathan
I have just finished reading Churchill's description of the WW2 coalition
government, frankly, I love how the two parties were able to come together and
function well, such that the opposition leader _was in the cabinet_.

It seems like such a fantasy of ever happening in the US.

------
daleharvey
This is actually pretty decent, its clean and usable which is enough of a
surprised, but it looks like it might actually be useful as well. Geolocation
was broken for me and @alphagov asked me for more information

Something feels strange about the govement asking me on twitter to give
feedback on getsatisfaction

------
abailin
The X on the popup modal doesn't work when the site first loads.

~~~
seabee
You can use the blue button to close it, though.

------
antihero
Still, doesn't make up for hushing up the fact that police arrested people at
random under Section 60 for things such as wearing zombie paint, protesting
against the royalty, filming the police, on the 29th.

------
mattmanser
At first I was a bit meh, so what, especially as the welcome splash screen
wouldn't close and required a screen refresh to get rid of it.

However, the blog's an interesting read on what they're trying accomplish. The
point is to make the user's journey much better for common tasks (their
example is a lost passport):

<http://blog.alpha.gov.uk/>

Check out <http://blog.alpha.gov.uk/blog/alpha-gov-uk-design-rules> for
example. They're openly ignoring IE6 and accessibility while they iterate
interactivity, fairly brave for a government site.

~~~
JonnieCache
_> Check out <http://blog.alpha.gov.uk/blog/alpha-gov-uk-design-rules> for
example_

In the photo, on one of those mission-statement postit notes, next to "no need
to understant govt" and "task focus" there's one that says "spin is trust."

This rather sours the milk for me.

~~~
simonw
I imagine that's a joke.

~~~
JonnieCache
Given the resemblance to Newspeak, and the also rather humorous state of their
error page, you're probably right.

Although from a government that seriously thought they could sell off all the
forests without anyone getting annoyed, I am unwilling to assume anything.

~~~
simonw
Not a joke, a typo - it's "Spin v.s. Trust" -
<http://twitter.com/alphagov/status/68322599503011840>

(@alphagov turned round an answer to my question in less than a minute!)

~~~
corin_
Can't help but feel that they opted for spin over trust in that reply, I can't
see how they meant that to be a 'v'.

My guess, and obviously I could be wrong, is that it was an internal joke, but
not meant to be for public consumption for fear that people wouldn't get it
and would criticise them for it.

~~~
bkudria
It's clearly a 'v', the marker was just a bit dry. Go do something productive.

------
smogzer
"You pay. We decide."

