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

Post by FuzzyDunlop » Wed, Oct 17, 2012, 4:21 PM UTC

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

    _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-26179049-1']);

Post by andyjohnson0 » Wed, Oct 17, 2012, 4:28 PM UTC

FuzzyDunlop wrote: post #31

Nursie wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

@andyjohnson0 - it's in there, around line 29 in the source. _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-26179049-1']); We're also referring to http://gov.uk , which is what the OP link refers to, not the OP link itself.

Post by meaty » Wed, Oct 17, 2012, 4:37 PM UTC

weavejester wrote: post #19

meaty wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I haven't noticed a huge shortage of Ruby on Rails devs in London, and the average salaries don't reflect a major shortage either. According to itjobswatch.co.uk, the average Ruby salary is the same as the average Java salary in London. I also thought the idea of hiring cheap, sub-par developers as a way of saving costs was somewhat discredited by now.

Post by Nursie » Wed, Oct 17, 2012, 4:42 PM UTC

sycren wrote: post #32

Nursie wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 req…

Is there not a separate deal for Governments and Educational Institutes with Google to negate this?

Post by shrikant » Wed, Oct 17, 2012, 4:55 PM UTC

meaty wrote: post #35

weavejester wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't noticed a huge shortage of Ruby on Rails devs in London, and the average salaries don't reflect a major shortage either. According to itjobswatch.co.uk, the average Ruby salary is the same as the average Java salary in London. I also thought the idea of hiring cheap, sub-par developers as a way of saving costs was somewhat discredited by now.

Thats advertised rates. The actual rates are higher or you lose people before you get a chance to offer a place to them. We employ starting at £50,000 and we still lose 80% of our candidates to better cash sums.