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GOV.UK page performance: are we fulfilling our content goals?
In the content team we’ve developed new theme dashboards that give us a page-level indication of GOV.UK mainstream content performance. These dashboards are useful to everyone in GDS, as GOV.UK user...
View ArticleGDS visits UKGovcamp
On Saturday 25th January 2014 we visited UKGovcamp; the annual ‘unconference’ for people interested in how the public sector does digital stuff. The event was held at City Hall, Southbank, London. Find...
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Looking back at Sprint 14
We made two short videos for Sprint 14 that give you a little glimpse into the work being done by teams all over the country to transform services. Both show what it’s like to be working on the...
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Improving GOV.UK on mobile devices
Mobile use on GOV.UK has increased significantly since launch in October 2012, moving from around 15% to 23% of the overall audience. We are now starting to improve the experience for mobile and...
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Striking a balance between security and usability
Last year our boss Mike Bracken talked at the Code for America Summit in San Francisco, and spoke about the need to strike a balance between usability and security. There is a point beyond which...
View ArticleSharing Sprint 14
With Sprint 14 now behind us, we wanted to share Baroness Martha Lane Fox’s opening speech, and the presentations and workshops given on the day. Martha used her talk to remind everyone how far we’ve...
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How to find all the maps published on GOV.UK
Government does a lot of stuff with maps, and if you like maps you might like to know about this clever trick for finding every single one that gets published on GOV.UK. Start off at the Publications...
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Weekend links
We wanted to try something new – sharing the things we’ve liked over the past week in a blog post. Let us know what you think: @GDSTeam 2014 is the Year of Code – encouraging people across the country...
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Guest Post: Clarity is king – the evidence that reveals the desperate need to...
Mark Morris is Head of Clear English at the Department of Health and a former speechwriter for the Health Secretary. Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so he is. So said Publilius...
View ArticleGDS this week: Innovating with SMEs and fast track apprentices
Speaking on the day HRH The Duke of York visited GDS, Dr. Brian Gannon of Kainos Software talks about the innovative work SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) are doing with government departments like...
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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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