<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0" xml:lang="en-US" > <title type="text">Government Digital Service</title> <subtitle type="text">GDS is leading the digital transformation of the UK government.</subtitle> <updated>2024-11-25T12:50:46Z</updated> <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" /> <id>https://gds.blog.gov.uk/feed/</id> <link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/feed/" /> <entry> <author> <name>Tim Paul - Head of Interaction Design, Government Digital Service</name> </author> <title type="html"><![CDATA[How GDS partners with the OECD on Digital Government]]></title> <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/11/25/how-gds-partners-with-the-oecd-on-digital-government/" /> <id>https://gds.blog.gov.uk/?p=36194</id> <updated>2024-11-25T12:50:46Z</updated> <published>2024-11-25T12:50:46Z</published> <category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="Digital, Data and Technology" /> <summary type="html"><![CDATA[Our new post highlights our work with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), reviewing digital government in the Republic of Korea.]]></summary> <content type="html" xml:base="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/11/25/how-gds-partners-with-the-oecd-on-digital-government/"><![CDATA[ <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" width="620" height="465" src="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/11/OECD-Korea-blog-photo-620x465.jpeg" alt="The OECD peer review team and their hosts from the Korean government." class="wp-image-36200" srcset="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/11/OECD-Korea-blog-photo-620x465.jpeg 620w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/11/OECD-Korea-blog-photo-310x233.jpeg 310w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/11/OECD-Korea-blog-photo-768x576.jpeg 768w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/11/OECD-Korea-blog-photo.jpeg 1164w" sizes="(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" /></figure> <p>At the Government Digital Service&nbsp;(GDS)&nbsp;our international work includes engagement with multilateral organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).</p> <p>The UK’s digital, data and technology expertise is highly sought after by our international peers in other governments and multilateral organisations. Our membership of forums hosted by these bodies plays a role in providing our UK practitioners with unique learning opportunities.</p> <p>With first-hand experience of delivering digital transformation, our GDS senior leadership is at the very core of our engagement, through their participation on international forums such as the OECD’s E-Leaders where they get together with other senior officials from different governments, share lessons learnt and collectively solve common problems, but also help to shape the future of the global digital government landscape.</p> <p>Organisations like the OECD bring together international experts and digital practitioners in their respective specialist subject fields to conduct in-depth analysis and share international insights and best practices with other governments.</p> <p>The end goals all have the same purpose - sharing of information and opinions between country peers and thematic experts to achieve a desired output or common goal.</p> <p>The UK’s engagement with the OECD’s Digital Government and Open Data Unit opens up many opportunities for learning.&nbsp;</p> <p>GDS digital practitioners have previously supported digital government reviews led by the OECD, in Chile, Slovenia and will be supporting upcoming OECD capacity building workshops in Thailand.&nbsp; Participating in interviews and discussions with other governments also brings back learnings and insights to help our own work and thinking.</p> <p>Here’s a recent example of a trip that my colleague Tim Paul, our Head of Interaction Design, joined. Over to Tim…</p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Peer review trip to the Republic of Korea</strong></h2> <p>Back in June 2024 I was lucky enough to be selected to join a small OECD delegation to the Republic of Korea, to conduct a peer review of their digital public services and infrastructure.</p> <p>The OECD works to help its 38 member countries improve people’s lives with better policies for things like digital government, economic development, education, climate change and corruption.</p> <p>They occasionally visit member countries to conduct a detailed review, and then share what they learn in a report. Typically they invite a few peers from other member countries; experts in a particular field that the country in question is interested in.</p> <p>I was joined by another peer, Laura Sommer, an advisor from the New Zealand equivalent of GDS. We were there to provide expertise on User Centred Design and Service Transformation.</p> <p>Over 5 days we held 19 in-depth interviews with civil servants from 14 different departments. They were held in government offices in Seoul and Sejong, and for each interview we were joined by a translator.</p> <p>The interviews were semi-structured, with some pre-prepared questions, but as peers we were able to improvise a bit. At the end of the week we presented our initial findings back to our hosts. The final report is written by OECD, but Laura and I will review it too.</p> <p>On reflection, it’s been one of the most fascinating and rewarding experiences of my career so far.</p> <p>It felt really good to be supporting the digital transformation of another country. The OECD team was fantastic, and it was great to make connections with a fellow peer.</p> <p>The trip&nbsp;gave&nbsp;me a new appreciation that every nation is on its own journey when it comes to digital transformation. What works in one place may not work elsewhere, so it’s really important to understand a country’s context before you try to replicate their strategies.</p> <p>Also, the food was delicious.</p> <div class="highlight"> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">See here for more information about the OECD's work on Digital Government: </span><a href="https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/policy-issues/digital-government.html"><span style="font-weight: 400">https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/policy-issues/digital-government.html</span></a></p> </div> <p></p> ]]></content> <link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/11/25/how-gds-partners-with-the-oecd-on-digital-government/#comments" thr:count="0" /> <link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/11/25/how-gds-partners-with-the-oecd-on-digital-government/feed/" thr:count="0" /> <thr:total>0</thr:total> </entry> <entry> <author> <name>Natalie Jones OBE - Director of Digital Identity, Government Digital Service</name> </author> <title type="html"><![CDATA[GOV.UK One Login: celebrating 50 services ]]></title> <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/11/12/gov-uk-one-login-celebrating-50-services/" /> <id>https://gds.blog.gov.uk/?p=36177</id> <updated>2024-11-18T08:51:35Z</updated> <published>2024-11-12T14:51:42Z</published> <category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="GOV.UK One Login" /> <summary type="html"><![CDATA[50 services are using GOV.UK One Login for authentication and identity verification for millions of users. Natalie Jones OBE, Director of Digital Identity at the Government Digital Service, reflects on this milestone in our latest blog post.]]></summary> <content type="html" xml:base="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/11/12/gov-uk-one-login-celebrating-50-services/"><![CDATA[ <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="620" height="413" src="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/11/Blog-post-asset-GOV.UK-One-Login-50-services-960x640px-620x413.png" alt="Text reads: GOV.UK One Login 50 services. There are black, white, blue and green icons in the background of the asset." class="wp-image-36176" srcset="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/11/Blog-post-asset-GOV.UK-One-Login-50-services-960x640px-620x413.png 620w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/11/Blog-post-asset-GOV.UK-One-Login-50-services-960x640px-310x207.png 310w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/11/Blog-post-asset-GOV.UK-One-Login-50-services-960x640px-768x512.png 768w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/11/Blog-post-asset-GOV.UK-One-Login-50-services-960x640px.png 960w" sizes="(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" /></figure> <p>As we come to the end of our initial three-year phase, GOV.UK One Login is now fully operational, and I’m delighted to be able to tell you that we’ve passed a golden milestone. </p> <p>As of October 2024, 50 services are using GOV.UK One Login for authentication and identity-proving. This is testimony to the hard work of not just the GDS teams developing the product, but all those in service teams across government who have worked to help us understand what their users need and to onboard to our service. This shows that GOV.UK One Login is fulfilling its purpose, empowering more teams to streamline their processes, and delivering tangible benefits for departments and end-users.&nbsp;</p> <p>The Department for Education ‘Confirm my Apprenticeship’ is officially our 50th service. With five Apprenticeship services now using GOV.UK One Login, employers, citizens, and apprentices are enjoying an improved user experience and are saving time as they access the services they need.</p> <p><strong>Gary Tucker, </strong><strong>Deputy Director, Digital Skills Portfolio </strong><strong>from the Department for Education said:&nbsp;</strong></p> <blockquote> <p>We’ve now integrated five Apprenticeship services with GOV.UK One Login, and it’s been a game-changer for our apprentices, the supporting services and our department. It shouldn’t be difficult for apprentices to create and manage their account, and now with GOV.UK One Login, the end to end process is so much smoother.</p> <p>The fact that employers, citizens and apprentices are all using GOV.UK One Login as well makes the process so much simpler and more joined up. As a department we’re saving time and money, reducing duplication and better serving our citizens. We’re proud to be part of this important milestone.</p> </blockquote> <p>It's exciting to see how GOV.UK One Login’s adoption continues to expand, boosting efficiency and collaboration while validating all the hard work that's gone into its development. A huge thanks to all our services who have onboarded and our colleagues who continue to work hard to achieve our shared objectives.</p> <h1 class="wp-block-heading">A modern digital government&nbsp;</h1> <p>With the recent change of government, GDS - including teams working on GOV.UK One Login -<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/dsit-bolstered-to-better-serve-the-british-public-through-science-and-technology"> has moved to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT),</a> alongside the Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) and the Incubator for AI (i.AI).</p> <p>This move will drive forward the digital changes needed to overhaul the British public’s experience of interacting with the government, so it becomes personalised, convenient, and timesaving – for example, by providing people with just one way to login and prove who they are so they can quickly access the government services they need. It will also help remove roadblocks to sharing data across the public sector.</p> <p>We have always worked closely with others in DSIT, and this move unites our efforts to create a modern digital government with a strong mandate for change. Our work in GOV.UK One Login will continue to drive forward a modern digital government that gives citizens a&nbsp;better experience, and their time back.&nbsp;</p> <h1 class="wp-block-heading">A front door open to all users&nbsp;</h1> <p>GOV.UK One Login is providing a secure front door to all government services, and so accessibility is vital. Over the past year we’ve honed in on inclusion, broadening the range of documents and evidence that people can use to prove who they are. We are now at a place where we can verify someone's identity with a range of different documentation, including UK biometric residence permits and knowledge-based verification questions.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>Last October, we established our face-to-face route for identity verification meaning people can instead choose to visit their local Post Office to complete this part of the journey. Enabling a face-to-face route is a huge step in enabling access to One Login for people who may not have the confidence to complete things online, or those without a smartphone.</p> <p>At the same time we also opened a contact centre, so that users who were struggling to prove who they are could call us and get support at the time they need it. If you’d like to find out more about the contact centre’s offering, <a href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/10/16/ringing-in-success-with-the-gov-uk-one-login-contact-centre/">check out our latest blog post here</a>.