Agenda

UK government IT, GDS & GOV.UK

GOV.UK and feedback

Agenda

UK government IT, GDS & GOV.UK

GOV.UK and feedback

Bringing sanity to UK government IT:

how GDS built GOV.UK

UK government IT insanity

... is too big a topic

UK government IT insanity

today: only publishing

Martha Lane Fox, UK Digital Champion

Bringing more people online

Making online services more efficient

Moving to digital by default could save the government £1.7bn to £1.8bn every year

Source: Cabinet Office Digital Efficiency Report, November 2012

For some government services, the average cost of a digital transaction is

20x lower than the cost of a telephone transaction

30x lower than the cost of postal transaction

50x lower than a face-to-face transaction

Source: Cabinet Office Digital Efficiency Report, November 2012

Government publishing in 2010

750 top level domains

Government publishing in 2010

Directgov, Business Link 6 years old

Government publishing in 2010

Directgov

Government publishing in 2010

Business Link

Government publishing in 2010

no unified website identities

Government publishing in 2010

Government publishing in 2010

Government publishing in 2010

Government publishing in 2010

users have to understand the structure of government to find information and services

Directgov usability problems

"everything is in one place, but it is a confusing place."

Source: Consumer Focus, Does Directgov Deliver?

Directgov usability problems

"...the information is not built around priorities in public services but around what the site is able to easily provide"

Source: Consumer Focus, Does Directgov Deliver?

Directgov usability problems

"At present, there are over a 100 sections and headings that link from the home page."

Source: Consumer Focus, Does Directgov Deliver?

Directgov usability problems

"Much content duplicates the work of existing trusted sources"

Source: Consumer Focus, Does Directgov Deliver?

Directgov usability problems

"Online surveys of visitors to Directgov shows 35% of people are unable to find everything they want"

Source: Consumer Focus, Does Directgov Deliver?

Making online services more efficient

Making online services more efficient

1. Fix transactional services

2. Fix publishing

3. Go wholesale, not just retail

4. New CEO Digital

Source: Tom Loosemore, GDS Changing by Doing, http://slidesha.re/nzYV4T

Making online services more efficient

2. Fix publishing (single domain, consistent UX, shared platform)

4. New CEO Digital (with powers & means to deliver above)

Source: Tom Loosemore, GDS Changing by Doing, http://slidesha.re/nzYV4T

Bringing sanity to UK government IT:

how GDS built GOV.UK

What is GDS?

Government

Digital

Service

What is GDS?

Bringing sanity to UK government IT:

how GDS built GOV.UK

https://www.gov.uk

What is GOV.UK?

Single government domain

What is GOV.UK?

Single entry point to central government

What is GOV.UK?

Single brand

GOV.UK replaced Directgov and Business Link on October 17, 2012

1800 user needs identified

700+ user needs redesigned and rewritten

188 million visits and 546 million pageviews in 6 months

GOV.UK: homepage

24 ministerial departments migrated by April 30, 2013

GOV.UK: departments

GOV.UK: departments

GOV.UK: answers

GOV.UK: transactions

GOV.UK: guides

GOV.UK: calculators

GOV.UK: one-off formats

Did GOV.UK succeed?

It gets more traffic

Source: GOV.UK performance dashboard

It's cheaper

Source: Efficiency and Reform 2012/13 summary report

It's award-winning

Source: Mike Bracken and Ben Terrett at the Design Awards by Cabinet Office, on Flickr

Agenda

UK government IT, GDS & GOV.UK

GOV.UK and feedback

iterative development, cross functional teams, TDD, continuous integration, code reviews, retrospectives, automated testing, etc etc

BORING!

7 unusual types of feedback

1. release early

The Alpha

a publicly released prototype

The Alpha

12 weeks, £261K

The Alpha

Built for learning - a Minimum Viable Product

The Alpha

The Beta

The Launch

Source:  How the redirection works, Paul Downey, GDS Blog

The Launch

2. product analytics

design with data

Pre-launch

decide whether to migrate or drop content

Pre-launch

identify nuances around specific user needs

Pre-launch

identify how users were finding the content

Pre-launch

identify target browsers and devices

Post-launch

define success metrics

3. performance dashboards

GOV.UK Performance Dashboard

Inside Government Performance Dashboard

GOV.UK Content Explorer

GDS Transactions Explorer

4. user research

analytics says what, user research explains why

lab testing

Iterating on the homepage

Iterating on the homepage

Iterating on the homepage

Iterating on the homepage

5. accessibility testing

usable and useful for disadvantaged users

not just box-ticking

internal testing

Colour contrast checker

Colour blindness simulator

Blurred vision simulator

external user testing

6. devops

developers and operations building live services together

developers have the keys to production

operations aren't responsible for fixing broken apps

it's great!

1000 code changes in the first 8 months

(7 updates per working day)

7. direct user feedback

GOV.UK has a user helpdesk

Reporting problems

Even on 404 pages

user feedback as monitoring

investigating trends

Thank you.

Questions?

Follow me on Twitter:

@benilov

Agenda

What is GDS?

What is GOV.UK?

GOV.UK and feedback

GOV.UK and open source

My open source contributions

GDS is "all in" with open source

perhaps not strictly "open source"

coding in the open

1. fairness towards the taxpayer

2. fairness towards the OSS community

3. transparency

4. reuse

5. marketing

6. as a portfolio