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Coding in the open
We talk a lot about Open Source at GDS. GOV.UK is built on open source software and, to a degree, built as open source software. It’s a topic we care passionately about because it helps us maintain our...
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This week at GDS
Time for a quick look at some of the things we’ve been up to this week at GDS With just a few days to go before the release of GOV.UK, the Development team switched to ‘skirmish’ mode this week. This...
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APIs for all
Last week I talked about GOV.UK’s APIs and how we use them to build and monitor the site. Now it’s time to say a little more about what they mean for other developers who might want to use our content...
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Directgov: a quiet history
If you search for Directgov on Wikipedia, or ever happen to browse through our press releases, you’ll see a version of our history that’s based pretty much around landmark achievements and major...
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GOV.UK – The start of a new way of delivering public services
Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office, writes about the release of GOV.UK The release today of GOV.UK, the new home of government services and information, proves that we can deliver digital...
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The software we’ve used to build GOV.UK
We’ve relied on a lot of software to help us build GOV.UK. From tracking the work we need to do in each sprint to managing the logs produced on our servers, we couldn’t build it without using tools...
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Meeting the needs of businesses
Last Tuesday I wrote about how we identified the things users need from government online, and how that’s guided the building of GOV.UK. Today I’m going to tell you bit more about how that’s helped us...
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Why GOV.UK matters: A platform for a digital Government
On Wednesday October 17th 2012, our new digital service www.gov.uk moved out of public beta development to replace the two main government websites, Directgov and Business Link. It is the first major,...
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GOV.UK – One day in
GOV.UK is now into its second day as the new place to find government services and information, and I’d like to share some highlights from our first 24 hours. In our first day (Wednesday 17th Oct) we...
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This week at GDS
The Identity Assurance team have been working closely with DWP on the first identity provider supplier framework for Universal Credit. They also had a retrospective on the development of the IdA ‘hub’...
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From user needs to content – what’s the story?
We’ve already written about how we’ve worked to identify user needs for GOV.UK, so now I’d like to explain a bit more about what happens next – how does a need become published content or a tool on the...
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How is GOV.UK performing?
Last week our new digital service GOV.UK moved out of public beta and replaced the two main government websites, Directgov and Business Link. As my colleague Mike Bracken explained at the time, GOV.UK...
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Identity assurance for local government services
Local government is facing many challenges in providing digital services to citizens and a significant barrier to that is identity assurance. In order to understand these challenges, GDS commissioned a...
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The right words for the job
Hens and chickens, or breeders and meat? Part of a GDS content designer’s role is to choose the best words to explain what a web page is trying to say. It’s got to be easy to understand, simple to find...
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Sharing the news about GOV.UK
As Paul’s explained previously on the blog we worked hard to make sure URLs didn’t break when we transitioned from the Directgov and Business Link websites. Although most people found Directgov and...
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Leaving GDS
I’ve been at GDS since the beginning. Well, before the beginning, and after nearly two years here I’ve decided to leave. I’m moving on for a couple of reasons; one, because Blaine Cook (the original...
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What we’ve learnt about scaling agile
Warning: This is a slightly geeky post about agile – the methodology we use to deliver our projects. It therefore features quite a lot of terminology. We hope this will be useful for those of you...
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Refining transactions with help from the Minister
The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Student Loans Company (SLC) team released a new loan application service for part-time students on Wednesday. I wanted to take a minute...
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Regular Releases Reduce Risk
GOV.UK came out of beta just over two weeks ago. In that time we’ve released over 100 updates. I want to talk a little about how we do that, but mainly to focus on why this approach makes for more...
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Designing for different devices
Following the successful release of GOV.UK a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to share some of the work we’ve done to support users on mobile devices (smartphones and any other portable devices with a...
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