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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

#51

Post by lambic »

sofixa wrote: post #42
dgb23 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sure, but why use google analytics? There are better trackers for this kind of thing that don't need cookies and can be self-hosted.

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

#52

Post by dalbasal »

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.)

IDK if those are, in themselves, indicators. The idea is not purity. The idea is for technical common sense to win over sales/consultant-led architecture.

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

#53

Post by pjc50 »

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.)

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

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

#54

Post by motogpjimbo »

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…

It looks like this service is intended to replace the kind of random "notify us of a missing manhole cover" type forms that are found in their thousands on government websites. For those types of applications, emailing the form to a relevant mailbox is probably the correct thing to do, and in many cases it's the way the existing forms already work. Only a small fraction of government services will have their own custom backend application supporting them.

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

#55

Post by pjc50 »

myth2018 wrote: post #47
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-...

The GOVUK deliberately bare branding serves a purpose similar to the old Tesco Value branding: to make it look austere. If it looked luxurious people would be more likely to complain about taxpayer's money being wasted.

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

#56

Post by manojlds »

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.

My first disappoint in the UK was the DVLA where I was sent to the older form.

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

#57

Post by Aeolun »

blitzar wrote: post #38
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.

> the people behind the scenes of gov uk Those would be the people commonly refered to as incompetent traitorous woke lefty cultural marxists refusing to do the will of the people by the fair and balanced media.

That sounds like the UK media alright. If you take one look at a newspaper stand on any day of the week you’d think the sky was falling.

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

#58

Post by mhitza »

mortallywounded wrote: post #33

I was surprised to see a gov.uk page on progressive enhancement and their thoughts on it ( https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/technology/using-progressi... ). I asked on HN yesterday if PE was dead and everyone seems to think it's dead, and yet gov.uk gets lots of love. Maybe it's not dead :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37779408

Please refrain from talking in absolutes, when you got 3 comments on your question yesterday.

Progressive enhancement is nice, and user friendly, and better UX overall. But when you get started with modern frontend stacks nowadays it's out of the question. Whereas, I and others like me, that use a classical backend framework that spits out HTML might do a better job (but not always, due to time and budget).

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

#59

Post by pjc50 »

alias_neo wrote: post #26
pnut wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that the UK government's bank holiday API has bunting advice just makes my day.

Where did you find this? Is it part of the API response? Would be fun to use this for some digital decor at home. Next bank holiday is Christmas so I've got some time to build something! EDIT: Just found it in the JSON; shame, was hoping it would contain bunting patterns/colours. https://www.gov.uk/bank-holidays.json

It looks like that's only false for Good Friday, which I suppose makes sense that as a Christian you don't "celebrate" the execution of Jesus.

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

#60

Post by moritonal »

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…

I get the sentiment, but an email is just a standardised queue. What were you going to do after the HTTP PUT? My guess is it onto a queue.
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