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Comment by spaniard89277 | Hacker News Reader

I really like the effort gov.uk puts on it. IIRC there's a similar thing getting traction in Italy. Why can't we have anything similar in Spain? Some regional governments already have with more or less success but central state services are a complete mess. No consistence at all, and some websites are so badly made that if feels like it was the intent.

AFAIK there isn't a lowest bid system anymore, so why is everything so difficult?

Just imagine being able to worry because some stuff doesn't work with screenreaders...

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We had a similar thing in Australia - the Australian Government Design System: https://designsystem.gov.au/

It is in use across a huge number of Australian government websites - the Australian Cyber Security Centre, Services Australia, Department of Health, Department of Veterans' Affairs to name just a few.

The agency that owned it had a huge amount of funding cut from its budget, and now it's being supported by an (admirable!) open source effort: https://designsystemau.org/

It's wonderful that there is this level of community support, but so disappointing that the government couldn't recognise the importance and usefulness of continued funding.

> The Australian Government Design System has been decommissioned and will be taken down on 30th Sep 2021.

Much like everything else that came out of that agency, it was released and then promptly abandoned.

The goal at various points was something gov.uk-like, but I think we failed pretty miserably on all counts.

Feels really wasteful that Australia would try to come up with the same thing rather than just using the UK one, if that's essentially the goal anyway.

https://design-system.service.gov.uk/

It's even published under this liberal license:

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-lice...

I feel this in my bones. Working on my Spanish tax return, and agencia tributaria's site has some of the most diabolical form validation I've ever encountered. They validate onblur and clear the field + popup an error dialog whenever validation fails - which triggers every single time I alt-tab out to my financial statements... grr

And Hacienda is one of the most widely used interfaces. Wait till you have to use some obscure system.

Luckily some other level of government made another interface for the same system cos they got tired of it.

I may be wrong, but I believe the gov.uk website work was originally done by a small consultancy who clearly knew what they were doing, which makes it something of a unicorn, as government IT work is usually farmed out to one of the big "jack of all trades, master of none" consultancies, with wearyingly familiar results in terms of low quality, cost overruns etc.

What was unique about GOV.UK is that it wasn’t done by a consultancy.

They managed to build an in-house, central resource (GDS/Government Digital Service) and pioneered a lot of public service design practices which are the template for USDS and others.

However, my understanding is that the GDS team is greatly diminished these days and the consultants are back across separate government departments again.

> However, my understanding is that the GDS team is greatly diminished these days and the consultants are back across separate government departments again.

That just seems to be the natural cycle of life. Some (somewhat independent) part of the government does something good and admirable, all of the self-interested politicians and other functionaries see that success and want to have a part of it, insert themselves and their interests into the thing, and in the process end up ruining it because they had no idea what they were talking about and should instead have left that work to the domain-experts which managed to make it successful in the first place.

There is a similar effort in France: https://www.systeme-de-design.gouv.fr/ and there are, presumably, other efforts elsewhere.

But the french administration has been very heavily centralised since forever, which probably makes that kind of project easier to run.

Wow I think this one is the best yet, I really like the visual look too. But it doesn't seem ready to be used? A part from the confluence link there's no mention of a license or how to use it a part from a "contact us" form.

Indeed it is not final but design systems are living entities anyway. It already covers quite a lot.

When to use and to not use it is slightly vaguely explained here: https://gouvfr.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/DB/pages/606012403/.... If I understand correctly, it's supposed to become mandatory at some unknown point in the future for all websites operated by the state. Whether some or all of it could be used by other entities and under what conditions is not exactly clear to me.

> Il est formellement interdit à tout autre acteur public d’utiliser le système de design de l’État (les administrations territoriales ou tout autre acteur privé). Le système de design de l’État représente l’identité numérique de l’État. Par conséquent, ces entités ne sont pas concernées par son déploiement ou son adoption.

> Par ailleurs, en cas d’usage à des fins trompeuses ou frauduleuses, l'État se réserve le droit d’entreprendre les actions nécessaires pour y mettre un terme.

They mention the non-state-operated public sector and fraudulent use but not much beyond that.

There are some negatives too. The design pattern doesn't work well for some specialist websites that get jammed into the gov.uk mould. Overall though, it's better than the mish-mash of styles and the duplication of effort across many different departments and levels of government.

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