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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

#41

Post by davidy123 »

lode wrote: post #12
V__ wrote: post #3

The GOV.UK Design System team [1] is really doing great work. Wish there would be more like this from other governments. [1] https://design-system.service.gov.uk/design-system-team/ Edit: Apparently there are a lot! Really nice to see.

> Wish there would be more like this from other governments. There is: Argentina - https://argob.github.io/poncho/ Australia - https://gold.designsystemau.org/ Canada - https://design.gccollab.ca/ Czech Republic - https://designsystem.gov.cz/#/ Estonia - https://brand.estonia.ee/?lang=en Flanders - https://www.vlaanderen.be/digitaal-vlaanderen/onze-oplossing... France - https://www.systeme-de-design.gouv.fr/ Germany…

Thank you for this, but I guess it's out of date, for Canada at least it's now https://articles.alpha.canada.ca/forms-formulaires/

It went from DIY open source to something more like the UK's model; in fact Canada is running with a number of UK-origin projects & ideas, like Notify, which is of course a good thing, we should all learn from each other's best practices and innovations.

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

#42

Post by sofixa »

dgb23 wrote: post #36
Teandw wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal requirement in the UK. No way around it.

Even if you don't actually track users? > We use Google Analytics to measure how you use the website so we can improve it based on user needs. Google Analytics sets cookies that store anonymised information about how you got to the site, the blog pages you visit, how long you spend on each page and what you click on while you're visiting the site.

Why would they not track users? They need to know how many users there are accessing from abroad (considering this is the UK which has many legitimate "abroads" like crown dependencies outside of the classic British citizens living outside of Britain), using what browsers and OSes, display sizes to know what they need to support. It would also be useful to know how much time users spend on the various pages, to know if some forms are super complex to fill out or what not.

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

#43

Post by 46Bit »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #34
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.

Hoorah to that! We are lucky to have wonderful .gov services; highly available, accessible, frictionless, simple, informative, well written and bullshit-free. Maybe the best online central government services in the world - though I hear Estonia are a contender too. However I live in perpetual fear that at any moment some corrupt minister will do a deal with Microsoft and the Devil. Out will go plain HTML and common…

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.)

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

#45

Post by adamretter »

This looks great :-) However reading the How it works section, it states:

"Each form needs an email address to be set for completed forms to be sent to when they’re submitted"

So... erm is an email Inbox needed for integration? - how very 1990!

In addition to email, for use by developers in other UK GOV departments - surely HTTP PUT of an XML or JSON document to a user nominated URL (with provided auth token) would have been trivial to achieve?

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

#47

Post by myth2018 »

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.

> This is how internet services should look like.

Yes, definitely.

I've called UX designers out a couple times on the aesthetical complexity of their designs: if you award GOV.UK's quality a prize [0], why don't you mimic them instead of Google?

[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/govuk-wins-design-of-the-...

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

#48

Post by butterknife »

alt227 wrote: post #15
Sheeny96 wrote: post #5

Honestly, the people behind the scenes of gov uk are doing gods work. See nothing but great stuff coming out of there.

I fully agree. Two of my favourites: Holiday API I plug into every ecommerce site I work on: https://www.api.gov.uk/gds/bank-holidays/#bank-holidays Domain Email Security checker: https://emailsecuritycheck.service.ncsc.gov.uk/check Please share any other favourites!

DVLA VES. Never miss a car tax payment or MOT again.

https://developer-portal.driver-vehicle-licensing.api.gov.uk...

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

#49

Post by globalise83 »

adamretter wrote: post #45

This looks great :-) However reading the How it works section, it states: "Each form needs an email address to be set for completed forms to be sent to when they’re submitted" So... erm is an email Inbox needed for integration? - how very 1990! In addition to email, for use by developers in other UK GOV departments - surely HTTP PUT of an XML or JSON document to a user nominated URL (with provided auth token) would h…

You can optionally pass an onSubmit function that will return the fax number that the form should be submitted to after printing.

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

#50

Post by Aeolun »

46Bit wrote: post #43
nonrandomstring wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hoorah to that! We are lucky to have wonderful .gov services; highly available, accessible, frictionless, simple, informative, well written and bullshit-free. Maybe the best online central government services in the world - though I hear Estonia are a contender too. However I live in perpetual fear that at any moment some corrupt minister will do a deal with Microsoft and the Devil. Out will go plain HTML and common…

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.)

Like he said:

> a stronghold of common sense and decency

I get that OP was going for something else but…

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with those things when in the right hands.

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