5 ms·

Hoorah to that! We are lucky to have wonderful .gov services; highly available, accessible, frictionless, simple, informative, well written and bullshit-free. M

Hoorah to that! We are lucky to have wonderful .gov services; highly available, accessible, frictionless, simple, informative, well written and bullshit-free. Maybe the best online central government services in the world - though I hear Estonia are a contender too. However I live in perpetual fear that at any moment some corrupt minister will do a deal with Microsoft and the Devil. Out will go plain HTML and common interoperable standards, simple authentication, and in will come a vipers nest of javascript calling home to monstrous tracking infrastructure, AWS containers, Cloudflare MITM, hooked into some hideous TPM module and mandatory smartphone camera garbage that scans my iris.... Somehow there is a stronghold of common sense and decency standing its ground within our government. I almost wish I could pay a little extra tax to fund them.

46Bit 3y ago
Umm, GOV.UK uses Google Analytics, Fastly CDN, AWS containers, and I believe is developing an app. (I worked at GDS until two years ago.)
- Aeolun 3y ago
  Like he said: > a stronghold of common sense and decency I get that OP was going for something else but… I don’t think there’s anything wrong with those things when in the right hands.
- dalbasal 3y ago
  IDK if those are, in themselves, indicators. The idea is not purity. The idea is for technical common sense to win over sales/consultant-led architecture.
- pjc50 3y ago
  Everyone uses Google Analytics. I don't find it particularly high up any list of real worries.
  - allan_s 3y ago
    French government websites use matomo if i m not mistaken
    - angra_mainyu 3y ago
      Makes sense, the French have a strong open source community and I believe the creator is French.
    - 6510 3y ago
      https://commission.europa.eu/europa-analytics_en https://commission.europa.eu/europa-analytics_en
  - Gud 3y ago
    I don’t. I despise Google and what they became and so should you. Maybe my 10 visits a day webpage is an anomaly, and I’m truly the only one not using Google analytics - Still, don’t pretend Google analytics is used by everyone.
    - nonrandomstring 3y ago
      For our podcast we specifically set up Plausible to exclude Google analytics. Rather little of value to be gained or lost either way, but it's a matter of conscience and politeness to our users. Sadly we had to put in links to other big-tech application platforms, but those are links to click out of choice if you're a user of those services.
      - Gud 3y ago
        This is always the problem when interacting with the corporate internet. I have a Shopify store on my website where my readers can buy mugs and t-shirts to support me(not that anyone is lol). Lord knows what goes on in there. I hope someone reinvents the services we take for granted with a focus on privacy.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  Indeed, but everything still works for me even though much of that stuff is blackholed here. These are common efficiencies (mistakes on my opinion fwiw) and hopefully we can further improve data-leakage and bring even more things properly back in-house. Not to be too gushing or naive, I am quite aware that in the UK we recently "sold" big chunks of GCHQ to Amazon, so I'm not all wide eyed that parts of our government IT aren't idiots.
  - djhn 3y ago
    Sold parts of GCHQ? Could you elaborate? That sounds rather bad.
    - nonrandomstring 3y ago
      Some but not all of it run-of-the-mill corruption from the usual suspects like Priti Patel. There's not much of Britain left to sell to private equity and Big Tech, but they're always working on finding new "markets". https://www.ft.com/content/74782def-1046-4ea5-b796-0802cfb90260 https://www.ft.com/content/74782def-1046-4ea5-b796-0802cfb90... https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/amazon-signs-deal-with-british-spy-agencies-boost-use-ai-espionage-ft-2021-10-25/ https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/amazon-signs-deal-with-brit...
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  It's the HTML forms that are good and Angular, React and all that which are bad.
  - bzmrgonz 3y ago
    I wonder what technology they are using to wrangle these forms... I remember reading an article a few days ago concerning vuejs project to do something similar.
    - petepete 3y ago
      My form building library is used for all the form wrangling. https://govuk-form-builder.netlify.app/ https://govuk-form-builder.netlify.app/
