Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gov.uk Platform as a Service

cloud.service.gov.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 126 posts

Re: Gov.uk Platform as a Service

#41

Post by toyg »

dariosalvi78 wrote: post #37

I had to deal with public administration in the UK, Italy, Spain and Sweden. The UK one is probably the easiest to use. You can definitely see that there is an excellent team behind.

There is one weakness, in my opinion, but it's not the service's fault as much as a national problem: identification is still messy. Whereas most continental administration have standardized on some sort of electronic-signature standard (which can be used to communicate safely and reliably as well as signing actual documents), the UK has not. The result is that the ID system is still excessively amenable to fraud and prone to problems identifying complex identities across all services.

This seems to be a national issue though, akin to the rejection of ID cards.

Re: Gov.uk Platform as a Service

#42

Post by legostormtroopr »

londons_explore wrote: post #28
ale42 wrote: post #7

"The platform is hosted on Amazon Web Services in the UK"... (see the beginning at https://www.cloud.service.gov.uk/features/ )

But when it gets big enough, it might be worth the government spinning up their own hardware and competing. Are there any other cloud providers who have started by reselling another cloud providers products? Even as a reseller they ought to be able to make a decent profit by relying on volume discounts.

Probably not - this is probbaly done to ensure apps are hosted correctly, and conform to specific security requirements while also being easy to deploy and maintain.

I doubt the UK government is interested in setting up competing infrastructure.

Re: Gov.uk Platform as a Service

#43

Post by rswail »

chrisseaton wrote: post #27
toyg wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit where credit is due, this is the legacy of the Cameron government (although the conversation started under Brown, iirc, it was the first Cameron cabinet that really pushed it, by basically setting up a skunkworks group that answered directly to the PM). The efficacy and power of GDS has since ebbed and flowed, but clearly they managed to entrench some great practices that continue to this day.

> setting up a skunkworks group that answered directly to the PM Isn't that massively excessive? Why does the Prime Minister need to be spending his time listening to a report direct from a team implementing software services?

Effectively it was in the PM's department directly, which means it was not subject to cross-department jealousies etc. Watch some series of Yes Minister, even though set in the 1970s and 80s, it's still all true.

Re: Gov.uk Platform as a Service

#44

Post by jayflux »

dan_pixelflow wrote: post #21

A bit off-topic, but gov.uk is quickly improving into an actual usable site. The GDS (Government Digital Service [0]) and the GDS (Government Design System [1]) - who run the posted link too - are doing a great job. Want to renew my passport? Easy, same UI/UX for getting a drone license, taxing my car and filing for benefits. Want to renew my driving license? Well, that's yet to move from the old DVLA site, but it's…

> A bit off-topic, but gov.uk is quickly improving into an actual usable site

Where've you been?

Agree with your points but the things you mention have been around for almost 10 years now (driving license/passport renewal easy UX etc). I renewed my passport around 7 years ago and it was much easier to use then. It's true there's some services that tail off into the older systems (and you can tell), but the modern things gov.uk has owned have always been good since launch.

Re: Gov.uk Platform as a Service

#46

Post by llampx »

somnium_sn wrote: post #26
dan_pixelflow wrote: post #21

A bit off-topic, but gov.uk is quickly improving into an actual usable site. The GDS (Government Digital Service [0]) and the GDS (Government Design System [1]) - who run the posted link too - are doing a great job. Want to renew my passport? Easy, same UI/UX for getting a drone license, taxing my car and filing for benefits. Want to renew my driving license? Well, that's yet to move from the old DVLA site, but it's…

I've moved from Germany to the US and then to the UK. gov.uk is by far the most impressive government website i've encountered. Accessible, consistent and just works. Really a good show of what a government website can offer if done right.

The German idea of an online platform is a website developed by Telekom (outsourced by them to the lowest bidder) which makes available the fax number of the Behörde, and the timings that the fax machine will receive incoming faxes.

