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Posts from the ‘GDS’ Category

May 17

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This week at GDS

Highlights: The 1000th code release on GOV.UK – that’s about seven every working day. We also created a team within HMRC to extend the way we’ve been working out into departments. At our big monthly team meeting on Wednesday we heard from the Student Loans Company about the great work they’ve been doing to transform their transactions. We also saw the launch of the Digital Skills Alliance, led by Martha Lane Fox at the Go ON UK Trust. Next week we’ve got our regular digital leaders’ meeting on Wednesday and a major release of new guidance for CTOs which will form part of our digital by default service standard. We’ve also got more new starters in the team, and continue with our progress on the 25 exemplar service projects. As part of this I’m going up to the north-east to meet DWP and HMRC, and while up there I’m speaking at the Thinking Digital conference.

Full transcript below.

May 14

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How GDS is working to help small businesses

David Thorpe writes in response to yesterday’s report by Lord Young on support for smaller businesses.

Yesterday Lord Young released Growing Your Business, the second instalment of his report on small firms. The report looks at ways to help small firms grow. Record numbers of people are starting a business each year, joining a community of over 4.8 million firms in the UK today. Of these, 3.6 million are sole traders.

Lord Young’s report identifies just how much complexity, cost and inconsistency hinders Small to Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurs. GDS is making its contribution through GOV.UK with its focus on user needs and delivering simpler, clearer and faster information and services. Read more

May 10

This week at GDS

Highlights: Progress this week on a new supplier framework, approaching launch around the end of this month, which will provide the whole of government with access to a broader range of digital and agile suppliers. GDS have also been working closely with the Student Loans Company in their selection of a technical transformation partner. The Digital Advisory Board also met this week. Next week, the monthly all-staff meeting will see updates from all the different projects and workstreams across GDS.

Full transcript below.

May 10

Analysing the format of Inside Government’s Policies

I’ve recently been embedded with the Inside Government team to work on understanding user behaviour through data analysis. One of my first tasks was to investigate the way that policies are being used and to identify any interesting or notable conclusions. Here’s an example of the format of a policy:

Example policy page

The content explorer provides a very useful snapshot of how the policy content is performing. But I wanted to dig further down into the data.

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May 3

This week at GDS

Highlights: A very big week, as we marked the 24th and last of the ministerial departments moving to Inside Gov. The numbers that describe the volume of activity over the last six months are incredible – and thanks go to so many of the team who’ve worked hard to make this happen. Other notable things this week have been GDS participation in a cross-government major project review – working with Defra to answer for performance in and around our work with the Rural Payments Agency, one of our first exemplar services. We also had the opportunity at the Public Sector Show this week to talk to counterparts looking at digital services in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Full transcript below.

Apr 30

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No 10 and the DPM move to GOV.UK

Today, the offices of the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister join every ministerial department on the Inside Government section of GOV.UK. Anthony Simon, Downing Street’s head of digital communications explains more.

If you’re familiar with the format of ministerial departments in their new online home on Inside Government, then you’ll probably notice some differences in the way that content for the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister is presented.

Number 10 performs a vital role in communicating news and information about the activity of the Prime Minister, which needs to be reflected online. But it must also acknowledge the rich history of 10 Downing Street, which boasts 275 years as the official residence of each of the UK’s 53 Prime Ministers.

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Apr 30

Neil_Graphic
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24 departments later

Martha said we needed a revolution.

As of this moment, 10 Downing Street, the Deputy PM’s office, all 24 of the UK’s central government departments and its embassies around the world are now sharing a single, joined-up presence on the web at www.gov.uk/government.

Today marks the end of a 6-month transition led by GDS and involving many talented digital teams, policy experts, project managers and content editors across Whitehall to merge these 26 domains (and a few more besides) into one. Together, we have published over 50,000 pages of web content, weeded out 116,000 pages and files, and redirected 275,000 URLs from old sites to their new home on GOV.UK.

It was a herculean task, and everyone who has worked on it deserves to feel immensely proud of themselves.

As well as reaching the end of that journey, today is the beginning of a new era in the relationship between government and the public.

If we’ve done our job right, most people won’t notice quite how big a change has just occurred. But those of us who are close to the project know just how profound it is.

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Apr 29

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Meet the User research team

Today marks the return of our occasional series of videos introducing GDS teams. So far, we’ve introduced the Transformation team, the Finance team and the Hosting and Infrastructure team, and shone the Spotlight on procurement. Now we’d like to give you a quick look at the work of the GDS User research team.

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Apr 26

This week at GDS

Highlights: This week we visited the DVLA in Swansea, went to their executive board and met the team working on 1 of the 23 exemplar transactions which are being redesigned to meet the digital by default service standard. DfE (Department for Education) and HMT (Her Majesty’s Treasury) became numbers 22 and 23 out of the 24 central government departments moving to GOV.UK. We also visited the House of Lords to explain the changes to the identity scheme. Next week we move the 24th and final department site to GOV.UK, and there will be a special announcement mid week so keep your eyes on this blog… Read more

Apr 19

This week at GDS

Highlights – this week marks 6 months of GOV.UK, with some great statistics including 187 million visits to the site and 546 million page views since launch. We were really pleased this week to be chosen by the Design Museum as their Design of the Year 2013 – not just for the team in GDS, but for all the departments who’ve been supporting work on GOV.UK. The Digital by Default Service Manual was also launched this week; we’d love your feedback – get in touch through the site. And another big departmental move to Inside Government, with DWP’s corporate content coming over.

Next week sees two more departments moving over: Treasury and Education, and we’re also holding the monthly meeting of departmental Digital Leaders. On the agenda are a presentation from Tim Brooks, from our Digital Advisory Board, and a look at training for service managers. We’ve also got some international visitors, including ministers from Indonesia and South Africa.

(Full transcript below)

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