Meet the IT network team
From time to time we like to give the teams at GDS the chance to talk about their work. This time we dropped in on the IT network team to find out if life in the bat cave really is like the IT Crowd....
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The unsung heroes of voter registration
Back in June, we launched the live phase of the new Register to vote digital service, number one on our list of transformation exemplars. I can’t overstate the importance of this project, and how...
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Doing the hard work to make things simple
Our fourth design principle is “Do the hard work to make it simple”. A team working at the Ministry of Justice have been putting that into action recently, trying to simplify a legal process known as...
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GOV.UK – it’s all in the name
We’ve updated the guidance on naming and registering government domain names to make it faster, simpler and clearer to read through and decide whether you can apply for a gov.uk domain. A local...
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A new digital hub on the Tyne
Good news from the north east: our colleagues at HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) have officially opened the Digital Delivery Centre Newcastle, a new headquarters for the HMRC Digital team. David Gauke,...
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This is what transformation looks like
The winner was … a prototype of a quick and easy online service to let people pay fines using a simple reference number. With a working payment system, the prototype wouldn’t be far away from a...
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Thank you Stephen Kelly
Our boss Stephen Kelly, the Chief Operating Officer of HM Government, has announced today that he will be leaving government in a few months. He will go on to lead Sage plc as Group Chief Executive....
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Inspiring teenagers: getting schools to beat bogus websites
Recently, GDS took part in the Whitehall Schools Conference. The conference is for bright 12-13 year olds from underrepresented backgrounds, and shows them the career opportunities available to them in...
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Our first video production workshop
We recently held our first ever video production workshop with a small group of participants from the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG). The aim was to pass on what we’ve learned about making films...
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Helping government find user needs with analytics
Over the last couple of months we’ve run search engine optimisation and analytics workshop sessions for content designers in government departments and agencies. We work with them to challenge...
View ArticleYou can now renew a patent online
If you hold a UK or European (GB) patent, you can now renew it more quickly and easily using a simple online service. Here’s a very short film we’ve made about it: What was a cumbersome process of...
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How sharing helps us improve digital services
We spend a lot of time banging on about sharing. Sharing code, sharing design ideas, sharing everything so that others can benefit. Until quite recently this was a rare thing in government, but I’m...
View Article100 technical hires
Today we’re announcing that more than 100 digital and technology experts have been brought into government departments over the last 12 months to drive the digital transformation of public services....
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5 live – Civil Claims: Evict a tenant using accelerated possession
On Wednesday Ministry of Justice (MoJ) Digital’s Civil Claims service removed its orange beta banner and became the latest exemplar to go live. It joins Electoral registration, Renew a patent, Student...
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Say the dot
Back in May, we wrote a short post explaining why we write the name of our website as GOV.UK, in capitals, and the URL as www.gov.uk, so that people know it’s a URL and know where to find it on the...
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Vertical campfires: our user research walls
A quick walk around our offices and you’ll see that vertical surfaces, whether wall or not, are both covered and coveted. Project paraphernalia are our wallpaper. Sticky notes, images, screenshots,...
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Service standard – how’s it going?
The digital by default service standard went fully live in April. That means that, in line with the Government Digital Strategy, all new and redesigned public facing services have to meet this...
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Please release me: building a new statistical release calendar
Image courtesy of Simon Cunningham under a Creative Commons license. Sam Hall is Head of Publishing Operations at the Office for National Statistics. Statistics may be defined as “a body of methods for...
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Time for tea: the EE Techy Tea Party
Yesterday mobile network operator EE, in partnership with Age UK, held the first ever Techy Tea Party day to promote digital inclusion. EE staff held free sessions in over 500 stores all around the...
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You can now book a prison visit online
Booking a prison visit should be simple and straightforward. Until now that was far from the case. Booking a visit required both prisoner and visitor to jump through hoops: paper forms and drawn-out...
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