This week, Kathy Settle, GDS' Director of Digital Policy and Departmental Engagement, talks about our biggest day of traffic to GOV.UK since launch, news of an award nomination for the Office of the Public Guardian and welcomes visitors from Identity Assurance programmes worldwide to GDS.
Follow Kathy on twitter: @Kathy_Settle
Transcript
Interviewer:
Hello Kathy.
Kathy Settle:
Hi, Matt.
Interviewer:
What have you been up to at GDS in the last week?
Kathy:
Quite a lot of stuff, but the first one I’ll start with is GOV.UK. Actually, we had, last Monday, 2 million visits in one day to GOV.UK, which is our highest single day of traffic, which is fantastic.
What do we think the causes are? Well, we always get a spike, anyway, at the end of the month, when everybody applies for their car tax. There were some changes to the minimum wage, as well, I think that might have affected it.
Probably, maybe the biggest one was the Royal Mail share offer, and people finding out information about that. It was great to see that so many people still want to come and visit our site.
Interviewer:
Other teams, outside of GDS had some good news, as well?
Kathy:
Many congratulations to the Lasting Power of Attorney team, as part of the Office of the Public Guardian, sits as one of the agencies of the Ministry of Justice. They were shortlisted for a civil service award, so it's brilliant news for them. The winners will be revealed on 21 November, so fingers crossed.
Also, we have the National Archives. They have got an exemption from GOV.UK, so they’re keeping their own website. They’ve done a whole revamp, and launched their new site, as well, last week. You can find that at nationalarchives.gov.uk. So, well done to them.
Interviewer:
You’ve got some visitors to GDS later this week?
Kathy:
We have, we’ve got a few visitors. The first lot are coming to see our Identity Assurance programme, headed by Chris Ferguson. We’ve got colleagues there from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Japan, New Zealand, Sweden, Australia. A whole heap of people coming. They’re discussing progress on the identity assurance programme that they’re all making, and sharing learning. So we should get some really good information from them.
The other visitor is Glen Archer. Glen is the Chief Information Officer for Australia, and he’s coming over for a few days this week, meeting people from GDS and from departments, so welcome to him.
Interviewer:
As ever, we’ve got some new starters, this week?
Kathy:
We have, we’ve got six people this week. Today, we’re going to focus on Jess Perriam. Jess is a user researcher and she’s joining the Opening Standards team. So welcome to Jess, and all the other new starters.
Interviewer:
Until next time.
Kathy:
Until next week.
