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UK only excels in static .gov.uk serving. They are great for informational purposes. The best one actually is the one serving Travel Guidance for any country in

UK only excels in static .gov.uk serving. They are great for informational purposes. The best one actually is the one serving Travel Guidance for any country in the world. They are light years behind countries that have fully-fledged dynamic services provided by the government accessible through the ID Cards, as it is in the Baltics for example.

jon-wood 6y ago
The lack of ID card based auth isn't really the fault of the team behind gov.uk, who provide the best service they can for government SSO in the form of Verify: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/introducing-govuk-verify/introducing-govuk-verify https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/introducing-govuk... National ID cards are a particularly thorny issue politically, there's been a few attempts to introduce them, all of which have been noisily shut down in parliament because of privacy concerns. There isn't really any single database of people in the UK, with different ministries having their own databases. In principle this seems like a pretty good approach, even if it does mean that things like authentication with web services is a bit clunky.
- marksomnian 6y ago
  GDS are clearly aware of this problem and are working on this as well, with "GOV.UK Accounts" [0] https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2020/09/22/introducing-gov-uk-accounts/ https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2020/09/22/introducing-gov-uk-accoun...
fakedang 6y ago
There's a nice episode of Yes, Minister showing why ID cards are a particularly thorny issue. One of the indicated reasons was how it's akin to Nazi armbands.
gm3dmo 6y ago
> UK only excels in static .gov.uk serving I'd put forward Gov.uk/pay and Gov.uk/notify as very successful transactional services that operate on a massive scale. They have been particularly good for local councils who just hook up to Notify and Pay. The parts where security is paramount are handled centrally. It stops councils having to "roll their own". Universal Credit is a transactional system handling billions in benefits. When the conservative government shut down the economy in March it seems to have coped pretty well: https://dwpdigital.blog.gov.uk/2020/12/14/dwps-agile-response-to-covid-19-scaling-universal-credit-to-meet-demand/ https://dwpdigital.blog.gov.uk/2020/12/14/dwps-agile-respons...

jon-wood 6y ago

The lack of ID card based auth isn't really the fault of the team behind gov.uk, who provide the best service they can for government SSO in the form of Verify: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/introducing-govuk-verify/introducing-govuk-verify https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/introducing-govuk... National ID cards are a particularly thorny issue politically, there's been a few attempts to introduce them, all of which have been noisily shut down in parliament because of privacy concerns. There isn't really any single database of people in the UK, with different ministries having their own databases. In principle this seems like a pretty good approach, even if it does mean that things like authentication with web services is a bit clunky.

marksomnian 6y ago
GDS are clearly aware of this problem and are working on this as well, with "GOV.UK Accounts" [0] https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2020/09/22/introducing-gov-uk-accounts/ https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2020/09/22/introducing-gov-uk-accoun...

fakedang 6y ago

There's a nice episode of Yes, Minister showing why ID cards are a particularly thorny issue. One of the indicated reasons was how it's akin to Nazi armbands.

gm3dmo 6y ago

> UK only excels in static .gov.uk serving I'd put forward Gov.uk/pay and Gov.uk/notify as very successful transactional services that operate on a massive scale. They have been particularly good for local councils who just hook up to Notify and Pay. The parts where security is paramount are handled centrally. It stops councils having to "roll their own". Universal Credit is a transactional system handling billions in benefits. When the conservative government shut down the economy in March it seems to have coped pretty well: https://dwpdigital.blog.gov.uk/2020/12/14/dwps-agile-response-to-covid-19-scaling-universal-credit-to-meet-demand/ https://dwpdigital.blog.gov.uk/2020/12/14/dwps-agile-respons...