&nbsp;</p> <h1 class="wp-block-heading">Making our service even better for citizens</h1> <p>But 50 is clearly not our end goal, with many more services on our roadmap in the future with HM Revenue and Customs, the Department for Work and Pensions, and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency soon to come on board. This achievement not only shows the programme's success but also highlights its potential to continue transforming how we work, collaborate, and serve users.</p> <div class="highlight"> <p> </p> <p>GOV.UK One Login numbers show our progress:</p> <p> </p> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>over 3 million One Login accounts have been created</li> <li>over 6.2 million identities issued</li> <li>over 8.8 million downloads of our ID check app </li> <li>now 50 services and counting onboarded </li> </ul> <p> </p> </div> <p>And throughout, our mission remains clear: save taxpayer money by cutting duplication, and make life easier for people with a simpler, faster login process. We’re opening doors for genuine users while keeping fraudsters at bay. Every step we take gets us closer to that goal and we won’t stop until we truly achieve One Login for all services.&nbsp;</p> <p>Until next time, Natalie.&nbsp;</p> <div class="highlight"> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">For more information about what GOV.UK One Login has been up to recently check out our blog post </span><a href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/09/19/gov-uk-one-login-designing-for-inclusion-at-scale/"><span style="font-weight: 400">GOV.UK One Login: Designing for inclusion at scale</span></a>.</p> </div> <p></p> ]]></content> <link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/11/12/gov-uk-one-login-celebrating-50-services/#comments" thr:count="1" /> <link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/11/12/gov-uk-one-login-celebrating-50-services/feed/" thr:count="1" /> <thr:total>1</thr:total> </entry> <entry> <author> <name>The GOV.UK Forms Team</name> </author> <title type="html"><![CDATA[GOV.UK Forms in motion]]></title> <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/11/04/gov-uk-forms-in-motion/" /> <id>https://gds.blog.gov.uk/?p=36163</id> <updated>2024-11-04T14:05:58Z</updated> <published>2024-11-04T09:23:03Z</published> <category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="GOV.UK Forms" /> <summary type="html"><![CDATA[GOV.UK Forms is now in public beta! Learn how easy it is to get started using the new form builder platform to make better, digital forms, save people time and improve the public’s experience of interacting with government.]]></summary> <content type="html" xml:base="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/11/04/gov-uk-forms-in-motion/"><![CDATA[ <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="620" height="413" src="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/11/GOVUK-Forms-team-group-photo-960x640px-620x413.png" alt="Picture of the GOV.UK Forms team with 8 members standing behind 6 members of the team seated on a blue corner sofa." class="wp-image-36162" srcset="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/11/GOVUK-Forms-team-group-photo-960x640px-620x413.png 620w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/11/GOVUK-Forms-team-group-photo-960x640px-310x207.png 310w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/11/GOVUK-Forms-team-group-photo-960x640px-768x512.png 768w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/11/GOVUK-Forms-team-group-photo-960x640px.png 960w" sizes="(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" /></figure> <p>GOV.UK Forms is now in public beta, enabling all teams across central government to use the platform. We’re also expanding our support and service offering.</p> <p>GOV.UK Forms is an easy to use form building platform with accessibility, security and hosting built-in. We do lots of the hard work for teams such as complying with government standards, including on accessibility and cyber security, so they can focus on building forms and using expert knowledge to run public services.&nbsp;</p> <p>You can see how the platform is enabling teams to save time and money in this short video.&nbsp;</p> <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper"> <iframe loading="lazy" title="GOV.UK Forms animation" width="620" height="349" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/fc0eTVB4Igk?wmode=transparent&amp;rel=0" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe> </div></figure> <p>There are over 10,000 document-based forms published on GOV.UK. GOV.UK Forms is designed to tackle some of the common problems associated with these. Many of these forms tend to be less accessible, difficult for the public to use and take longer to process.&nbsp;</p> <p>GOV.UK Forms is part of <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/government-digital-service/about">GDS’ commitment</a> to make common components, making it easier for government departments to build better digital forms, save everyone time and improve the public experience of interacting with government.&nbsp;</p> <p>Teams right across central government can now sign up to quickly create secure and accessible digital forms without needing any technical knowledge. We estimate this has already saved government teams over 2 years in processing time since September 2022.</p> <p>During private beta and early access we saw 87 forms published alongside over 1,200 users creating accounts to test how GOV.UK Forms can help their organisations build better forms. The team have done lots of accessibility research throughout development and Oliver Quinlan, Lead User Researcher at GDS, has previously written about <a href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/01/12/how-were-making-it-easier-to-access-government-forms-online/">what we learned from users when testing different form formats and the preference for digital forms</a>.</p> <p>To help organisations use GOV.UK Forms we’ve also included controls such as user management, which enables departments to manage who can publish forms, and <a href="https://www.forms.service.gov.uk/create-good-forms">guidance on how to create good forms</a>.</p> <p>We’ve been working with and learning from teams across government throughout private beta. <a href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/08/12/how-to-get-started-using-gov-uk-forms-experiences-of-the-content-team-at-the-dvsa/">John Ploughman and Thomas Williams from DVSA, recently published a blog post on ‘How to get started using GOV.UK Forms’</a> and what they’ve learned.&nbsp;</p> <p>We’re continuing to develop and scale the platform and we’re keen to do that in partnership with teams across central government. So if you have <a href="https://forms.service.gov.uk/support">questions, feedback or ideas, please get in touch</a>.</p> <div class="highlight"> <p>To find out more, including how to create an account and start building a digital form, visit <a href="http://gov.uk/forms">GOV.UK Forms</a> and ‘get started’.</p> </div> <p></p> ]]></content> <link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/11/04/gov-uk-forms-in-motion/#comments" thr:count="8" /> <link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/11/04/gov-uk-forms-in-motion/feed/" thr:count="8" /> <thr:total>8</thr:total> </entry> <entry> <author> <name>Imran Hussain - Community Designer, GOV.UK Design System, Government Digital Service</name> </author> <title type="html"><![CDATA[How Design System Day makes our community stronger]]></title> <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/10/31/how-design-system-day-makes-our-community-stronger/" /> <id>https://gds.blog.gov.uk/?p=36146</id> <updated>2024-11-04T09:26:07Z</updated> <published>2024-10-31T15:23:53Z</published> <category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="Digital Service Platforms" /><category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="GOV.UK" /><category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="Service design" /><category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="Design System" /><category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="Digital" /><category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="Events" /><category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="gov.uk" /><category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="Platforms and Services" /> <summary type="html"><![CDATA[Our latest blog post outlines how our GOV.UK Design System Day event makes the community stronger.]]></summary> <content type="html" xml:base="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/10/31/how-design-system-day-makes-our-community-stronger/"><![CDATA[ <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="620" height="326" src="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-draft-v3-620x326.png" alt="Text reads: Design System Day. There is a GDS logo in the top left of the asset." class="wp-image-36149" srcset="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-draft-v3-620x326.png 620w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-draft-v3-310x163.png 310w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-draft-v3-768x403.png 768w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-draft-v3.png 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" /></figure> <p>An active community is essential to the <a href="https://youtu.be/MMfqMSPKGj4?si=rX-ZW9LV1RKze0BE">GOV.UK Design System</a>. We are a contribution based design system, so continually growing and engaging the community is essential.&nbsp;</p> <p>Functioning communities do not run themselves, especially those that actively ‘create’ together. That’s where a community designer, like myself, comes in; to build relationships with our users, find out their needs, and work with the team to design solutions. I’m there after things have gone live too, checking that things have landed as intended, feeding back to the team if they haven’t. A community designer is there for the whole user journey but where the community is the service.</p> <p>As a team, we’ve been doing collaborative design for a few years and continue to iterate on our processes. When I joined the team, user research showed that users wanted more visibility of our roadmap and decision-making processes.</p> <p>We’ve been working for years to break these problems down. Part of the solution was the community values we introduced to the team in 2022:</p> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="620" height="413" src="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-blog-asset-31.10.24-620x413.png" alt="The GOV.UK Design System’s community facing values: Be open, Be inviting, Transfer power, Educate, Show gratitude" class="wp-image-36151" srcset="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-blog-asset-31.10.24-620x413.png 620w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-blog-asset-31.10.24-310x207.png 310w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-blog-asset-31.10.24-768x512.png 768w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-blog-asset-31.10.24-1536x1024.png 1536w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-blog-asset-31.10.24.png 1600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" /></figure> <p>We try to embody these values whenever we interact with our community. That could be on support channels, on monthly calls, workshops and conferences.<br><br><strong>Design System Day</strong></p> <p>Design System Day is our annual flagship conference. It started as a way to pick our community up after the summer lull, and it’s proving really effective at doing that. If we have one big-bang event for the year, this is it.</p> <p>We’ve endeavoured to make all forms of contribution more participatory, experimenting with co-design, running open design workshops, crits, and testing sessions. This requires a lot of engagement work and a highly motivated, switched on community. During summer, when people take holidays and spend time with children during their school break, the appetite for extra-curricular activity is muted.</p> <p>We use Design System Day as a re-energiser for the community, it brings focus back onto the design system’s collaborative work and draws even more eyes to our community. The event perfectly aligns with our open-source contribution model and with our community values.</p> <p><strong>Open</strong></p> <p>The <a href="https://design-system.service.gov.uk/">GOV.UK Design System</a> is an open-source platform and the team <a href="https://design-system.service.gov.uk/community/roadmap/">share our roadmap</a> online. We do regular show and tells at our monthly calls, and we follow this up with a larger showcase at our events.