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We’re opening up access to Gov.uk forms

gds.blog.gov.uk

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Re: We’re opening up access to Gov.uk forms

#161

Post by hgomersall »

gadders wrote: post #149
doublesocket wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flip side of this is local government technology. Truly some of the worst crimes against web development have been committed by local councils, or rather their outsourcing partners. The service that takes that crown in my experience is tarantopermits.com, a parking permit management system that fills me with rage just thinking about it.

It takes the piss that you have to pay to park outside your own house anyway. I mean, a nominal fee enough to correlate car registration with owners address, but not £210 like google told me it costs in Wandsworth. I bet about £10 of that goes to the council.

Why? Do you own that bit of road?

Re: We’re opening up access to Gov.uk forms

#162

Post by pc86 »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #137
cdogl wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should they instead invest time and public money into solving simple product problems (“how many times was this thing looked at?”) in a way that can be understood by the average desk worker? When that problem is well met by the private sector?

> Should they instead invest time and public money into solving simple product problems ... when that problem is well met by the private sector? I think the answer is yes, and in my earlier post said I'd actually be happy to give more money for government projects that protect peoples' privacy better. For me the problem is not "well met by the private sector" because that solution imposes a hidden externality upon th…

I'm not sure using Google Analytics qualifies as an "externality" but even if it does the UK government has proven time and time again it doesn't give a damn about anyone's privacy, so what makes you think any in-house version would be any better for privacy? Because it would certainly be worse from a technical standpoint.

Re: We’re opening up access to Gov.uk forms

#163

Post by joshxyz »

meindnoch wrote: post #21

When I moved to the UK, one of the surprising things was how well the GOV.UK ecosystem worked. My original country uses a mishmash of Java applets, ajax-based websites, and a mixture of mildly broken, outdated web technologies, served from a variety of domains. GOV.UK was a breath of fresh air with its simple, consistent UI, served as static HTML. This is how internet services should look like.

one of the many good measures of the company and country is their design system implementation.

love u gov.uk.

Re: We’re opening up access to Gov.uk forms

#164

Post by 6510 »

allan_s wrote: post #76
pjc50 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone uses Google Analytics. I don't find it particularly high up any list of real worries.

French government websites use matomo if i m not mistaken

https://commission.europa.eu/europa-analytics_en

Re: We’re opening up access to Gov.uk forms

#165

Post by sonthonax »

arpinum wrote: post #85
46Bit wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm, GOV.UK uses Google Analytics, Fastly CDN, AWS containers, and I believe is developing an app. (I worked at GDS until two years ago.)

gov.uk is not a monolith, different departments can make different decisions. There is no mandate for AWS containers or Fastly CDN.

They tend to use the tools provided by Government Digital Services.

Re: We’re opening up access to Gov.uk forms

#166

Post by nonrandomstring »

pc86 wrote: post #162
nonrandomstring wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should they instead invest time and public money into solving simple product problems ... when that problem is well met by the private sector? I think the answer is yes, and in my earlier post said I'd actually be happy to give more money for government projects that protect peoples' privacy better. For me the problem is not "well met by the private sector" because that solution imposes a hidden externality upon th…

I'm not sure using Google Analytics qualifies as an "externality" but even if it does the UK government has proven time and time again it doesn't give a damn about anyone's privacy, so what makes you think any in-house version would be any better for privacy? Because it would certainly be worse from a technical standpoint.

> what makes you think any in-house version would be any better for privacy?

Well, it's a personal value judgement what is "better" of course, but for me being British, I see my government as having some legitimate interest in what I am doing, especially when transacting with them.

On the other hand, a gargantuan for-profit American corporation that enriches it's shareholders and was once run by Eric Schmidt, whose legendary face-palm gaffes buried "Don't be Evil" under a smoking heap of sulphurous brimstone....

  "We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or
  less know what you’re thinking about"
No thanks!

My government may be a sneaky bunch of bastards, but so far they've had the good manners not to openly show utter contempt for privacy.

Re: We’re opening up access to Gov.uk forms

#167

Post by chinabot »

doublesocket wrote: post #140
dazc wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often wonder why so many Local Authorities and Gov Departments have to have their own unique web portals? There must be a massive cost-saving opportunity here.

Absolutely, there's massive duplication of functionality. I think it's partly incompetence and partly a control thing.

All a control thing, incompetence is just a side effect.

Re: We’re opening up access to Gov.uk forms

#168

Post by djhn »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #62
46Bit wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm, GOV.UK uses Google Analytics, Fastly CDN, AWS containers, and I believe is developing an app. (I worked at GDS until two years ago.)

Indeed, but everything still works for me even though much of that stuff is blackholed here. These are common efficiencies (mistakes on my opinion fwiw) and hopefully we can further improve data-leakage and bring even more things properly back in-house. Not to be too gushing or naive, I am quite aware that in the UK we recently "sold" big chunks of GCHQ to Amazon, so I'm not all wide eyed that parts of our government…

Sold parts of GCHQ? Could you elaborate? That sounds rather bad.

Re: We’re opening up access to Gov.uk forms

#169

Post by LeonardoTolstoy »

kaashif wrote: post #91
LeonardoTolstoy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved there from the US (and since then I've moved back). The main surprise was learning that working for the government is relatively high paying and considered a very nice and challenging job that great programmers coveted. At least that was my impression when a very good systems engineer workmate left my company to start working for gov.uk. I do wish there was a similar system in the US as I would find public se…

As someone from the UK, with friends who work as programmers in both the public and private sectors, I'm not sure what you're saying is true. It's definitely not highly paying to work for the government, although "relatively" may be doing the heavy lifting in that sentence.

I'm going off what I was told when I expressed surprise that such a good engineer would go for government work. Looking online it looks like they pay about median for a software engineer in London. And yeah, relatively here is basically meaning I was surprised you didn't have to take a pay cut to work for the government.

Re: We’re opening up access to Gov.uk forms

#170

Post by sofixa »

debugnik wrote: post #134
sofixa wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it really funny that it's published on GitHub with the MIT license, but with a disclaimer it's illegal to use it outside of government websites. It's great that it's publicly available, like many other public stuff the French Government is doing like https://beta.gouv.fr/ or the tax calculators, but it's still funny.

The conditions in the disclaimer only apply to the French government. Translated with Firefox (which apparently still makes some typos): > Conditions for the use of the Components by the Other Users > All Other Users are allowed to use the source code according to the terms of the MIT license. > Other Users are expressly reminded that any use of the Components outside the limits referred to herein or for the purpose…

> Prohibited Use Outside Government Websites

It explicitly states it's forbidden to be used by private actors.

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