Re: Gov.uk Platform as a Service

#48

Post by Zenst »

toyg wrote: post #25
dan_pixelflow wrote: post #21

A bit off-topic, but gov.uk is quickly improving into an actual usable site. The GDS (Government Digital Service [0]) and the GDS (Government Design System [1]) - who run the posted link too - are doing a great job. Want to renew my passport? Easy, same UI/UX for getting a drone license, taxing my car and filing for benefits. Want to renew my driving license? Well, that's yet to move from the old DVLA site, but it's…

Credit where credit is due, this is the legacy of the Cameron government (although the conversation started under Brown, iirc, it was the first Cameron cabinet that really pushed it, by basically setting up a skunkworks group that answered directly to the PM). The efficacy and power of GDS has since ebbed and flowed, but clearly they managed to entrench some great practices that continue to this day.

I recall GDS being initiated for internal DOH stuff circa John Major, going into Blair era (yip was there when Blair took over the role).

Not that I'd attribute it to any PM, believe it was driven by the government security services (which department/flavor I could not say).

That all said, it may of been a different aspect but certainly has a longer story than told. With that, it started as an intranet project iirc.

https://gds.blog.gov.uk/story/ has some insight but that seems more to cover the more public web aspects and even they say it is "a story" not "the story".

So be fascinating to peace the "full story" and history together.

GDS was a whole catchment in the early days, that included the phone services and that was contracted to Mercury telecom at one stage, or aspects were. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_Communications

If any credit should be laid, it would be upon the civil servants and associates that came up with the initiative, who sadly will probably remain nameless even if their names were known. Politicians just green light so much and claim credit, so much goes on behind the scenes of any government. With that, best think of politicians as orchestra conductors who depend upon musicians knowing how to do things, often able to do things right without eye sight of the conductors at times.

Re: Gov.uk Platform as a Service

#49

Post by reallydontask »

trhoad wrote: post #38

If anyone is interested in doing similar work at UK Parliament, we're on the same journey that UK Gov are on, although not quite as advanced yet so there's a lot of scope to shape what we're working on from an early stage: https://www.parliament.uk/about/working/jobs/

Enterprise architect at £50-60k per year seems like a role that has been put on the jobs website to provide evidence that it cannot be filled and thus can go to a service company rather than an honest expectation of getting any realistic candidates

Maybe I'm being too cynical

Re: Gov.uk Platform as a Service

#50

Post by heurisko »

toyg wrote: post #25
dan_pixelflow wrote: post #21

A bit off-topic, but gov.uk is quickly improving into an actual usable site. The GDS (Government Digital Service [0]) and the GDS (Government Design System [1]) - who run the posted link too - are doing a great job. Want to renew my passport? Easy, same UI/UX for getting a drone license, taxing my car and filing for benefits. Want to renew my driving license? Well, that's yet to move from the old DVLA site, but it's…

Credit where credit is due, this is the legacy of the Cameron government (although the conversation started under Brown, iirc, it was the first Cameron cabinet that really pushed it, by basically setting up a skunkworks group that answered directly to the PM). The efficacy and power of GDS has since ebbed and flowed, but clearly they managed to entrench some great practices that continue to this day.

The Cameron government learned the lessons of the massively wasteful failed IT projects from the Blair era (see Fujitsu NHS contract).

The GDS started well, but I don't think the GDS can continue to cruise on its earlier reputation. It too has started to fall back into the bad old days of massively wasteful projects with unclear scope, such as the Verify system, that is absorbing hundreds of millions of pounds for dubious benefit [1].

"Unfortunately, Verify is also an example of many of the failings in major programmes that we often see, including optimism bias and failure to set clear objectives." [2]

I think the idea of GDS is a good one, but evidently it needs to continue to reevaluate itself to avoid regressing into what it was originally setup to avoid.

[1] https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Back-to-the-past-with... [2] https://www.nao.org.uk/report/investigation-into-verify/

Post reply on HN