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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

#71

Post by londons_explore »

nicoburns wrote: post #32
alt227 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Yes: a plain JSON endpoint with no authentication! It's the perfect way of exposing this kind of data.

I wonder how the backend works... Is it a microservice which queries over a globally distributed 'bank holidays' database, which has a frontend for some admin to add/remove bank holidays, and perhaps a custom approval workflow to approve/deny bank holidays, and maybe a system to make new bank holidays 'go live' on a certain date/time?

Or is it just a static file someone wrote in vim and checked into git which got hosted as a static asset?

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

#72

Post by alias_neo »

pjc50 wrote: post #59
alias_neo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Indeed, there are others such as the queen's funeral. Bunting is reserved for celebrations.

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

#73

Post by londons_explore »

Aeolun wrote: post #61
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.

That seems unenforcable under a MIT license? Especially outside of France.

Governments can write laws to do whatever they like... And they have police to enforce stuff however they like.

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

#74

Post by switch007 »

imdsm wrote: post #17
switch007 wrote: post #11

One niggle I have is the departments’ over-use of forms (from my perspective) in employing the ‘landing page’ pattern. E.g. if you search ‘DVLA vehicle information’, you will land on this page https://www.gov.uk/get-vehicle-information-from-dvla and you have to click ‘Start Now’ to get the page you actually wanted. The same is for logging in to HMRC Personal Tax I’d like the actual form I want on the same page

I can understand that, but I think it's very subjective. For example, it's an opportunity to explain what the form is, and give any other information (do you need the form? do you need something else?) before the option of, if you're in the right place, click here to begin. I think ultimately, it works quite well.

I do see it from both sides, definitely. It’s just as a frequent user, it gets in the way. Once you understand what the form does, you don’t really need to be told every time.

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

#75

Post by Chaosvex »

LeonardoTolstoy wrote: post #64
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.

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…

This is definitely not true. Developers are better off in the private sector and I've never heard of any developer regard working for the government as coveted or prestigious.

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

#76

Post by allan_s »

pjc50 wrote: post #53
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.)

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

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

#77

Post by switch007 »

Teandw wrote: post #31
azangru wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No frills or silly scroll jacking animations plus javascript hogging contraptions that we see in almost all websites these days. Still the cookie warnings though :-( I've just visited on my phone the forms page linked in the title, and the first thing that greeted me was a full-screen page-blocking dialog with some cookie nonsense. You can't interact with the contents of the page until you decide how you feel about…

Legal requirement in the UK. No way around it.

Only if you store non-essential cookies, as explained by the team themselves:

> You can choose not to have a cookie banner if the service only sets essential or ‘strictly necessary’ cookies, as these do not need user consent.

> However, you must tell users that you set essential cookies. You can do this with a cookies page — link to this page in the footer.

https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/cookie-banne...

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

#78

Post by londons_explore »

moritonal wrote: post #60
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.

It's a standardized queue with a lot of features too...

You can set up filters and forwarding rules. It doesn't require a programmer or special knowledge to do so.

The queue can be viewed by one or many humans.

Messages don't have to be dealt with in-order.

read/unread state, stars, labels, drafts all allow construction of advanced workflows with no specialist knowledge.

Sure, all these things can be done better with special software, but there is a massive benefit to something that all your existing untrained and probably-not-well-paid employees can set up themselves.

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

#79

Post by svilen_dobrev »

if only this short "manual on how to make maintainable-software" below was a) studied and b) followed ... the software-world would be much-much better place. (and Avoiding the several-years-learning-500-pages-books-by-heart.. without ever understanding why those are what they are)

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

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

#80

Post by PaulHoule »

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.)

It's the HTML forms that are good and Angular, React and all that which are bad.
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