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 means that the team is available to work on bugs and tweaks as they come up, and in the last few days that's included polishing a new release of the font and making the site work better on mobile browsers
- The Communications team have been working with the Cabinet Office press team to get briefing notes together ahead of the release of GOV.UK. They've also been planning post-release workshops with other departments so we can coordinate feedback on future iterations of the site content
- The Data Insight team have been putting the finishing touches to their code, so we can measure how each of the formats on GOV.UK performs post-launch
- We're working hard to make sure that when GOV.UK goes live no Business Link or Directgov URLS are broken. Paul wrote yesterday about the work the Transition team have been doing, and they've been hard at work to make sure that mappings and redirections are ready in time for next week
- Load testing continued this week, and the team responsible for putting GOV.UK through its paces were very happy with the results. That work will continue into the weekend
- After GOV.UK launches, one of the big priorities is going to be the next iteration of Inside Government, which will replace departmental sites which we released in beta earlier this year. The team have been blogging about the project, and in the last few days have written about how navigation will work and how work on online consultation tools is progressing
- The Identity Assurance (IDA) team has been busy at the RSA conference, discussing the role of government in effective online identity verification
- There are two posts open at GDS at the moment. One is for a Technical Architect, which closes on Monday, and another is in Web Operations, which closes on the 19th
- And Meri donated a little mascot for the release of GOV.UK. The role of the mascot in the launch has yet to be determined...
3 comments
Comment by jake posted on
what happened to all the forms on forms.direct.gov.uk?
e.g. https://forms.direct.gov.uk/forms/form/14/en/v14_application_for_a_refund
Comment by David posted on
Has GOV.UK gone quietly live ahead of shcedule? It's 3:00 pm on 16th Oct as I write and the site looks to be out of beta as I write. Sneaky. 🙂
Comment by James Taylor posted on
Hi David,
GOV.UK will not become the official website for the UK Government until Wednesday 17th October. Directgov and Business Link websites are still the official sites until then.
Directgov and Business Link will be shut down on Wed 17th October and people who go to those websites will be automatically be redirected to GOV.UK.
James