</p> <p>Here’s our showcase from the first Design System Day event earlier this year:</p> <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper"> <iframe loading="lazy" title="Design System Day 2024: Future of the GOV.UK Design System" width="620" height="349" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/_gSZJrqLnYY?wmode=transparent&amp;rel=0" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe> </div></figure> <p>And we encourage the community to share what they are working on too.&nbsp;<br><br><strong>Inviting</strong></p> <p>Our community work is all about making people feel that we want active participation in our design system. We have a collaborative philosophy and welcome input in sessions throughout the year. We consider contribution to be anything that helps bolster our community and make it better. This can be attending an event, giving an answer during a discussion, spotting a spelling mistake on our site, sharing how you used a component, through to contributing a new component or pattern.</p> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="620" height="413" src="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-blog-Greg-Macoy-Matchstick-Creative-620x413.jpg" alt="Greg MaCoy from Matchstick Creative gives his talk on stage at Design System Day. He stands on stage in front of a large screen, showing his picture and title of his talk. The world on your doorstep: Local services with global values." class="wp-image-36150" srcset="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-blog-Greg-Macoy-Matchstick-Creative-620x413.jpg 620w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-blog-Greg-Macoy-Matchstick-Creative-310x207.jpg 310w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-blog-Greg-Macoy-Matchstick-Creative-768x512.jpg 768w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-blog-Greg-Macoy-Matchstick-Creative-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-blog-Greg-Macoy-Matchstick-Creative.jpg 1600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Greg Macoy, presenting at Design System Day 2024.</figcaption></figure> <p>Design System Day is essentially a celebration and showcase of our community. We had an open call for speakers and almost all (9 of 10) speakers came from this call for speakers. We also invited Greg Macoy, a local speaker from Liverpool to speak about working with local charities and making positive change in the area. We like to pay tribute to the city we host in, and talking about local user needs is one way we do that.<br><br><strong>Transfer of power</strong></p> <p>To stop our design system being too top-down, it is important to hand over some decision-making authority to our community. After all, most of the components and patterns that sit in our product are contributed by external users. We have an impartial, external panel of experts that make up the GOV.UK Design System Working Group, that have the final say on whether components and patterns are ready to launch. We also now co-design all our components and patterns, running collaborative kick-off sessions, ideations, crits and launches.</p> <p>Design System Day helps that process of transferring power. It is our highlight event of the year, and that’s why we insist on putting our community members front and centre. We essentially create a stage for our community to showcase their work and skills. Every talk is user-pitched, drafted and delivered; much like any other contribution to the design system. The agenda is shaped by the community, for the community, and we love being able to give people that agency.</p> <p><strong>Educational</strong></p> <p>As with any good community of practitioners, we want members to learn new things from being part of the community. Whether chatting on Slack, sharing examples on Github, or discussing in one of our monthly chats, our community members have the ability to make new connections and share best practice.<br><br>We encourage collaboration, and one thing that we hope to see is community members working together on new projects and achieving something collectively. On Design System Day, we were lucky to have sustainability lead Ishmael Burdeau talk to us about his drive for services to have public sustainability statements. You can watch Ishmael’s talk here:</p> <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper"> <iframe loading="lazy" title="Design System Day 2024" width="620" height="349" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/videoseries?list=PL5tovFCB3CsAGIPmLW1mUCWeYPEtsMbr4" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe> </div></figure> <p>We hope it inspires you to take action in your service. You can join the <a href="https://www.civilserviceenvironmentnetwork.org/">Civil Service Climate and Environment Network</a> and discuss on the <a href="https://ukgovernmentdigital.slack.com">Cross-Government Slack</a> channels <strong>#sustainability</strong> and <strong>#green-software-development</strong>.<br></p> <p><strong>Gratitude</strong></p> <p>We like to say thank you to our community members for the hard work they put into making our product great. We put together stickers, credit people in release notes and send thank you messages to our speakers.</p> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized is-style-default"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="620" height="343" src="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/Design-System-stickers-1-620x343.jpg" alt="Two stickers made for the GOV.UK Design System Working Group. One shows design elements of a service: text, button, radio and checkmark, with text saying Working Group member. The other shows a laptop with a completed service, saying Working Group Alumni." class="wp-image-36152" style="object-fit:contain;width:620px;height:413px" srcset="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/Design-System-stickers-1-620x343.jpg 620w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/Design-System-stickers-1-310x171.jpg 310w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/Design-System-stickers-1-768x424.jpg 768w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/Design-System-stickers-1-1536x849.jpg 1536w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/Design-System-stickers-1.jpg 1600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" /></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="620" height="621" src="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-sticker-3-620x621.png" alt="A sticker with multiple squares in its design, it plays on the GDS moniker with GOV.UK Design System." class="wp-image-36153" style="object-fit:contain;width:620px;height:413px" srcset="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-sticker-3-620x621.png 620w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-sticker-3-310x310.png 310w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-sticker-3-150x150.png 150w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-sticker-3-768x769.png 768w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-sticker-3.png 1458w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" /></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="620" height="378" src="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-Thank-You-sticker-2-620x378.png" alt="A sticker saying thank you in the blue text style of Design System Day 2024." class="wp-image-36154" style="object-fit:contain;width:620px;height:413px" srcset="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-Thank-You-sticker-2-620x378.png 620w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-Thank-You-sticker-2-310x189.png 310w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-Thank-You-sticker-2-768x468.png 768w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-Thank-You-sticker-2-1536x937.png 1536w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/DSD-Thank-You-sticker-2.png 1600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" /></figure> <div class="highlight"> <p>Design System Day is another contribution to the design system, and we love when people take part. </p> <p>There’s another opportunity to get involved with our community, a Design System ‘hack’ Day is coming up on Tuesday 28 November 2024 with tickets on sale from the week of Monday 4 November 2024. <a href="https://design-system.service.gov.uk/community/design-system-day-2024/">Find out more here</a>.</p> </div> <p></p> ]]></content> <link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/10/31/how-design-system-day-makes-our-community-stronger/#comments" thr:count="0" /> <link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/10/31/how-design-system-day-makes-our-community-stronger/feed/" thr:count="0" /> <thr:total>0</thr:total> </entry> <entry> <author> <name>Laura Yarrow - Head of Design, GOV.UK, Government Digital Service</name> </author> <title type="html"><![CDATA[How GDS is supporting women in STEM]]></title> <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/10/21/how-gds-is-supporting-women-in-stem/" /> <id>https://gds.blog.gov.uk/?p=36119</id> <updated>2024-11-04T09:25:24Z</updated> <published>2024-10-21T09:49:24Z</published> <category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="GDS team" /><category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="People and skills" /><category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="technology" /><category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="women in technology" /> <summary type="html"><![CDATA[The Government Digital Service recently hosted three students from Next Tech Girls, a social enterprise that works with girls in education who are interested in a career in tech. ]]></summary> <content type="html" xml:base="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/10/21/how-gds-is-supporting-women-in-stem/"><![CDATA[ <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="620" height="465" src="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/NTG-blog-2-copy-620x465.jpg" alt="The image features three young women from Next Tech Girls, alongside a member of the GDS team, Dr Sarah Kirby-Ginns. They're standing in front of two pop-up banners, smiling." class="wp-image-36122" srcset="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/NTG-blog-2-copy-620x465.jpg 620w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/NTG-blog-2-copy-310x233.jpg 310w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/NTG-blog-2-copy-768x576.jpg 768w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/NTG-blog-2-copy-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/NTG-blog-2-copy.jpg 1600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" /></figure> <h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Introduction</strong></h2> <p>Here at the Government Digital Service, we're committed to gender equality throughout our workforce. So, it's crucial that we do our bit to make sure younger generations can take advantage of the fantastic opportunities that exist through careers in technology.&nbsp;</p> <p>That’s why GDS recently hosted three students from <a href="https://nexttechgirls.com/">Next Tech Girls (NTG)</a>, a social enterprise set up in 2016 that works with girls currently in education looking to work in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) careers. They especially focus on working with girls from lower income and minority backgrounds.&nbsp;</p> <p>Next Tech Girls facilitates work placement and career opportunities for the students across a broad spectrum of organisations. Their mission is “to inspire today's girls in education to be tomorrow's women in tech”. As a woman who has been on that journey myself, I wanted to get involved to bring opportunities I didn’t have in the past to the next generation of female digital and technology specialists.</p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"> <p><em>“Only 26% of the UK tech industry are women” - <a href="https://nexttechgirls.com/">Next Tech Girls</a></em></p> </blockquote> <p>In the UK, Next Tech Girls statistics show that there is currently a huge gender gap in STEM careers, with women severely underrepresented. Women are much less likely to enter into a STEM career path due to a number of factors. </p> <p>This can range from the stereotypes of it being a predominantly male career path (I was one of the only girls on my own university computer science degree out of approximately 100, which was intimidating), issues with a lack of role models and visibility of women working in tech, to a lack of advocacy and support in school to pursue these types of careers in the first place. </p> <p>This can mean girls are not able to make these choices at the critical time they are building the qualifications and knowledge needed to pursue a career in STEM.</p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Setting up the work placement</strong></h2> <p>It was important for GDS to understand what the students wanted to get out of the work placement, so we met with the girls before our week together started to understand a bit more about them, their interests and background, and to make sure we were going to provide a good experience for them.