As the week draws to an end I wanted to tell you a bit about what we've been up at to GDS this week…
- GDS helped deliver three big pieces of work this week. The first was on Monday, when GDS participated in the first ERG Analyst event. Over 40 analysts were presented with the Government savings and efficiencies plan, including a review of how moving to digital by default services is crucial in delivering substantial savings
- the second was a loan application service for part-time students, in collaboration with BIS and SLC, which Mike Beaven wrote more about in his blog post
- then, yesterday, our colleagues at the Cabinet Office published a report on Open Standards, which will drive the development of all of our platforms and products
- meanwhile, content designers and developers fixing bugs and making tweaks to copy and code wherever necessary on GOV.UK. As Gareth noted in his blog post earlier today, we’ve release more than a hundred updates to GOV.UK since launch
- the Analytics and Reporting team have been following up the delivery of the Performance Platform by helping the GOV.UK team prioritise areas for improvement. That means looking at how millions of people are moving through the site to identify where to focus our energies
- Ben Terrett and I helped deliver a design summit at Number 10, running a series of workshops with students and tutors from the RCA and elsewhere to teach colleagues across government the core principles of service design
- we held the second ever Digital Advisory Board, the highlight of which was presentation about GOV.UK by Etienne Pollard
- the Inside Government team made some big updates to the tools departments will be using, and at the end of last week they posted a big update about what they’ve been up to on their blog. If you’re interested in the minutiae of their recent work it’s well worth a read
- and finally, a few of the GDS team got into the Halloween spirit by baking things. Frances brought in these zombie macarons, which looked disgusting, but tasted delicious
2 comments
Comment by Martin Cantor posted on
Quite apart from all the great work, which I love reading about - even some of the techie stuff that I don't begin to understand - I particularly like the pic of zombie macaroons. Not that I'm a big fan of the zombie craze (should be kept in the Caribbean) or Halloween (it was duck apple night when I was a kid). I just love the culture that sees government sharing this sort of office activity with pride rather than discomfort. I'll have to ask whether I can post a picture of my lunch on the Council's website. Keep it up team.
Comment by David posted on
"the Inside Government team made some big updates to the tools departments will be using, and at the end of last week they posted a big update <> about what they’ve been up to on their blog. If you’re interested in the minutiae of their recent work it’s well worth a read"
I'm sure it's a great read, but as an employee of HMRC, websites such as tumblr are blocked so unless I check at home I'll never actually know. Why not have all blogs on the cabinet office site so those working in Digital (as I do for HMRC) can actually see what is being written about and developed?