The unlikely success story of putting the British Government online
Governments don’t win design awards. That’s pretty much a given. But the UK Government’s digital team are the exception to that rule, having scooped up the Design Of The Year award in 2013.
“A remarkable success on so many levels”
There can’t be many Government websites that have ever been described as “a remarkable success on so many levels. It makes life better for millions of people… It’s a reflection of the government understanding how to communicate with the country in a way that works, it’s simple, direct, well mannered, all the things that we would like to take for granted from the government, but in a sea of red tape and jargon, usually can’t.” as Deyan Sudjic, Director of the Design Museum described it at the time.
But it has been a long hard slog to get there. The British Government were a surprisingly early adopter of the world wide web, and the first government web pages appeared over twenty years ago.
The first iteration of the UK’s online government portal was open.gov.uk in 1994. By March 1997 it was receiving around 2m requests per week, a not inconsiderable number for the web’s early years.
As the end of the decade approached, the site was much more focussed on transactions — actually getting things done online — rather than just providing info. In 2000 the site was replaced with ukonline.gov.uk.
Two further major developments happened as we approached the mid-2000s. In 2003 businesslink.gov.uk arrived, and in 2004 it was joined by Directgov.
For many British internet users, these would have been the first government sites they encountered. Only 9% of UK households were online when the ONS first started collecting figures in 1998. By the launch of DirectGov, this had become 49% of all UK households.
But in October 2012 that all changed. Following a report by Martha Lane Fox the path was set for Gov.uk to become the UK’s primary website for all government information and transactions, and by summer the following year, it had replaced individual department websites. Directgov and BusinessLink were gone. And in making that transition, gov.uk promised that “no link would be left behind” painstakingly making sure that all of the old web addresses, many of which would be found on poster and official leaflets and publications for years to come, would still work.
The whole process has been run by a highly-focussed central digital team, who have won respect for publicly stating their design principles.
“By building services to meet the needs for the bulk of users, we create simpler, clearer and faster services for them”
Part of the GDS mission has been to simplify transacting with the Government for the most straightforward usages, not for the specialism.
Mike Bracken, Executive Director of Digital in the Cabinet Office, has stated that “by building services to meet the needs for the bulk of users, we create simpler, clearer and faster services for them, and have the time and financial flexibility to offer case-by-case support for edge case users.”
It isn’t just the front-end services either. The GDS programme also looks at the tools that civil servants are using behind the scenes, to try and streamline and make those more cost-effective and efficient.
Head of User Research Leisa Reichelt recently told an event about designing content management tools that one of the most common tasks performed behind the scenes at government is simply the transfer of information from one format — say a form submitted by a citizen — to another. This is time consuming, and slows down civil servants who are trying to help in complex cases.
Martha Lane Fox promised in her 2010 report that the Government should pursue digital revolution, not evolution. Gov.uk has certainly revolutionised the level of expectation the public can have about the performance and design of government web sites.
This story is one of 30 celebrating the launch of .uk domain names in 1985. To read the others visit our 30 Years of .uk hub. To start your own .uk story check out www.agreatplacetobe.uk.