</p> <p>We learnt that the students were especially interested in our individual career paths, what qualifications we each had, what helped us get to where we currently were in our career, and what a day in the life of different disciplines looked like, especially what it was like to work in a modern office environment.&nbsp;</p> <p>Part of this was going to be about exposing the students to different STEM roles and activities, so it became important to assemble a set of people they could work with across a variety of roles. This led to putting together a team of designers, developers, delivery managers, data scientists, and leadership roles to spend some time throughout the week giving the students a variety of perspectives. </p> <p>One of the principles of this project was to ensure the majority of the people speaking to the students were female, and we achieved that. 9 out of 10 of the staff involved were female, and could offer that unique perspective on their careers, challenges and approach to work to the students.&nbsp;</p> <p>I also wanted to ensure we inspired the students, and to give them confidence that they can pursue any career they wanted to. Luckily at GDS we are not short of inspirational and accomplished women, who agreed to put together a timetable of immersive activities and learning.</p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"> <p><em>“Our session explored different accessibility features on Android and iOS. It was a hands-on session, and we all learned by playing and exploring (me included!). My favourite bit of the session was when we were able to talk about what we'd covered about accessibility and how they might make changes to their previous coursework to make their website designs more inclusive. </em></p> <p><em>I hope that they can take that experience and build on it in whatever career path they choose.” </em></p> <p><em>- Elise Robinson, Senior Designer</em> <em>at GDS</em></p> </blockquote> <p>Our agenda was across an action-packed five days, which we divided up into a morning session, then lunch followed by an afternoon session that finished at 4pm. It was important to respect the time of our volunteers, but also give the students a bit of time to learn from people, then go off and complete some self-directed activities and tasks. The challenge here was not making it too much like the school environment, and exposing them in a safe way to a work environment where they had to use their initiative to develop their own skills.</p> <p>We kicked the week off with an introduction from myself to GDS and our unique history. I then gave a brief overview of my education and career to date, what I enjoyed and what I found a challenge. This format was used by most of our volunteers to give an insight into how different people approached their careers, followed by some hands-on activities and experience. I also set them a task for the week of summarising what they learned during their time with us, to present back on the Friday afternoon.</p> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="620" height="541" src="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/Next-Tech-Girls-group-photo-e1728985379220-620x541.jpg" alt="The image features three young women from Next Tech Girls, alongside one of the GDS team." class="wp-image-36126" srcset="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/Next-Tech-Girls-group-photo-e1728985379220-620x541.jpg 620w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/Next-Tech-Girls-group-photo-e1728985379220-310x271.jpg 310w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/Next-Tech-Girls-group-photo-e1728985379220-768x671.jpg 768w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/Next-Tech-Girls-group-photo-e1728985379220.jpg 900w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" /></figure> <p>A sample of the other sessions students attended were:</p> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>spending time with Senior Interaction Designer Monica doing design challenges in Figma: one challenge focused on redesigning some WhatsApp screens</li> <li>enjoying time learning how to do HTML, CSS and Javascript coding with our Front End Developer, Becca</li> </ul> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="620" height="465" src="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/NTG-blog-2-copy-620x465.jpg" alt="The image features three young women from Next Tech Girls, alongside a member of the GDS team, Dr Sarah Kirby-Ginns. They're standing in front of two pop-up banners, smiling." class="wp-image-36122" style="width:623px;height:auto" srcset="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/NTG-blog-2-copy-620x465.jpg 620w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/NTG-blog-2-copy-310x233.jpg 310w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/NTG-blog-2-copy-768x576.jpg 768w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/NTG-blog-2-copy-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/NTG-blog-2-copy.jpg 1600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><em>Lead Designer at GDS, Dr Sarah Kirby-Ginns, with the three placement students</em>.</figcaption></figure> <h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>End of the placement week</strong></h2> <p>At the end of the week, we all convened to watch a presentation from the placement students. This was the highlight of the week for me, as not only was it an energetic presentation from the girls, but seeing the sheer amount of things they learned about and put into practice over such a short time that week was incredible. They told us they really enjoyed the week and have a good idea of what to do next to start out in their careers.</p> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="620" height="348" src="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/NTG-blog-3-620x348.png" alt="The graphic is a screenshot of one of the placement students final presentation, it’s a written diary of their first day meeting the head of design, and spending the afternoon with two designers learning about accessibility. There are two pictures of laptops and post-it notes." class="wp-image-36123" srcset="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/NTG-blog-3-620x348.png 620w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/NTG-blog-3-310x174.png 310w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/NTG-blog-3-768x431.png 768w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/NTG-blog-3.png 800w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" /></figure> <p>As a team, it was also useful to hear feedback from the girls at the end-of-week session. It was great to hear that the students had a positive experience at GDS, and to know we now have the blueprint to offer this sort of work experience again. </p> <p>We learned it was so important to have a strict agenda to stick to, to give confidence that the students would have a good mix of taught and self-directed learning, and to see the spread of disciplines and activities they would be doing. It was also useful to set up a Slack channel for all volunteers to keep in touch with, and in case of emergencies.&nbsp;</p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"> <p><em>“I was really inspired by the energy, enthusiasm and creativity of all the girls. It was great to see how quickly they took to the activity of journey mapping, they approached it in a fresh way, bringing their own personality and were able to articulate their detailed design thinking. </em></p> <p><em>It was a rewarding experience to see how the girls work and how their ideas could challenge and bring positive change to the tech industry. I think it’s important that we continue to support young girls and open them up to different opportunities in technology” </em></p> <p><em>- Sally Tolsen, Senior Interaction Designer</em></p> </blockquote> <p>We learned it was important to be candid and talk about not just the surface elements of a career, but the deeper aspects such as challenges, pay and uniquely female experiences such as “what happens if I get my period at work?”. We had to remember that they weren’t familiar with many of the daily aspects of work we take for granted as experienced STEM professionals.</p> <p>One thing that was consistent between all volunteers was that nothing prepared us for how much we would enjoy this week. It was a thoroughly positive, fulfilling and uplifting experience to be part of a group of women supporting the next generation of girls leaving school to start their own careers.&nbsp;</p> <div class="highlight"> <p><span style="font-weight: 400">To find out more about working at the Government Digital Service, visit the <a href="_wp_link_placeholder" data-wplink-edit="true">GDS Hub</a> on the Civil Service Careers website. </span></p> </div>]]></content> </entry> <entry> <author> <name>Stephen Allington - Contact Centre Manager, Government Digital Service</name> </author> <title type="html"><![CDATA[Ringing in success with the GOV.UK One Login contact centre]]></title> <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/10/16/ringing-in-success-with-the-gov-uk-one-login-contact-centre/" /> <id>https://gds.blog.gov.uk/?p=36133</id> <updated>2024-11-04T09:24:44Z</updated> <published>2024-10-16T08:13:22Z</published> <category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="GOV.UK One Login" /><category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="Digital" /><category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="gov.uk" /> <summary type="html"><![CDATA[Our new blog post looks at the GOV.UK One Login contact centre, which was launched to help users access the services they need. ]]></summary> <content type="html" xml:base="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/10/16/ringing-in-success-with-the-gov-uk-one-login-contact-centre/"><![CDATA[ <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="620" height="413" src="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/GOV-UK-One-Login-contact-centre-blog-image-960-x-640-px-620x413.png" alt="Text reads: Ringing in Success with the GOV.UK One Login Contact Centre. The text is written on a blue background, with a phone icon and laptop icon below the text." class="wp-image-36134" srcset="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/GOV-UK-One-Login-contact-centre-blog-image-960-x-640-px-620x413.png 620w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/GOV-UK-One-Login-contact-centre-blog-image-960-x-640-px-310x207.png 310w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/GOV-UK-One-Login-contact-centre-blog-image-960-x-640-px-768x512.png 768w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/10/GOV-UK-One-Login-contact-centre-blog-image-960-x-640-px.png 960w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" /></figure> <p>The Government Digital Service (GDS) is on a mission to help the government make brilliant public services for everyone. As part of this, GOV.UK One Login lets users sign in and prove their identity so they can access central government services quickly and easily.</p> <p>More and more, we are seeing everyday services move online, from shopping to banking to food. It can be taken for granted that people automatically understand how to perform these tasks online, even as those tasks grow in complexity. </p> <p>As government, we need to ensure that as our services move online, we provide support for people who are less confident.&nbsp;Whether it's seeking assistance with an account, resolving an issue, or simply needing guidance, the ability to connect can make all the difference. GOV.UK One Login’s contact centre is marking one year, and has expanded our offer to provide round-the-clock support.</p> <p>Through the contact centre you can:</p> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>speak to an agent on the phone, Monday to Friday 8 am until 8 pm</li> <li>use a webform to share your issue, and an agent will get back to you</li> <li>use the web chat 24/7, with the ability to transfer to a live agent for more complex issues from Monday to Friday 8 am until 8 pm</li> <li>use the contact centre’s chatbot for 24/7 support</li> </ul> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">New services in the GOV.UK One Login contact centre</h2> <p>We've recently introduced two new features to the contact centre: a live web chat, where our agents can interact directly with users, and a 24/7 chatbot, an automated service that quickly and efficiently handles initial user queries. These two services work together to provide a seamless user experience.<br><br>The web chat has evolved as the programme has grown and the agents are now able to manage multiple chats with users. The chatbot has also increased the number of tasks it can handle at any one time. This enables users to quickly resolve straightforward&nbsp;issues through a chatbot, meaning our agents are able to dedicate their time to more complex issues.