Red lines for IT procurement
In January, the government published some ‘red lines’ for IT contracts. At the time, Bill Crothers, the government Chief Procurement Officer, described the reasoning behind them. These rules apply to...
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The end of the beginning for GOV.UK
A project team in GDS is working to make sure GOV.UK can meet the needs of all its users, including specialists and professionals, when it becomes a fully-realised “single domain for government” later...
View ArticleWhat kind of things do people ask?
Once in a while we like to raise a flag to highlight the work of the teams in GDS and show how we work. This week Operations Manager Albert Massa tells us how the GOV.UK Helpdesk team helps users get...
View ArticleWeekend links: Oscars news, style guidance, red lines and more
Got a link you think we’ll love? Share it with us on Twitter: @GDSTeam Next week is the seventh annual National Apprenticeship Week. Follow the hashtag #NAW2014 throughout the week to stay up to date....
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Report a misleading website to search engines
Government services have been getting a growing number of complaints from people who feel misled by websites which charge for access to public services that are either free or much cheaper when...
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Guest post: A year on GOV.UK – HMRC’s experience
Robin Riley, HMRC Head of Digital Engagement and project lead for HMRC’s corporate content on GOV.UK. This week marks exactly one year since HMRC moved its corporate web presence to GOV.UK, and exactly...
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New Transport for GOV.UK
You may not have noticed, but we recently changed the bit that says ‘GOV.UK‘ in the black banner that appears across the website. It now uses New Transport, the same typeface that we use across the...
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Every day we write the book: an incomplete history of civil service authors...
Today is World Book Day, so we thought it would be fun to look back through history and find out about some civil servants who dabbled as authors on the side. Ian Fleming (image courtesy of Libor Kriz...
View ArticleUser research – a day in the life
This week, Cath Richardson and Jon Rimmer talk about some of the user research methods we are using at GDS to help us understand how people use our online services. Join in the conversation on Twitter...
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Weekend links: celebrating International Women’s Day
In celebration of International Women’s Day we’re dedicating our weekend links to the work and achievements of women – in tech, in history and in innovation. Join the conversation on Twitter @GDSTeam....
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Setting open standards for government documents
When I ran the open standards consultation, I heard first hand the effect that government’s choice of technology was having on people. Take documents, for example. You might think sending something to...
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GDS this week: GOV.UK meets Ontario.ca and Digital Services Store now open
This week GDS Head of Content Design Sarah Richards talks about meeting our counterparts from Canada, Ontario.ca, and their exciting One Site project, and Josh Russell and Warren Smith explain how...
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The search is over … almost!
When it comes to improving our offering, looking at what people search for on GOV.UK is one of the best ways we can understand what you want from government information. The search box allows you to...
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Strategy and delivery, one year on
We’ve published a couple of big updates, both to the Digital Strategy and to the transformation programme. Between them, they’ll give you a picture of just how much we’ve achieved in the last twelve...
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Transactions Explorer: latest release of data
Today, we updated the Transactions Explorer, our tool for tracking performance data for the government’s transactional services. The Explorer covers 17 government departments, and now includes 766...
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Accessing GOV.UK information for the gaming generation
We love it that you are making GOV.UK work for you. We want the information you need to be easy to find, no matter how you choose to access our digital services. So, you can imagine how pleased we...
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Half a billion views on GOV.UK!
What a great way to say goodbye to 2013 – we exceeded 500,000,000 views on GOV.UK recently – which tells us that you’re finding loads of ways to access our services. We’ll keep working tirelessly to...
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When will more people visit GOV.UK using a mobile or tablet than a PC?
Yesterday the BBC published data showing more people accessing iPlayer via tablet than via computer. This prompted me to update some of the data I gathered for the government’s agreed approach to...
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What are we doing about accessibility?
Joshua Marshall is Head of Accessibility at GDS. Just before Christmas, we sat him down for a short chat about his work. In Joshua’s opinion, the single most important thing GDS has done to improve...
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Iterating our support for service managers
Just before Christmas we released dates for the next four cohorts on GDS’s Service Manager Induction and Development Programme. During 2013, we took the programme through discovery, alpha, beta, and...
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