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Bank Holiday story – is it really simpler, clearer, faster?
At GDS we iterate. One of the key contributions to that iteration is the post change checking to make sure that the users needs truly have been met and that the rules of the game have not changed....
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From Solr to elasticsearch
Search is right at the center of GOV.UK. It’s the main focus of the homepage and it appears in the corner of every single page. Many of our recent and upcoming apps such as licence finder also rely...
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Transactions – finding the stories hidden in the data
The transactional services list we published two weeks ago was the first time Government had attempted to gather data on all of its services together. Clifford Sheppard, Data Analyst, explains why...
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Shipping new formats: the GOV.UK ‘international trade’ release
In the spirit of iteration and continuous delivery today we are releasing a number of new tools and content items, and as usual we’d like your feedback. Neil Williams, Product Manager at GDS explains...
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The all new Trade Tariff tool
Yesterday the new Trade Tariff tool on GOV.UK was released as part of the wider ‘international trade’ release. Matthew Ford, Ruby on Rails developer from Bit Zesty explores the tool in more detail....
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I say consultation, you say…?
The delivery of digital consultations within government is something which has been under much discussion recently. Ade Adewunmi, Digital Strategy Advisor invites you to take part in an online...
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Happy birthday e-petitions – a year in numbers
E-petitions is the very first product delivered by GDS and last week it celebrated its first birthday. Pete Herlihy, product owner for e-petitions reviews the year in numbers. It’s been an eventful and...
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Learning from user testing
We’re doing a lot of user testing over the summer, and Sarah Prag has a quick update on a couple of things we’ve already changed based on what we’ve learnt so far. Thanks to our colleagues in the...
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Work experience with no photocopier in sight
We were very pleased to be able to offer a two week internship as part of the scheme being run by the Social Mobility Foundation. Lily, who has been with us for the last 2 weeks reveals some of her...
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Finding your digital stakeholders (and why you should bother to)
The Civil Service Reform (CSR) plan talks a lot about the need for open policy making – a more inclusive approach to developing government policy that engages people who have simply not had the...
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Introducing a new supplier (Skyscape)
As you will know, we at GDS are building GOV.UK, currently in beta at www.gov.uk. As part of that process we have been thinking about the best way to host the new platform. Mark O’Neill, Head of...
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Working on government digital projects – an event to start showcasing what...
Whilst the focus of GDS has quite rightly been on the forthcoming release of GOV.UK on the 17th October, a small team in GDS has been working on how we engage with digital companies working with...
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Finding your way around GOV.UK
In the past couple of months, we’ve been making it easier to browse the site. I’m going to cover a bit of what we’ve done to improve things and tell you a little bit about why it’s changed. Since early...
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Sharing the GDS approach with Code for America
Last week I spoke about GDS at the Code for America Summit in San Francisco, and I thought I’d share a few of my highlights from the event. I was on a panel chaired by Jennifer Pahlka, founder of Code...
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Writing for a citizen isn’t the same as for a customer
I’ve written web content for everyone from huge corporations to one-person start ups, and from small charities to central government departments. But for the last few months I’ve been writing...
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Agile projects: the people side
We talk a lot about agile here at GDS. We use agile methodologies to focus on our users. The faster we can build a functioning product, the sooner we can get it in front of real users and start...
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What devices are we supporting at launch, and why?
In January James Weiner wrote a little about the browsers we support and during the summer we revisited that question to decide which operating systems, screen sizes and devices we would support at...
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One size does not fit all
It’s taken a very different kind of team to build GOV.UK than the one most people picture when they think of web developers. Even within the tech industry, some stereotypes don’t fit with the kind of...
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No link left behind
From October the 17th GOV.UK will replace Directgov and Business Link as the best place to find government services and information, but what will that actually mean for people following links for...
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Meet the finance team
A couple of weeks ago we introduced you to the Hosting and Infrastructure team. Now it’s time to meet the Finance team. A big thanks to Andy, Ezinne and Margaret. We’ll be busy with the release of...
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