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How to make a great government website

asteriskmag.com

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Re: How to make a great government website

#31

Post by kennydude »

hnlmorg wrote: post #21
0xWTF wrote: post #2

Dave Guarino needs to read Seeing Like a State, Seeing Like a Bank, and Seeing Like a Data Structure. And then write his own Seeing Like a Government Website. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300078152/seeing-like-a-... https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/seeing-like-a-bank/ https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/seeing-data-structu...

The UK government have one: https://www.gov.uk/service-manual Specifically the “design” section for our current context.

The UK Government's efforts to make their services digital, easy to understand and workable is such a great effort. The digital department also has many common tools to help such as notifications, forms, payments as integratable APIs instead of each government unit needing to procure this (at great cost) themselves!

Re: How to make a great government website

#32

Post by 8organicbits »

bruce511 wrote: post #16

Hardware. Lots of hardware. The first law of govt sites is insanely high usage, clustered around very specific date and times. The first rule of govt websites is "thou shalt not crash". For startup folks dreaming of growing a single horn, over provisioning is an indulgence, scaling design an all-too-often vanity. But govt sites should be designed for insane scale from day 1.

Scale from day one is a good point. Unlike a commercial website, users are required to use a government website (or use a paper equivalent) so usage can rapidly jump from zero to every citizen.

In the US, Federal government websites total over a billion sessions per month [1].

[1] https://analytics.usa.gov/

Re: How to make a great government website

#33

Post by wizzwizz4 »

ozr wrote: post #9
davisr wrote: post #3

Ctr+F "javascript" -- no results. Hmm, if a government website necessitates the use of JavaScript, I'd consider that a hallmark of being awful.

It's 2024. We've got to stop with the not everyone has javascript meme. Anyone browsing the internet without it at this point is doing it intentionally to be special.

https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/technology/using-progressi...

> You should not assume the reason for designing a service that works without CSS or JavaScript is because a user chooses to switch these off.

> There are many situations when extra layers can fail to load or are filtered, for example:

https://technology.blog.gov.uk/2016/09/19/why-we-use-progres...

> It’s important to understand that it’s often not the conscious choice of users to arrive at your site without JavaScript. We did some research and discovered that 0.9% GOV.UK visits are by people who don’t have JavaScript available and haven’t chosen to turn it off.

Re: How to make a great government website

#34

Post by jpmoral »

sgu999 wrote: post #24

How to not make great government websites: use random domain names instead of a single dedicated tld, different contractors and design for each, make sure there's enough overlap in functionality in-between each of them, and then regularly remind everyone that it's very easy to scam you with fishing attacks. Here are just some of the official French websites: service-public.fr impots.gouv.fr gouvernement.fr ameli.fr v…

How about the totally not-dodgy-sounding ustraveldocs dot com?

Re: How to make a great government website

#36

Post by simonbarker87 »

kennydude wrote: post #31
hnlmorg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK government have one: https://www.gov.uk/service-manual Specifically the “design” section for our current context.

The UK Government's efforts to make their services digital, easy to understand and workable is such a great effort. The digital department also has many common tools to help such as notifications, forms, payments as integratable APIs instead of each government unit needing to procure this (at great cost) themselves!

My favourite API endpoint on the internet is

https://www.gov.uk/bank-holidays.json

an always up to date list of public holidays, makes automated workload planning and working day delivery calculations so much more reliable in our internal app.

Re: How to make a great government website

#37

Post by 8organicbits »

danpalmer wrote: post #17
bruce511 wrote: post #16

Hardware. Lots of hardware. The first law of govt sites is insanely high usage, clustered around very specific date and times. The first rule of govt websites is "thou shalt not crash". For startup folks dreaming of growing a single horn, over provisioning is an indulgence, scaling design an all-too-often vanity. But govt sites should be designed for insane scale from day 1.

I disagree. Most content on government sites is static content, you could fairly easily deliver much of that to a large population with relatively little hardware, assuming the software is developed such that static delivery is possible. There are "processes" that people need to complete, but these are typically life-changing processes, things you do once in your life, or maybe once a year at most. Even if those are…

> things you do once in your life, or maybe once a year at most

I don't think that's the case. Analytics [1] for the top web pages in the US Federal government are:

* GSA advantage - a search tool * Visa instructions - static? * USPS tracking - a search tool * ESTA application - a form * NWS Radar - weather radar * Sex offender registry - search tool

Checking the weather or shipping a package are much more common than yearly activities.

Of course anything that is static will be behind some sort of cache, but the DevOps team is focused on scaling the dynamic parts.

[1] https://analytics.usa.gov/

Re: How to make a great government website

#38

Post by cnity »

jpmoral wrote: post #34
sgu999 wrote: post #24

How to not make great government websites: use random domain names instead of a single dedicated tld, different contractors and design for each, make sure there's enough overlap in functionality in-between each of them, and then regularly remind everyone that it's very easy to scam you with fishing attacks. Here are just some of the official French websites: service-public.fr impots.gouv.fr gouvernement.fr ameli.fr v…

How about the totally not-dodgy-sounding ustraveldocs dot com?

It says "Official U.S. Department of State Visa Appointment Service" right there at the top. It even has the US flag emoji so it is clearly legit.

Re: How to make a great government website

#39

Post by cs02rm0 »

cnity wrote: post #38
jpmoral wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the totally not-dodgy-sounding ustraveldocs dot com?

It says "Official U.S. Department of State Visa Appointment Service" right there at the top. It even has the US flag emoji so it is clearly legit.

Clearly. :)

Re: How to make a great government website

#40

Post by red_admiral »

> When we started working on GetCalFresh, the online application was about 200 questions across 50 or so screens.

And that is why people who want to send you marketing e-mail have literally a single field: e-mail address. Not even a 2nd field "name" so they can send you personalized email, or "date of birth" so they can send you special offers for your birthday.

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