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It’s not about us, it’s about collaboration
A few years ago, I stood up at the first GDS all-staff meeting and told everyone there to “look sideways”, by which I meant: don’t get stuck in silos of your own making. Talk to people, look at other...
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Cambridge coding club for girls
Last month I was invited to give a talk as at the Cambridge University Computer Science lab. The lab was running a summer school for teenage girls to encourage them to study science, technology,...
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Learning and doing together
I’ve written about the important work we’ve been doing in building a Digital and Technology profession across government. Digital transformation of government is bigger than any one person. It requires...
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My new favourite form. Really.
I have a new favourite form: HMRC’s Pay your self-assessment online. Enjoy! But maybe before you do, you’d like a little explanation? OK, I’ll back up a bit and explain. Licence: Creative Commons...
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Why GOV.UK Verify matters
I wanted to point you to a post on the GOV.UK Verify blog that you might have missed. It talks about the programme’s objectives, and how the team has been making progress to meet those objectives....
View ArticleStuff that matters, done the right way
There are so many committed teams delivering digital services all over government, it feels unnatural to highlight just one - but when it comes to doing stuff that matters, at scale, and under...
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What’s happening with data
It’s time to update you on what’s been happening on our work with data. It’s one of our three interconnected strategic areas of focus: digital, technology and data. They’re so closely intertwined that...
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Thanks Mike
It’s Mike Bracken’s last day today, and on behalf of everyone at GDS I want to say this: thank you, Mike. Government, and government services, have changed beyond all recognition since 2010 when this...
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Civil servants are users too
In some ways, the civil service is very different to corporate organisations. And in other ways, it’s very much the same. Most of our time is spent building secure digital services for citizens...
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Your friendly neighbourhood GOV.UK
In my previous blog post, It's all about trust - auditing local government domains, I talked about auditing all gov.uk domains belonging to local authorities, the devolved governments and locally...
View ArticleIt’s all about people: DVLA delivers real transformation
Over the last two years the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) have been preparing for a huge change. Last Friday, the Partners Achieving Change Together (PACT) contract closed, bringing...
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Status tracking - making it easy to keep users informed
Last month, we started discovery around status tracking and notifications. We’ve discovered a bunch of interesting (and surprising) things and are now moving into a 4-6 week alpha delivery of a...
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Government as a platform for the rest of us
So far we’ve talked about the technology that makes Government as a Platform work, and the technical benefits it brings, but less about the more tangible benefits for everyone else in government. For...
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How to be agile in a non-agile environment
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution Giles T At GDS, we think working in an agile way is a good thing. You’ve probably gathered that by now. Over the years, we’ve not missed an opportunity to talk...
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The characteristics of a register
We’ve talked about registers as authoritative lists you can trust, but what do we mean when we say “register”? Across government we manage and hold data that we need to deliver services to users and...
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Introducing GOV.UK Pay
We’ve previously blogged about the work we’re doing to make payments more convenient and efficient. During the alpha phase of our project we developed a prototype that helped us do user research and...
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I became a civil servant by accident
I'm Mark, and I'm a User Researcher at GDS. But I haven't always been. After the financial crash of 2007/8 I lost my job in pension and investment sales so I needed to go and sign on at the Jobcentre....
View ArticleHow digital and technology transformation saved £1.7bn last year
We’ve always said that transforming government’s approach to digital and technology would save money, and it has. The published figures are impressive: last year the Cabinet Office helped government...
View ArticleGOV.UK Verify - one year of public beta
GOV.UK Verify recently passed one year in public beta. Programme Director Janet Hughes talks about what the last year has involved, and why the team is focusing on the months ahead. Join the...
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Discovering the way people work
The GDS Common Technology Services (CTS) team was set up following the Cabinet Office Transformation Programme. We want to explore the best ways to run technology transition projects in other...
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