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

GOV.UK: new government site built with open source software, £70 million cheaper

digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 47 posts

Re: GOV.UK: new government site built with open source software, £70 million cheaper

#21

Post by Nursie »

benblack86 wrote: post #18
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty important point IMO. Why couldn't they use a local analytics system? Perhaps partner with one of the OS analytics like Piwik? Edit: Um, I just looked, they don't appear to be using GA but a local system already?

Why is it important to use a local system? What is wrong with using the best system for the job wherever in the world it comes from?

Because it's important that recorded information about my interactions with my government doesn't cross borders and escape from the data protection laws in the UK and the EU.

If it was a traditional software system that actually ran on the servers owned by the government then that would be fine.

With GA, at the very least Google get to know when I visit the site, and likely which pages I visit, simply through the requests my browser makes.

I'm not familiar enough with GA to be able to judge how much else is transmitted to them.

Re: GOV.UK: new government site built with open source software, £70 million cheaper

#22

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

meaty wrote: post #7
cangencer wrote: post #3

For the curious, here is the tech stack: http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/govuk-launch-colophon/

So every fad platform you could possibly imagine. I reckon that the savings are up front but will cost a fortune in the long run and there are virtually no staff in the UK who can support it.

> there are virtually no staff in the UK who can support it.

On the contrary, for at least one of the less well-known platforms, RabbitMQ, they are based in London: http://www.rabbitmq.com/contact.html

Saying that you can't get ruby devs in the UK is also not true.

Re: GOV.UK: new government site built with open source software, £70 million cheaper

#23

Post by [deleted] »

meaty wrote: post #7
cangencer wrote: post #3

For the curious, here is the tech stack: http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/govuk-launch-colophon/

So every fad platform you could possibly imagine. I reckon that the savings are up front but will cost a fortune in the long run and there are virtually no staff in the UK who can support it.

[deleted]

Re: GOV.UK: new government site built with open source software, £70 million cheaper

#24

Post by mtgx »

benblack86 wrote: post #18
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty important point IMO. Why couldn't they use a local analytics system? Perhaps partner with one of the OS analytics like Piwik? Edit: Um, I just looked, they don't appear to be using GA but a local system already?

Why is it important to use a local system? What is wrong with using the best system for the job wherever in the world it comes from?

Because US can use the Patriot Act to get cloud data about foreign users. That's why.

Re: GOV.UK: new government site built with open source software, £70 million cheaper

#26

Post by arctangent »

meaty wrote: post #11
nicholassmith wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Aside from Scala and RabbitMQ I know at least a dozen developers with skill sets in the rest of the technologies, and that's in my very small neck of the woods in the darkest North East England.

Demand is greater than supply in London, which is a big issue. It turns people towards high salary bidding wars, which to be honest offsets the saving.

When I interviewed with the GOV.UK people in January it turned out that the seemingly good salary they were offering was actually about the same as I'm currently paid up here in Leeds. However, the pension element of the compensation was relatively generous.

Re: GOV.UK: new government site built with open source software, £70 million cheaper

#27

Post by macavity23 »

Nursie wrote: post #2

Awesome. Except for loading in google analytics. I'd really rather that my interactions with my government were not reported to a US based megacorp.

Easy to disable in your browser, e.g. by using the Ghostery extension.

Re: GOV.UK: new government site built with open source software, £70 million cheaper

#29

Post by andyjohnson0 »

Nursie wrote: post #17
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty important point IMO. Why couldn't they use a local analytics system? Perhaps partner with one of the OS analytics like Piwik? Edit: Um, I just looked, they don't appear to be using GA but a local system already?

Err... Still there when I look at the page source for the front page at https://www.gov.uk

Edit: Ignore this, its wrong. I was looking in the wrong place. Should have been http://gov.uk.

I've just (17:10 utc) at the source for http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/ and http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2012/10/16/gov-uk-the-st... there is only one occurrence of the string "google" in the page, and that is is link to a font called 'cabin':

http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Cabin:bold type='text/css' media='all' />

Doesn't look like they are using google analytics to me, at least not now.

Post reply on HN