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Visas: user research from 5,000 miles
Hi, my name’s Dave Mills and I am the Product Owner for UK Visa and Immigration’s China visit visa exemplar – part of the Immigration Platform Technology programme. My background is in business...
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Here’s what we mean by building for inclusion
A few weeks ago, I went to Coventry to visit the Skills Funding Agency, where a team is working on a new online service to help young people in England apply for apprenticeships. How apprenticeships...
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The Public Guardian on agile development
You hear the word agile in government a lot these days. And not only within the teams making digital services. Agile development is a way to make software. We build a simple prototype quickly, then...
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Liam Maxwell commits to CTO post until 2018
You may have already seen the good news earlier today, but I wanted to mention it here too: Liam Maxwell has signed on the dotted line to stay with us as Chief Technology Officer for government until...
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Self-assessment – training assessors across government
A few weeks ago GDS hosted the latest training session for Digital by Default (DbD) assessors. There were over 50 attendees from across government – the largest assessor training session we have run so...
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New paths opened as Transport Direct closes down
Hands up if you remember Transport Direct – www.transportdirect.info. It was a journey planner for British transport – all of it, everywhere. Roads and traffic, rail journeys, cycle routes, foot and...
View ArticleA new way to view your driving licence info online
View your driving licence information is a new digital service from DVLA. It’s a simpler, clearer and faster way to view your driving information online. The service is free and available 24 hours a...
View ArticleWhen is it ok not to open all source code?
To meet the Digital By Default Service Standard, digital services have to ‘make all new source code open and reusable, and publish it under appropriate licences (or give a convincing explanation as to...
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Combining user research and analytics to improve the user experience
Over the last year or so, we’ve been working on moving the websites of 311 government agencies and arms length bodies onto GOV.UK, as part of the transition towards a single online platform for all...
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Building digital civic infrastructure from the ground up
“Do less” is one of our design principles. Visiting the Environment Agency in Bristol, it struck me that sometimes one of the best things departments can do to support digital transformation is to let...
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Happy birthday GOV.UK
GOV.UK is 2 years and 1 billion visits old today. So we’re celebrating. But it’s worth remembering that we couldn’t have got this far without a great deal of support from others. On 17 October 2012,...
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It’s all about trust – auditing local government domains
We know that owning a gov.uk domain address tells users that we can be trusted, and we’re proud of this message – it is an important part of building trust and reducing the potential for people to use...
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The move to GOV.UK: training 1,000 writers
I am one of the trainers here at Government Digital Service and I work alongside Brij Thakrar. Our role is to train people in departments and agencies how to write and publish to GOV.UK. We take people...
View ArticleA short film about accelerated property possession
As we announced in August, it’s now possible to make an accelerated property possession online. The service lets a property owner evict a tenant at the end of a tenancy agreement. This is the first...
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Designing assisted digital based on research, not assumption
Our eighth design principle is build digital services, not websites. “Our service doesn’t begin and end at our website. It might start with a search engine and end at the post office.” Assisted digital...
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GDS blogs round-up
If you’re interested in our work, don’t forget that GDS has 14 blogs including this, the main one. For a flavour of some of the things we’ve been up to lately, here are 5 (spoiler alert: it’s really...
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Create a better user experience by changing the way you write
As a copywriter who’s written online content for the likes of BBC, Yahoo and Nokia, I have always thought about how the text appears on web pages. I think the way it looks is almost as important as...
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Digital Marketplace: building a digital by default service
The Digital Marketplace helps government find and compare cloud services for their technology projects. I am the Service Manager for the Digital Marketplace and lead the multidisciplinary team tasked...
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How we organise our film production team
One question we’ve been asked a few times is: “What does your film production team look like? How can our department/agency/organisation build a team like that too?” In the spirit of “publish, don’t...
View ArticleSimpler Carer’s Allowance digital service now live
The new Carer’s Allowance digital service goes live today. If you have access to the internet it’s now easier than ever to apply for Carer’s Allowance. Here’s a short film we’ve made about the service:...
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