Dec 13
It’s been a whole month since the Departments for Transport and Communities and Local Government moved over to GOV.UK. That kicked off a process which will see around 300 departments and agencies joining the site by April 2014.
Today 11 more organisations will be moving to GOV.UK, including big names like the Ministry of Defence and Foreign Office. All this means lots more policies, lots more content, and lots more users for Inside Government. Read more
Dec 12
Earlier this year James Weiner and Ben Welby wrote about the browsers and devices that we are supporting on GOV.UK. We made these decisions using browser/device data from various sources including Directgov, BusinessLink, central government departments and several other big sites.
Now that GOV.UK has been getting real traffic for a while, we are starting to gather our own usage data. I wanted to share quick snapshot of the data so far. The figures we’ve collected aren’t much different from what we expected before launch.
Now that GOV.UK has replaced Directgov and BusinessLink, and departments are moving to Inside Government, we want to make sure that people visiting links to the old sites get where they need to be. We want them to be redirected to the correct page on GOV.UK, with no link left behind.
This post is about the tools we built to make that possible. Read more
Nov 28
We’ve been monitoring the volume of traffic to GOV.UK since launch. We want to ensure that the people who used to rely on Directgov and Business Link can still find the reliable and authoritative information and services they need.
As the GOV.UK dashboard shows, and some followers have commented, the numbers of visits and unique visitors have fallen since the first week after launch. So what’s been going on? Read more
Nov 27
Janet wrote recently about how we’re presenting policy differently on Inside Government, but what does that mean for individual departments? Paola Wright, Online Policy Desk Officer for the Ministry of Defence (MOD), explains the impact it has had on their work.
After nearly two months of work, all of our policies at MOD are just about ready to be published on GOV.UK. It’s taken a lot of hard graft, in a very short space of time, and it’s meant big changes to how we approach policy. Although there have been a few hiccups along the way, it’s been a success story. Read more
Imagine that you are a violin maker, and you have only a chisel and a hacksaw. With such inappropriate tools, you’re going to either a) make a really shoddy violin, b) spend an age trying to get the tools to work, or c) develop some tools that are better suited to violin making.
I work on the infrastructure of GOV.UK, and in the infrastructure team we are making the tools that make better violins, so our violin makers (the developers) can get on with worrying about how the instruments sound. Read more
Nov 22
The search engine optimisation landscape is changing. As I have blogged previously, we are doing our best to make sure we use the same search terms as our users to make content easier to find. Now that Directgov and Business Link are no more, and GOV.UK has shaken off its beta-warning shackles, it’s time to see if we’ve achieved this.
Nov 15
Today we released Inside Government, bringing together all the corporate and policy information of 2 ministerial departments (out of a total 24) and 3 smaller public bodies (out of the hundreds of agencies and other bodies who will later be joining the site).
Here’s a quick video to explain what Inside Government is all about.
You can find this video, along with some more information, at www.gov.uk/tour
The new URLs for the 5 organisations are:
www.gov.uk/dclg – Department for Communities and Local Government
www.gov.uk/dft – Department for Transport
www.gov.uk/dsa – Driving Standards Agency
www.gov.uk/brac – Building Regulations Advisory Committee
www.gov.uk/pins – The Planning Inspectorate
Read more
Policy, publications and announcements are moving to GOV.UK
Jeremy Heywood, Cabinet Secretary, writes about the release of Inside Government.
Nov 14
The release of Inside Government tomorrow is a beginning, not an end. There’s a lot in it, but there’s also a lot yet to come.
Here is a list of features which are on the product roadmap to be delivered later. It’s a matter of when, rather than if, the following content and features will appear on Inside Government. Read more
