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sergiomattei

On a side note, I'm a huge fan of the standardized design language of all UK Government sites.

They really nailed the aesthetic and the consistency is unmatched.

Edit: I'm impressed at this tooling.[1]

1: https://www.gov.uk/service-toolkit#gov-uk-services

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That’s the GOV.UK Design System in play: https://design-system.service.gov.uk/

(I helped to start the current incarnation of that, and it’s probably the thing in my career that I’m most proud of.)

So that's where Canada.ca aesthetic comes from.

Also https://www.govt.nz/ and https://www.gov.au/.

And https://www.ontario.ca.

Incredible work. I don't think I've seen another government that has a design system so cohesive and well thought out.

I cannot praise the UI design on gov.uk more. It is a beacon of light in this dark age of web UI usability and I am not at all surprised that they have a coherent design system.

The impression I've got is that this also actually a rare victory of politics. My understanding is that GDS was set up under the Cabinet Office with enough political power to dictate to the various bits of the government how their web presence would work. It's lovely that that has (mostly) worked and that there is a great design being delivered!

I can't criticise the aesthetics but damn I can criticise the usability.

I've been on UC (edit: Universal Credit) a while and when I was first on it would lose messages (on both my side and the jobctr officials, and it has frustrated them because I talk to them Edit: and they have their own usability frustrations with it, with little or no way to feed them back up), log you out even before timing out, lose appointments or have them be set but not show up for you, and more.

There's plenty more I could say but I'll just leave something which sums it up. At the top it says "BETA This is a new service - your feedback will help us to improve it". Guess what, it's disabled so you cannot give feedback. It always has been disabled.

Visually pretty good but in terms of usability, not so good. Pretty sure no proper testing was done on it, though it has been getting a lot better recently.

Not a single part of UC is meant to make it easy on the claimant, so colour me surprised to read about website issues!

Actually the claimants use it intermittently while the UC office staff use it for much of their working day. I don't know for sure, but it's a pretty likely that it's actually quite a bit harder on them.

So cases don't get worked and UC doesn't get paid. In other words: working as intended.

It's better than it used to be. Still, a way off from what it needs to be.

The first version was on Microsoft Dynamics (yes a CRM...) for whatever reason iirc.

When it comes to UK tech, what's always happened is projects get farmed out to mega-outsourcing firms, like TCS and Capita, who then deliver a bunch of crap, very late and way over budget.

I'm so pleased that we've brought some of it in house with GDS, and I'm amazed (in a good way) that it actually works, and they are even part of the OSS community.

I was involved (at arms length) in one part of GDS a few years ago and it sounded like some department heads really didn't like the GDS approach.

Departments actually prefered spending ££££££ with HP / Capita / CapGemi etc. because the big outsourcing companies didn't ask as many 'awkward' questions (about accessibility, for example), and the departments got to 'own' the product more.

Saddens me to hear that. At least from their blog, OSS, and the end results I see as a citizen, GDS is a breath of fresh air in a never-ending series of farcical, failed mega-projects. And as a tax payer, I'd much prefer my taxes to go towards building a capable team, rather than paying billion after billion to oursourcing firms, and god only knows how much in pork to to politicians.

Couldn't agree more.

Thank you.

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