</p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Using the right channels</h2> <p>Introducing web chat and the chatbot were decisions that came out of the contact centre’s Right Channel Strategy, aimed at making the service fit the needs of our users. This strategy is underpinned by four principles:&nbsp;</p> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>intelligent channel route</li> <li>scaling</li> <li>self-serve</li> <li>continuous improvement&nbsp;&nbsp;</li> </ul> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Intelligent Channel Route</h3> <p>An Intelligent Channel Route ensures&nbsp;customer inquiries are directed to the most appropriate channel and agent based on complexity, urgency and availability. For example, in an instance of suspected fraud, a user will be immediately routed to a live agent. However if someone wanted to raise a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, they would be routed to webform as FOIs need to be written to be responded to.&nbsp;</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Ability to scale up at busy times</h3> <p>This strategy allows the service to scale up at busier times, such as major deadlines. As the strategy is in motion the contact centre will continuously monitor and measure its performance and tweak the service as it grows.&nbsp;</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Enabling self-serve</h3> <p>There has also been a significant amount of work on the <a href="https://home.account.gov.uk/contact-gov-uk-one-login?_ga=2.114577166.808936310.1717585783-106912436.1699303605">self help guidance pages</a>. These pages provide self-help guidance which empowers users to find solutions to their problems independently. Instead of relying solely on customer support or assistance, users can access resources and information to address their needs promptly. </p> <p>The self-help guidance pages offer a convenient way for users to troubleshoot issues or learn how to use a One Login without needing to contact customer support or navigate through different menus. User research has found that users appreciate the ability to find answers quickly and easily on their own time, without waiting for assistance.</p> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Contact centre feedback loop</h3> <p>Users get the opportunity at the end of the call to complete a short customer satisfaction survey. On average, nearly 50% of users complete this which is above standard industry benchmarks. From these surveys the contact centre averaged an 85% satisfaction rating with ‘Agent knowledge’ and ‘Professionalism’ scored at 90% or above. Users state that we resolve their query around 75% of the time at first point of contact. </p> <p>It is our aim that this user satisfaction score will grow over time and more resources are added.&nbsp;By incorporating customer feedback and usage data, we're able to continuously refine and enhance our service, ensuring it meets users' needs more effectively over time.</p> <div class="highlight"> <p><b><br /></b><span style="font-weight: 400">If you would like to know more about the </span><a href="http://gov.uk/"><span style="font-weight: 400">GOV.UK</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400"> One Login contact centre, take a look at the guidance <a href="https://home.account.gov.uk/contact-gov-uk-one-login">here</a>.</span></p> </div>]]></content> </entry> <entry> <author> <name>Pablo Romero - Lead User Researcher for Digital Identity, Government Digital Service</name> </author> <title type="html"><![CDATA[GOV.UK One Login: Designing for inclusion at scale]]></title> <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/09/19/gov-uk-one-login-designing-for-inclusion-at-scale/" /> <id>https://gds.blog.gov.uk/?p=36100</id> <updated>2024-09-19T15:47:44Z</updated> <published>2024-09-19T15:47:44Z</published> <category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="GOV.UK One Login" /><category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="Service design" /><category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="User research" /><category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="gov.uk" /><category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="service design" /> <summary type="html"><![CDATA[In this blog post, learn how our user-centred design work has revealed some surprising findings, and what we’re doing to address them. ]]></summary> <content type="html" xml:base="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/09/19/gov-uk-one-login-designing-for-inclusion-at-scale/"><![CDATA[<figure class="wp-block-post-featured-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1920" height="1280" src="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/09/GOVUK-One-Login-UCD-image.jpg" class="attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image" alt="The image features a person with their hand on the keyboard of a laptop. The laptop screen displays: ‘GOV.UK One Login the single sign-on and identity checking solution for government’." style="object-fit:cover;" srcset="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/09/GOVUK-One-Login-UCD-image.jpg 1920w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/09/GOVUK-One-Login-UCD-image-310x207.jpg 310w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/09/GOVUK-One-Login-UCD-image-620x413.jpg 620w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/09/GOVUK-One-Login-UCD-image-768x512.jpg 768w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/09/GOVUK-One-Login-UCD-image-1536x1024.jpg 1536w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></figure> <p>The <a href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2022/08/24/an-update-on-one-login-for-government/">GOV.UK One Login</a> mission is to ‘make it easy for everyone to access government services’.</p> <p>However, translating exactly what ‘for everyone’ looks like in the context of identity proofing is not an easy task. There can be many barriers for a user to complete an identity journey and gain access to government services. Our work has shown that these not only exist for various user groups, but they are overlapping in nature and not easy to overcome.</p> <p>Our ambition means it is essential that we design solutions that help users access services online. User-centred design (UCD) is at the core of our work and how we address our inclusion challenges.&nbsp;</p> <p>In this blog, we’ll share a strategic piece of UCD work on user segmentation to help GOV.UK One Login plan delivery of our inclusion agenda. And, in particular, how we’re working to address the barriers of a particular user group that indexed highly in our findings, namely young people.&nbsp;</p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Building our evidence base around inclusion </h2> <p>At GOV.UK One Login, we’ve been doing end-user research since April 2021. To date, we’ve carried out over 150 rounds of research with over 2,000 participants, including live end to end testing and observational studies of participants engaging with our journeys. We’ve got a rich pool of qualitative data and insight around people’s lived experience of proving digital identities and using our service.&nbsp;</p> <p>Despite all of this work, we knew we had a gap in understanding of the scale of digital inclusion and the impact of those insights across different user groups.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>In 2023, we started a piece of work on ‘user segmentation’ to uncover inclusion gaps in our coverage and evidence ways to address these. We wanted to understand the technology and identity documents our users have access to, as well as their levels of digital confidence.&nbsp;</p> <p>The aim of the user segmentation work was to get more in depth insight into different user groups (or segments) that share similar characteristics in terms of their barriers to using GOV.UK One Login.</p> <p>Working with colleagues across the programme, we defined a set of parameters that would enable us to build a sustainable data set on inclusion, which the programme can augment over time. We surveyed 2,000 users, ensuring the results were representative of UK population demographics. The survey answers were self-reported allowing us insight into people’s direct experience and perception of barriers to proving their identity. You can access the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/govuk-one-login-user-segmentation-survey-summary">fuller findings here</a>.&nbsp;</p> <p>In addition to our inclusion data set, the output of the user segmentation work is helping GOV.UK One Login more easily quantify the value and impact of inclusion related initiatives and to better understand how the One Login product is performing for different user groups.&nbsp;</p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Overlapping barriers and opportunities for the digitally native</h2> <p>Our work revealed something surprising about digital exclusion.&nbsp;</p> <p>It is well documented that network connectivity is a common, yet, significant issue across digital services. Despite this challenge, mobile device penetration is extensive, with only 3% of all survey respondents not owning a device that can access the internet.&nbsp;</p> <p>A small but significant margin (4-9%) of users did not have the evidence for identification which is critical to digital identity verification. A larger proportion of users, and a significant barrier for GOV.UK One Login, struggle with having enough credit history for identification, if they were using the security questions route. This is because a person may not have a mobile phone contract, as well as an active bank account, credit cards, loans, or mortgages used to establish a financial UK digital footprint.&nbsp;</p> <p>Our focus in the past year has been to widen the evidence types and government data sources for users we know will find it particularly difficult to prove their identity online. We believe this data will significantly support addressing these barriers.</p> <p>The most surprising finding from those surveyed, were the barriers for users under the age of 17:&nbsp;</p> <p>- only 4% have enough financial or government footprint for identification</p> <p>- 46% don't have a phone number (they have a mobile but without a phone number)</p> <p>- 20% don't have an email address</p> <p>- 42% have difficulty completing online tasks and therefore need help from friends and family</p> <p>Users in the 13-17 year old group are between 20% and 33% less likely to be able to prove their identity through our service compared to the average potential user.</p> <p>Our findings are not unique and speak to recent data from OFCOM. As a result, we did a little more digging to understand how this compares with a wider cohort of young people.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>The 18-24 year olds have similar barriers but experience them less acutely:</p> <p>- only 22% have access to an active bank account, credit cards, loans, or mortgages used to establish a financial UK digital footprint (compared with 43% for the general population)</p> <p>- only 16% don’t have a phone number (compared with 20% for the general population, meaning that in this aspect 18-24 year olds are better off)</p> <p>- 13% don’t have an email address (compared with 8% for the general population)</p> <p>- 43% have difficulty completing online tasks (compared with 25% for the general population)</p> <p>Young people (aged 24 and under) will be the first generation to have just one government account, it's crucial that we get it right for them. From applying for their first apprenticeship to signing their mortgage deed, they will rely on their GOV.UK One Login account throughout their lives, which will transform the way they access government services for years to come.</p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Continuing to iterate our service to meet our user needs </h2> <p>As a result of our findings, GOV.UK One Login is actively exploring how best to respond to these findings in terms of how they might shape our product roadmap in future. Specifically, we’re focused on access to identification, mobile usage, lack of email, and increasing digital confidence.&nbsp;</p> <p>We know this is just the start. When it comes to using the user segmentation data across GOV.UK One Login there are a number of pieces of work underway to combine this data with live service data, performance analytics, our own user research insights and that of other government services. </p> <p>We have also produced a characterisation of a set of user groups identified from our segmentation work, and are using it to inform our day-to-day design practice and user research participant recruitment and to seed inclusion insights at scale, in all our practice.   </p> <div class="highlight"> <p>In the coming months we will also be publishing more information on our UCD strategy and work, and how this work is being looped back into supporting UCD practice in our future product development lifecycle. </p> </div> ]]></content> <link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/09/19/gov-uk-one-login-designing-for-inclusion-at-scale/#comments" thr:count="1" /> <link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/09/19/gov-uk-one-login-designing-for-inclusion-at-scale/feed/" thr:count="1" /> <thr:total>1</thr:total> </entry> <entry> <author> <name>The GOV.UK Notify Team</name> </author> <title type="html"><![CDATA[How we migrated GOV.UK Notify to AWS Elastic Container Service]]></title> <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/08/14/how-we-migrated-gov-uk-notify-to-aws-elastic-container-service/" /> <id>https://gds.blog.gov.uk/?p=36058</id> <updated>2024-08-15T08:02:54Z</updated> <published>2024-08-14T15:11:17Z</published> <category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="GOV.UK Notify" /> <summary type="html"><![CDATA[GOV.UK Notify recently migrated our applications to AWS Elastic Container Service. Find out how we did it without affecting our users. ]]></summary> <content type="html" xml:base="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/08/14/how-we-migrated-gov-uk-notify-to-aws-elastic-container-service/"><![CDATA[<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-36068 size-large" src="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Notify-Tech-asset-2-1-620x342.png" alt="" width="620" height="342" srcset="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Notify-Tech-asset-2-1-620x342.png 620w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Notify-Tech-asset-2-1-310x171.png 310w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Notify-Tech-asset-2-1-768x423.png 768w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Notify-Tech-asset-2-1.png 1140w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" /></p> <p><a href="https://www.notifications.service.gov.uk/">GOV.UK Notify</a> has finished our migration from <a href="https://www.cloud.service.gov.uk/">GOV.UK Platform as a Service</a> (PaaS). In our previous blog post we talked about <a href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/01/17/how-we-migrated-our-postgresql-database-with-11-seconds-downtime/">how we migrated our database</a>. In this post, former Notify team member David McDonald explains how we migrated production traffic to our new apps running in Amazon Web Services (AWS) <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/ecs/">Elastic Container Service</a> (ECS).</p> <h2>Building the new ECS infrastructure</h2> <p>On PaaS, we had 3 environments: preview, staging and production. We had about 25 apps running per environment, mostly deployed using the <a href="https://docs.cloudfoundry.org/buildpacks/python/">Cloud Foundry Python buildpack</a>.</p> <p>We built an equivalent set of these 3 environments, deploying our apps as <a href="https://www.docker.com/resources/what-container/">Docker containers</a> in ECS. We also built new deployment pipelines and monitoring infrastructure. Those 2 sentences do not do justice to the hard work of our team of 7 who worked on this, alongside other infrastructure we migrated, over a period of 18 months.</p> <p>The 3 new ECS environments were separate from PaaS and were built to share a minimal amount of infrastructure with their PaaS equivalent. For example, the <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/sqs/">AWS SQS</a> queues that we put our <a href="https://docs.celeryq.dev/en/stable/">Celery</a> tasks on were kept separate, so that the same environment that created a task would also process it.</p> <p>The PaaS environment and equivalent ECS environment did share the same state though. For example, they shared a Postgres database per environment. This meant if you visited the same URL on the PaaS environment and the ECS environment, you would see the same result and the same data.</p> <p>We had built these 3 new environments but by default they received no traffic.</p> <h2>Our plan for migrating traffic</h2> <p>Near the start of our migration project, we identified all the ways that traffic comes into Notify. We identified 7 of these 'entry points'. We planned how to migrate each of them to stop sending their traffic to our PaaS environment and instead send it to our ECS environment.</p> <p>Our approach was to:</p> <ol> <li>avoid any downtime for our users</li> <li>migrate each entry point independently to keep things simple</li> <li>use a percentage approach where possible to reduce any impact of mistakes or problems. For example, to start by sending only 1% of traffic to ECS before slowly increasing the percentage</li> </ol> <p>I'll explain in detail about how we did this migration for our different types of entry points.</p> <h2>HTTP requests entering at an AWS CloudFront distribution</h2> <p>Five of our entry points were <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/">AWS CloudFront distributions</a>. These distributions are where HTTP requests enter our infrastructure. Each distribution links to a particular subdomain.</p> <p>For example, one distribution is responsible for receiving all traffic to <a href="https://www.notifications.service.gov.uk/">www.notifications.service.gov.uk</a> and forwarding it to the appropriate application. Another distribution is responsible for traffic to <a href="https://api.notifications.service.gov.uk/">api.notifications.service.gov.uk</a>.</p> <p>On PaaS, when a user visited <a href="https://www.notifications.service.gov.uk/">www.notifications.service.gov.uk</a>, the CloudFront distribution received their request and forwarded it to the relevant PaaS origin.</p> <p>On AWS ECS, the same CloudFront distribution would need to receive the request and forward it to its new origin, an <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/application/introduction.html">AWS Application Load Balancer</a>. The load balancer then has our ECS apps as its targets.</p> <p>We could have simply changed the origin of our CloudFront distribution from the PaaS origin to the ECS origin when we wanted to migrate traffic. However, this would have affected 100% of traffic immediately and we had already decided to take a percentage-based approach.</p> <p>We used <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/lambda-at-the-edge.html">CloudFront Lambda@Edge</a> to run a small bit of Python code for every request that would decide whether to send the request to PaaS or to ECS.</p> <p>The Python code looked a bit like this:</p> <div class="highlight"> <p><code class="language-python">import random</code></p> <p>ECS_TRAFFIC_PERCENTAGE = 0<br /> ECS_ORIGIN = “our-new-ecs-load-balancer-address”</p> <p>def handler(event, context):<br /> request = event['Records'][0]['cf']['request']</p> <p>if random.randint(0, 100) &lt;= ECS_TRAFFIC_PERCENTAGE:<br /> request['origin']['custom']['domainName'] = ECS_ORIGIN</p> <p>return request</p> </div> <p>To start with this code will have no effect. All requests will still go to PaaS because the ECS_TRAFFIC_PERCENTAGE is set to 0.</p> <p>If we change the value of ECS_TRAFFIC_PERCENTAGE this will divert a percentage of requests to our new ECS_ORIGIN by overwriting the PaaS origin already set in the request object.</p> <p>We also added 2 further improvements to this Lambda@Edge function.</p> <p>First, we added support for forcing a request to go to either PaaS or ECS based on custom HTTP headers. If we included our ECS HTTP header in a request then the function would always send the request to ECS. We put the equivalent in place for forcing requests to go to PaaS.</p> <p>This was useful for our manual testing, and even more important for the testing done by our deployment pipelines. The tests run by the deployment pipelines should tell us that a specific environment is working correctly. Using custom headers meant we could ask our tests to target either the PaaS or ECS environment.</p> <p>Second, we changed our Lambda@Edge function so we could very quickly decrease the percentage of traffic going to ECS, for example if we spotted a problem and wanted to revert back to sending all traffic to PaaS. With our original function, the percentage was hardcoded and to change it we had to deploy a new version of the function and associate it with the CloudFront distribution - this took about 10 minutes.</p> <p>We moved the percentage value out of our code and into an <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/dynamodb/">AWS DynamoDB</a> table. Changing a value in DynamoDB would only take us a few seconds and we wouldn't need to deploy a new version of our function. Having our function call out to DynamoDB did have a performance hit, roughly 200ms, but we added 30 seconds of time-based caching so that the vast majority of requests wouldn't be slowed down.</p> <h2>Email delivery receipts entering at an AWS Lambda function</h2> <p>The sixth entry point is an <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/pm/lambda/">AWS Lambda function</a> that receives <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/monitor-sending-activity-using-notifications-sns.html">delivery notifications from AWS Simple Email Service (SES)</a>. Whenever it receives one, it takes the JSON it receives and puts it in a Celery task on an SQS queue to be picked up by one of our apps.</p> <p>For the migration we tweaked the Lambda function code so it put the Celery task on the relevant queue in our PaaS environment, or the equivalent queue in our ECS environment, based on a percentage value. The code we added was similar to the code we used for our CloudFront Lambda@Edge functions.</p> <h2>Celery tasks put on queues by celery beat</h2> <p>The seventh entry point is <a href="https://docs.celeryq.dev/en/stable/userguide/periodic-tasks.html">celery beat</a>. Celery beat is a scheduler - it creates Celery tasks at regular intervals. For example, it is responsible for creating a Celery task:</p> <ul> <li>every evening at 5:30pm to send letters to our print and postage provider</li> <li>every hour to generate the latest billing summary for our users</li> <li>every minute to generate delivery metrics so we know how Notify is performing</li> </ul> <p>Celery beat itself doesn't process the tasks it creates. Instead it puts them on an SQS queue and one of our other apps will pick up the task from the SQS queue to process.</p> <p>We only run a single instance of celery beat in PaaS production. Instances of celery beat don't share state, so if we ran 2 instances then we would have 2 tasks created for every item in our celery beat schedule. While this wouldn't be an issue for most of our Celery tasks, we knew at least some are not able to be run twice without having an unwanted impact.</p> <p>For example, running our letter sending task twice in one evening would mean 2 duplicate letters arriving on your doorstep!</p> <p>This behaviour also means we couldn't necessarily run celery beat in PaaS and ECS at the same time. Both environments share the same database and state, so duplicate tasks might end up with duplicate results.</p> <p>To migrate celery beat, we had to decide between 3 options:</p> <ul> <li>turn off celery beat in PaaS production and then turn on celery beat in ECS production. There would be a short amount of time (probably under a minute) where celery beat was not running in either environment</li> <li>turn on celery beat in ECS production and then turn off celery beat in PaaS production. There would be a short amount of time (probably under a minute) where celery beat was running in both environments and any duplicate tasks run during this time could have an unplanned impact</li> <li>review all of our Celery tasks to ensure that they could be run twice, or at the same time, without any impact. Then we could run celery beat in both PaaS production and ECS production at the same time knowing this would not cause problems</li> </ul> <p>We chose the first option because it was quick and simple. We timed the swap over for one of the quieter times of day where no critical tasks were scheduled.</p> <h2>How it went</h2> <p>On 9 January, we started sending our first production traffic to ECS. For our lowest traffic and lowest impact subdomain, we configured its CloudFront distribution to send 1% of requests to ECS. This subdomain only serves GET requests, so if a request is served by ECS and errors, the user can just reload the page. The reload will likely be served by PaaS with no further impact to the user. Regardless, we kept a close eye on our logs to spot any errors.</p> <p>On 6 February, we started sending 0.1% of traffic for <a href="https://api.notifications.service.gov.uk/">api.notifications.service.gov.uk</a> to ECS. This was our last subdomain because it was the highest risk. If requests to our API fail, then we might break other web services run by the public sector -- maybe even leaving their users stuck in a web journey or never receiving an important notification.</p> <p>We started with just 0.1% of traffic because our API receives thousands of requests per minute so even 0.1% would be enough to give us confidence that things were working without the risk of affecting a large number of users.