The UK government's Github | Hacker News Reader

The UK government's Github

github.com

36 pointslutfidemirci20 comments

No, the Government Digital Service (http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/) GitHub account.

They're building a new, single Government website, currently in beta at http://www.gov.uk, to replace the current http://direct.gov.uk and other government websites.

From a presentation I caught earlier this year they're planning to start rolling this out later on in the year. The approach they've taken is very refreshing on eye and quite joyful to use - the new vat rate page[0] compared to a current vat rate page[1] is a nice example.

Also, it's been featured here before, but it's worth adding that I love how visible they've made their design principles[2].

[0]: https://www.gov.uk/vat-rates

[1]: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/MoneyTaxAndBenefits/Taxes/Beginn...

[2]: https://www.gov.uk/designprinciples

It only looks refreshing because it lacks detail. Anyway this whole project is blatantly political. Directgov was a product of the last government so why not spend money making a new one and show how we've made all government services go online in a web2.0 fashion when we could fix the current one.

>It only looks refreshing because it lacks detail.

It doesn't lack detail. It just lacks unnecessary detail.

>why not spend money making a new one and show how we've made all government services go online in a web2.0 fashion

Uhm, gov.uk is a response to a report suggesting "Revolution not Evolution", among other things. It is not being done because the government wants to leave its mark, it's because Directgov is horrible.

http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/resource-library/directgov-2...

I'd like to agree with you but nope it clearly does lack detail, looking at that page I've a few instant questions

* If I'm a business how do I get my VAT right?

* What goods/services are VAT exempt

Now they're a little specific because I deal with VAT regularly but the fact that the VAT rate is 20% is easy to show and it's a headline piece of information. However tax and everything else involving government is always complicated and presenting it simply is incredibly difficult. The questions that a user landing on that page will want answering are diverse and as much as I'd like it to be as simple as showing a simple table with some data I doubt whether that's going to answer the question the average user has. The current directgov page is full of links to and information that might help, the new snazzy page - nope nothing.

I don't think this is purely political I honestly believe there are people trying to make government sites more simple but I also don't think just throwing away whatever information you don't need is not particularly helpful. The reason most gov websites are hugely complicated/confusing is because gov is hugely confusing/complicated and while I applaud any effort to simplify the presentation simply dropping a bunch of information and claiming you've solved the problem doesn't cut it.

There's more than one search result for 'VAT', that's just the quick answer, although you're right it's a little lacking in links to more info. But in which case, submit feedback.

There's also the US Government's Github including the White House:

* White House: https://github.com/WhiteHouse

* Other Federal Agencies: http://gsa.github.com/federal-open-source-repos/

Some state and local ones are listed at:

* http://wiki.civiccommons.org/Public_Software_Repositories

Now I'm not bashing anything by this comment, but I'm surprised they built it in Ruby/Rails.

It doesn't really match the traditional integration paths that they're going to have to deal with across direct.gov.uk and I'm genuinely not sure it'll scale up that high if they are pushing people down that route.

We all know what happens once a year when we have to do our tax returns and that's all on a huge Java EE cluster apparently.

Is it not the intention to replace directgov, rather than integrate with it?

Yes. I am considering the integrations which are going to have to be moved from direct.gov.uk to their new Rails platform.

direct.gov has been a monumental failure, which is why it is being canned (at vast cost due to contractual terms, I believe). If the "traditional integration paths" are broken they will need fixing too.

That RoR isn't typical for government is much of the point. They've been spending 20x too much for one-tenth of what they should have: moving to traditional web tech is a pretty brilliant step forward.

As regards scaling, it's a valid concern but one I suspect they'll have considered. A good number of brilliant people work there (I've visited and know the crowd).

I am utterly utterly overjoyed seeing this, even with caveats.

Government has been described as the engine of a lawn mower and the brakes of a Rolls-Royce - so it's good to see the brakes off for a while.

I do worry about those brakes though. In the design principles they disparagingly refer to an article on beekeeping as not a core focus for government (you did not know Ron Paul was a RoR guy did you?).

But beekeeping is on the live site because it represents a constituency of the live governemnt. Although they are under the cabinet office and so theoretically able to say no, I think hoping you can slim down government through web design is a bit - optimistic.

Dirctgov started off as optimistic as these guys - and what is not on github is the decision making process - when their mailing list is world readable as well as their code then we shall have open government

till then, the beekeeping lobby will have it's way - eventually.

I wonder what the legal background of this is. My understanding that every work created by the UK government is protected by crown copyright which is only waived in certain very specific cases (and this is not listed amongst those). Can anything under crown copyright really be considered open source?

(It doesn't say anywhere that it is, by the way, although there is a BSD-style license).

As you suggest, I would imagine crown copyright still applies but is simplu being licensed out.

Pwrhaps ironically, the existing direct gov page has information on permitted uses of crown copyright materials.

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/SiteInformation/DG_020460

I believe this may be licensed under the Open Government License: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licen...

How much of it is UK-specific? It would be interesting to have other countries forking these tools ;-)

I was really excited to see this.. then saw that most of it was in Ruby. Sad4us.

What's so bad about Ruby?

At least you were able to see what it was in. That alone in a massive step forward. And I don't see any problem with Ruby - at least it isn't some proprietary Accenture framework.

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