Earlier this week the the final ministerial department joined GOV.UK. This isn't the end of the GOV.UK story; in fact it's barely the end of the beginning. But today is still a big moment, the result of commitment and collaboration …
We’ve talked about our initial analysis, our design rules and our technology. This post is about how we tried to get from those starting points to that technology — to the built thing — which is what you can see …
This is a short post about a huge topic: what government should do to consult, engage and involve people more openly in the work it does, online. Consultation is a big part of government. Doing it better online is a …
As mentioned in other blogs, one of the first and primary tasks for the Alphagov project was to build a site that provided the information and services users need. So where were we going for the evidence? Within the timescale …
Just as there are trends in technology, there are fashions in project management and some feel that agile is poorly suited to government and is just a fad. One of the principle objectives for this project was to demonstrate that …
It is always easier to sketch out a page design rather than build straight out or do a detailed mockup - it is lower cost and gives everyone a common thing to frame discussions around. Here are a few of …
The blank slate the Alpha.gov.uk team was handed was a huge privilege, but threw up some unusual technical challenges. Normally when embarking on building web apps you'd expect to have some sense of the corpus of content or the core …
Alpha.gov.uk is a demonstration of what a single central Government site could be. It's not Business Link, it's not Directgov, it's not any specific department or Government agency – but at the same time it represents all of those, and …
We knew very early on that Alpha.gov.uk was going to work best if it had a sense of where in the country (or world) its visitors are coming from. Knowing that means it can provide you with information on where …
It's all too easy to get caught up in the excitement of launching a new site full of interesting new stuff. If you're not careful, you can miss the bigger picture. You can get lost in the wondrous geekiness of …
Read GDS’s recent blog post for an update on our one login for government programme, including live beta, onboarding and feature development.
If you’re interested in joining us, check out all open opportunities on the GDS careers site.