</p> <p>Once we had a small percentage of traffic from each of our CloudFront distributions going to ECS, we had reasonable confidence that our apps were working correctly. Over the next few weeks, we gradually increased the percentage of traffic going to ECS, while continuing to closely monitor. This helped confirm that our autoscaling and the capacity of our new environment were sufficient.</p> <p>With the migration of HTTP traffic going well, we turned our attention to the Lambda function for our email delivery receipts. Between 27 January and 28 February, we slowly increased the percentage of email delivery receipts going to ECS until we reached 100%.</p> <p>On 27 February we migrated celery beat.</p> <p>On 8 March we increased the percentage of traffic going to ECS for our final CloudFront distribution to 100%. At this point, all production traffic was being served by ECS.</p> <h2>Migration complete</h2> <p>We'd managed to migrate all of our applications to our new infrastructure without any downtime. We monitored for one further week before calling it 'job done' and celebrating. Migrating our apps was the last part of migrating off the PaaS. We were only left with the final and most pleasing of tasks - deleting lots of code and infrastructure we no longer needed!</p> <div class="highlight"> <p>To find out more about GOV.UK Notify, how it works and how it could help you, visit <a href="https://www.notifications.service.gov.uk/">the GOV.UK Notify website</a>.</p> </div> ]]></content> <link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/08/14/how-we-migrated-gov-uk-notify-to-aws-elastic-container-service/#comments" thr:count="1" /> <link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/08/14/how-we-migrated-gov-uk-notify-to-aws-elastic-container-service/feed/" thr:count="1" /> <thr:total>1</thr:total> </entry> <entry> <author> <name>John Ploughman, Head of Content Design, Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA)</name> </author> <title type="html"><![CDATA[How to &#039;Get Started&#039; using GOV.UK Forms - experiences of the Content team at the DVSA]]></title> <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/08/12/how-to-get-started-using-gov-uk-forms-experiences-of-the-content-team-at-the-dvsa/" /> <id>https://gds.blog.gov.uk/?p=36045</id> <updated>2024-08-14T12:43:51Z</updated> <published>2024-08-12T13:09:30Z</published> <category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="GOV.UK Forms" /> <summary type="html"><![CDATA[In this guest blog post, Thomas Williams and John Ploughman, from the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) share their experience of being private beta partners and getting started with GOV.UK Forms. ]]></summary> <content type="html" xml:base="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/08/12/how-to-get-started-using-gov-uk-forms-experiences-of-the-content-team-at-the-dvsa/"><![CDATA[<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-36054 size-large" src="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Forms-blog-post-960-x-640-px-620x413.png" alt="The graphic features a screengrab of a page on GOV.UK, on a laptop. The text on the screen reads: Apply to replace a lost, stolen or damaged Driver CPC card. The image has a blue background." width="620" height="413" srcset="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Forms-blog-post-960-x-640-px-620x413.png 620w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Forms-blog-post-960-x-640-px-310x207.png 310w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Forms-blog-post-960-x-640-px-768x512.png 768w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Forms-blog-post-960-x-640-px.png 960w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" /></p> <p>Over the last 12 months at the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), we've published 12 GOV.UK Forms, and we've received more than 14,000 form submissions. We've also developed a clear backlog of forms that could be created using GOV.UK Forms.</p> <p>We want to share how we've gone about this so you can learn from what we've done - and hopefully so we can learn from your comments and feedback.</p> <h2>Making sure GOV.UK Forms is considered for new forms</h2> <p>At DVSA, we already had a centralised policy and process for getting approval to create new forms.</p> <p>We've been working to update these so that GOV.UK Forms is considered as an option for creating new forms. As <a href="https://www.gov.uk/">GOV.UK Forms' features</a> increase, more forms will become suitable, and we expect fewer new PDF forms will be published.</p> <p>We hope to launch this updated policy and process soon. It will mean that when a new form is flagged as being suitable for GOV.UK Forms, the Content Design team will be able to step in and help to design and publish it.</p> <h2>Identifying existing forms to remake with GOV.UK Forms</h2> <p>To bring some structure to identifying existing forms that could be remade with GOV.UK Forms, we started with a content audit.</p> <p>We audited all of the forms we have published on GOV.UK. It included:</p> <ul> <li>forms published on dedicated forms pages, such as <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/complain-about-an-mot">appeal an MOT test result</a></li> <li>forms embedded in detailed guidance for specialists, such as applying for permission to <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/set-up-a-drink-drive-rehabilitation-scheme-course">set up drink-drive rehabilitation courses</a></li> </ul> <p>Our audit included the:</p> <ul> <li>page title</li> <li>page URL</li> <li>form title</li> <li>form format (for example, PDF)</li> <li>number of submissions per year</li> <li>service group the form belongs to</li> </ul> <p>We also recorded whether the form requires:</p> <ul> <li>supporting documents</li> <li>complex branching (more than just skipping one question based on an answer)</li> <li>a payment</li> </ul> <p>In total, we identified 136 forms as part of the audit.</p> <h2>Identifying things that would be better as forms</h2> <p>We also audited all of the places on GOV.UK where we ask users to send structured information to a DVSA email address.</p> <p>We found about 60 of these. In most cases, we ask users to email no more than 5 pieces of data to us as part of a process, such as replacing lost documents.</p> <p><div id="attachment_36049" style="width: 630px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-36049" class="wp-image-36049 size-large" src="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Add-or-remove-MOT-test-records-620x303.png" alt="The image depicts a screengrab of a GOV.UK page describing how to add or remove MOT test records for a vehicle." width="620" height="303" srcset="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Add-or-remove-MOT-test-records-620x303.png 620w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Add-or-remove-MOT-test-records-310x152.png 310w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Add-or-remove-MOT-test-records-768x376.png 768w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Add-or-remove-MOT-test-records-1536x751.png 1536w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Add-or-remove-MOT-test-records-2048x1002.png 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" /><p id="caption-attachment-36049" class="wp-caption-text">Example of a page on GOV.UK where we ask users to send us structured data.</p></div></p> <p>When we started talking to the teams that deal with the incoming emails, we found that most miss some or all of the required information. The teams then need to go back to the user and ask for the missing information.</p> <p>It slows down the outcome for the user, and it's frustrating and inefficient for the teams dealing with the emails.</p> <p>Again, we recorded whether the email process required supporting documents or payments further down the line.</p> <h2>Starting out simple</h2> <p>We decided to start with some of the most simple things we'd identified - such as processes which mainly involved collecting information by an email address.</p> <p>Because this early version of GOV.UK Forms didn't have these features at the time, we ruled out anything that needed supporting documents, complex branching or taking payments*.</p> <h2>Designing and publishing forms</h2> <p>At DVSA, we've made the decision to centralise the creation, publication and management of GOV.UK Forms in our Content Design team.</p> <p>GOV.UK Forms has been designed to help any teams in government to create accessible online forms, regardless of their technical skills. However, at the DVSA we decided we'd achieve the best results by having user-centred design experts working on the forms.</p> <p>We have the skills to:</p> <ul> <li>write for user interfaces</li> <li>design good questions</li> <li>advocate for users by challenging requests that do not support their needs</li> <li>make sure the start point on GOV.UK for accessing the form is designed at the same time as the form itself - bringing more consistency across the user journey</li> <li>make sure other content on GOV.UK is reviewed and updated as necessary as forms go live</li> </ul> <p>We will not go into detail on how you actually create a form within the platform. But if you want to see a demo of that, do go and read this blog post and watch the embedded video about <a href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/02/28/how-were-using-webinars-to-demonstrate-how-quick-and-easy-it-is-to-use-gov-uk-forms/">how easy it is to use GOV.UK forms</a>.</p> <h2>Measuring success</h2> <p>We're trying to follow the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/measuring-success">guidance in the Service Manual about measuring success</a> as much as possible.</p> <p>The GOV.UK Forms platform shows us the number of form submissions and forms started but not completed over the last 7 days.</p> <p>If you keep a record of these, you can build up a picture of your form's <a href="https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/measuring-success/measuring-completion-rate">completion rate</a> over time.</p> <p><div id="attachment_36050" style="width: 522px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-36050" class="wp-image-36050 size-full" src="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/ADI-driving-test-data-report-screengrab.png" alt="This image is a screengrab of a Request your approved driving instructor (ADI) driving test data report page, taken from GOV.UK." width="512" height="324" srcset="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/ADI-driving-test-data-report-screengrab.png 512w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/ADI-driving-test-data-report-screengrab-310x196.png 310w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" /><p id="caption-attachment-36050" class="wp-caption-text">Example of the analytics currently available within GOV.UK Forms.</p></div></p> <p>We know this is just a minimum viable product (MVP) of metrics and that more detailed performance data will be available later this year. For example, including total form submission numbers and a breakdown of interactions with each question page. These would help to identify where we might need to improve the wording for any questions.</p> <h2>Measuring user satisfaction with GOV.UK feedback pages</h2> <p>We've worked with the content team at the Government Digital Service to create GOV.UK feedback pages (sometimes called 'completed transaction' or 'done' pages) for our forms.</p> <p>This allows us to collect feedback from users on:</p> <ul> <li>how satisfied they were with the form</li> <li>any improvements they would like to see</li> </ul> <p>We're using this to <a href="https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/measuring-success/measuring-user-satisfaction">work out user satisfaction ratings</a> for each form.</p> <p><div id="attachment_36052" style="width: 522px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-36052" class="wp-image-36052 size-full" src="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Driver-CPC-card-screengrab.png" alt="The image is a screengrab of the Give feedback on Apply to replace a lost, stolen or damaged Driver CPC card page on GOV.UK." width="512" height="460" srcset="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Driver-CPC-card-screengrab.png 512w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Driver-CPC-card-screengrab-310x279.png 310w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" /><p id="caption-attachment-36052" class="wp-caption-text">Example of a GOV.UK feedback page collecting user satisfaction and feedback.</p></div></p> <p>We're getting feedback that shows that users are finding the forms easy to use.</p> <p style="padding-left: 40px">"It was very straightforward, easy to use."</p> <p style="padding-left: 40px">"Could not be better."</p> <p style="padding-left: 40px">"This is the first time I have used this service and it is much easier than having to email through a request."</p> <p>We're also getting useful feedback from users on what they want to see next.</p> <p style="padding-left: 40px">"By accepting payment online when filling out the forms."</p> <p style="padding-left: 40px">"Take payment online for replacements."</p> <p style="padding-left: 40px">"Having an online payment option so the lot could be sorted immediately."</p> <h2>Feedback from the teams processing submissions</h2> <p>We've received positive feedback from the teams that we've worked with to design and publish the forms. They're now busy processing the submissions.</p> <p>We think this is our favourite so far:</p> <p style="padding-left: 40px">"[The form submission email] looks awesome, really easy to action now and gives us all the details we need, huge improvement!!!"</p> <h2>Working towards services that solve whole problems for users</h2> <p>We're not just creating a GOV.UK Form and then moving on as if the job is done. It's not.</p> <p>Using GOV.UK Forms can help us make some current processes more efficient in the short term. But in the longer term, we need more user-centric policies and services that reduce the need for forms.</p> <p>As an example, one of our GOV.UK Forms allows MOT centres to apply for a replacement approval certificate. This proves they're approved to carry out MOTs - they have to display it on a public notice board.</p> <p>When the MOT centre applies for a replacement, a member of staff at DVSA will generate a PDF certificate and then email it to the MOT centre so they can print it out.</p> <p>So you can see that we could:</p> <ul> <li>build that feature into our digital service for MOT centres, so they can just print a replacement as and when they need one</li> <li>rethink whether or not it's necessary for policy and regulation to mandate that MOT centres have to display a paper certificate</li> </ul> <p>But by using GOV.UK Forms, we can make things more efficient right now. And it makes it easier to make iterative improvements to forms, benefitting thousands of users.</p> <p>Equally as important, it helps us to:</p> <ul> <li>refocus on the underlying user needs behind lots of these smaller tasks, record them and build up a bank of them</li> <li>collect data and feedback from users that can be fed back into services and policy development</li> </ul> <div class="highlight"> <p>Government users can find out just how quick and easy GOV.UK Forms is to use by creating an account to start building forms. <a href="https://www.forms.service.gov.uk/get-started">Get started today</a>.</p> </div> <p>* Providing documents and complex branching are amongst the <a href="https://www.forms.service.gov.uk/forthcoming-features">GOV.UK Forms teams top forthcoming features</a> with work planned for the second half of 2024. GOV.UK Forms now includes the new 'taking payments' feature, which was released in March 2024.</p> ]]></content> <link rel="replies" type="text/html" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/08/12/how-to-get-started-using-gov-uk-forms-experiences-of-the-content-team-at-the-dvsa/#comments" thr:count="3" /> <link rel="replies" type="application/atom+xml" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/08/12/how-to-get-started-using-gov-uk-forms-experiences-of-the-content-team-at-the-dvsa/feed/" thr:count="3" /> <thr:total>3</thr:total> </entry> <entry> <author> <name>Chris Bellamy, CEO, Government Digital Service</name> </author> <title type="html"><![CDATA[From Whitechapel to the White House]]></title> <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/08/06/from-whitechapel-to-the-white-house/" /> <id>https://gds.blog.gov.uk/?p=36030</id> <updated>2024-08-06T12:33:17Z</updated> <published>2024-08-06T10:58:27Z</published> <category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="GDS team" /><category scheme="https://gds.blog.gov.uk" term="Digital" /> <summary type="html"><![CDATA[When you make things open, you make things better. GDS Chief Executive Chris Bellamy and Chief of Staff Louise Harris, and cross-government colleagues, were invited by counterparts in Washington DC to have that conversation with a group of global digital leaders. Discover their key highlights in our latest blog post.]]></summary> <content type="html" xml:base="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2024/08/06/from-whitechapel-to-the-white-house/"><![CDATA[<p>&nbsp;</p> <p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-36037 size-large" src="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Delegates-from-digital-governments-at-the-White-House-620x413.jpg" alt="A large group of delegates from digital governments around the world pose on the ‘Navy Steps’ outside the Old Eisenhower Building, Washington DC." width="620" height="413" srcset="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Delegates-from-digital-governments-at-the-White-House-620x413.jpg 620w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Delegates-from-digital-governments-at-the-White-House-310x207.jpg 310w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Delegates-from-digital-governments-at-the-White-House-768x512.jpg 768w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Delegates-from-digital-governments-at-the-White-House-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2024/08/Delegates-from-digital-governments-at-the-White-House.jpg 1600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" /></p> <p>The Government Digital Service's (GDS) mission is to design and protect the user experience of government - making it better for users and cheaper for the taxpayer. Over the last year, we've been asking ourselves some big questions. Like what's changed socially, technologically and economically since we were set up in 2011? We've challenged ourselves to test previous assumptions and technical decisions about how digital services needed to work, thinking critically about which aspects might need to change versus what should remain the same.</p> <p>We've always believed that when you <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/government-design-principles#make-things-open-it-makes-things-better">make things open, it makes things better</a>. So when our counterparts from the Office of Management and Budget, part of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, invited us to have that very conversation with a group of global digital leaders, we were first in line.</p> <p>Earlier this year, we swapped our UK base for the storied halls of the White House, and the iconic backdrop of Washington DC. Alongside colleagues from I.AI and the Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO), we sat down with leaders from the USA, Trinidad and Tobago, Cyprus, Canada, Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, Azerbaijan, and Singapore for an inspiring (and intense!) three days of discussion, debate and storytelling. Read on for the key takeaways from our time in DC.</p> <h2>Our four main takeaways</h2> <h3>Trust is everything</h3> <p>In an era of increased complexity and misinformation, users justifiably expect accurate guidance and information from government. They want to trust that services are designed around their needs, and be confident their data is suitably protected and responsibly used.</p> <p>Frustrating or fragmented interactions can harm trust. The group agreed that adopting modern user-centric design principles is just one of the ways digital governments around the world can build and maintain trust among our users. By designing the user experience of government better, we have the opportunity to create more positive interactions between users and the state.</p> <p>In the UK, we maintain trust through our unified digital brand, GOV.UK, supported by an ecosystem of other digital components including GOV.UK Pay, Notify and Forms. These platforms already offer a consistent, accessible experience for users who interact with our government, and drive efficiency for our taxpayers. We're now <a href="https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2023/06/06/putting-growth-at-the-heart-of-gov-uks-strategy/">expanding our channel strategy</a> to strengthen the trust they have in our services by meeting them in more places, and offering information and support in alternative formats that work best for them.</p> <h3>The role of connected data</h3> <p>Canada and Singapore kicked off the conversation highlighting their efforts to connect data around users in order to make services more efficient, and personalised. As you'd expect, privacy and security were at the core of the conversation, but so was data quality. As one US delegate summarised: "if you put garbage in, you'll get garbage out."</p> <p>We know that data which is seamlessly integrated across departments could revolutionise government services - but only if we work together to achieve high levels of quality, privacy, security and user trust.</p> <p>Here in the UK, the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/data-standards-authority">Data Standards Authority</a> established standards to streamline data sharing and usage and a CDDO roadmap mission is focused on <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/roadmap-for-digital-and-data-2022-to-2025/transforming-for-a-digital-future-2022-to-2025-roadmap-for-digital-and-data">better data to power decision-making</a>. At GDS, reimagining how government services could be offered if they were designed around (quality) data is something which is at the heart of our thinking. Specifically how GOV.UK One Login could enable a faster, more personalised and more proactive experience of government in the near future.</p> <h3>Generative AI needs guardrails and governance</h3> <p>The conversation naturally shifted from data to generative AI. Like any other technology, AI will only ever be as good as the data we use to train it, or the guardrails we apply to govern its use.</p> <p>Governments around the world are exploring AI to boost productivity, economic growth, and improve policy-making. At GDS, we're experimenting to see whether it can <a href="https://insidegovuk.blog.gov.uk/2024/01/18/experimenting-with-how-generative-ai-could-help-gov-uk-users/">improve the government-to-citizen experience</a>. And last November, the UK proudly initiated a global dialogue at the first-ever AI Safety Summit. <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ai-safety-summit-2023-the-bletchley-declaration/the-bletchley-declaration-by-countries-attending-the-ai-safety-summit-1-2-november-2023">The Bletchley Declaration</a> which followed, endorsed by 29 global signatories, aims to use AI to "enhance human wellbeing, peace and prosperity".</p> <p>In Washington, fellow leaders balanced the ambition to innovate at pace and at scale, with accountability for the wider potential impacts of AI. As a group we recognised that the AI challenge is as much about the people, policies and governance as it is about the underlying technology. Working together, we can harness AI's potential to enhance public services alongside safeguarding societal values. But only if ethical governance, transparency and collaboration remain central to the work.</p> <h3>Alternative funding models can benefit innovation</h3> <p>The majority of the global partners in the room were still subject to fixed budget cycles. We discussed how traditional government funding approaches can hinder agile software development, and the rapid experimentation and adoption of emerging technologies, and what alternatives might exist.</p> <p>Our US hosts shared their experience with the <a href="https://tmf.cio.gov/">Technology Modernisation Fund (TMF)</a>, which acts as an alternative to Congress' 12 funding committee routes to accelerate funding for high-potential digital, cybersecurity, and data projects.</p> <p>The TMF mission is to "enable agencies to reimagine and transform the way they use technology to deliver their mission and services to the American public in an effective, efficient and secure manner". It has supported over 57 projects with $900 million in funding to date, including guardrails to protect the investment by providing technical expertise and board oversight to guide the work.</p> <p>Adopting innovative funding arrangements - such as the TMF - could enable governments to more rapidly embrace technological advancements and drive digital transformation outside of fixed, traditional funding cycles.</p> <h3>Where next?</h3> <p>Our discussions in Washington, and the generous insight shared by those who attended, underscored the importance of many of the things we are already focusing on: building trust; unlocking the transformative power of data and pursuing responsible innovation.</p> <p>It was wonderful to come together and reflect on all of the work already happening across the globe to make interacting with government simpler and faster for the millions (billions?) of users who collectively rely on us. But there is so much more to do, and we are up for the challenge.</p> <p>We will all go further, faster if we keep sharing and learning from one another and we look forward to continuing the conversations and the collaborations sparked with our international colleagues.</p> ]]></content> </entry> </feed>