- arpinum 3y ago
  gov.uk is not a monolith, different departments can make different decisions. There is no mandate for AWS containers or Fastly CDN.
  - switch007 3y ago
    They have to provision from a market place of approve service though right?
  - sonthonax 3y ago
    They tend to use the tools provided by Government Digital Services.
    - Aerbil313 3y ago
      Yes, this is the point and the reason it's so good. Centralization and standardization. I'm so glad that my country (Turkey) has made big leaps in centralization of digital services in the recent years with E-Government platform. I even recently wrote the Presidency Public Communcations Center, suggesting every citizen should have a government-issued email address and that an email account must be a right. E-mail is a necessity at this point and it's unacceptable that anyone can lose access to their email account just because Google's ML models decided he's a bot. The government could easily verify every real citizen.
- bitcharmer 3y ago
  Why does that matter?
- tannhaeuser 3y ago
  GA and external CDNs require cookie banner/consent under GDPR (which is still valid in UK AFAIK). So that alone should be reason enough to avoid it. But you can never be sure: very recently, I'm seeing (unnecessary) popups coming up informing me about the site not using cookies! To make up for the phantom pain of not having one in EU where "real" sites do have cookie dialogs? The web and its self-referential UI idioms have become a strange place indeed.
- ksec 3y ago
  >(I worked at GDS until two years ago.) If you could tell, why did you leave?
mtillman 3y ago
Singapore recently did a deal with a company no one has heard of for their immigration process and the results are cameras that don’t work to the point of the officials needing to manually adjust them, forms that don’t contain consistent data across pages, and my favorite “save a photo of the confirm just in case lah.” The old system just worked, the new system insists upon APPs.
- delta_p_delta_x 3y ago
  > Singapore recently did a deal with a company no one has heard of for their immigration process Source? I've lived in Singapore all my life and have not heard of this. There was an outage on the 31st of March[1], and parliamentary discussion after that[2] doesn't mention any of what you said. [1]: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/changi-airport-terminal-checkpoint-delays-ong-queue-slowness-clearance-delays-ica-3387526 https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/changi-airport-ter... [2]: https://www.mha.gov.sg/mediaroom/parliamentary/oral-reply-to-pqs-on-the-immigration-clearance-system-disruption-at-ica-checkpoints-on-31-march-2023/ https://www.mha.gov.sg/mediaroom/parliamentary/oral-reply-to...
  - mtillman 3y ago
    “Recently” is admittedly subjective but I was just there (2 times in 3 weeks) and can confirm it’s a new system to 4 years ago when the foreign passes were all paper. I think it’s called Tacent. It was so bad a local woman couldn’t even get in and they had to have her wait in the foreign line. You can simply visit the existing immigration website, as it’s public, to view the inconsistent data-the same forms that are displayed on their iPads in the reception hall. This wasn’t an outage, just poor technology implementation.
whimsicalism 3y ago
Half of the technologies you named are actually useful and it wouldn’t shock me if gov.uk uses them
gadders 3y ago
>>simple authentication This is my only gripe. Every time I do self assessment or complete my tax returns as a contractor I had to find some arcane combination of government gateway ID, password, authentication app etc etc. It's so secure it stops you paying the government money.
yonatan8070 3y ago
Entirely off-topic, but why do some comments on HN have manual line breaks but most just soft-wrap? On my phone (Hacki app) each line is soft-wrapped, then hard-wrapped after 1 or 2 words, which looks quite off

46Bit 3y ago

Umm, GOV.UK uses Google Analytics, Fastly CDN, AWS containers, and I believe is developing an app. (I worked at GDS until two years ago.)

Aeolun 3y ago
Like he said: > a stronghold of common sense and decency I get that OP was going for something else but… I don’t think there’s anything wrong with those things when in the right hands.
dalbasal 3y ago
IDK if those are, in themselves, indicators. The idea is not purity. The idea is for technical common sense to win over sales/consultant-led architecture.
pjc50 3y ago
Everyone uses Google Analytics. I don't find it particularly high up any list of real worries.
- allan_s 3y ago
  French government websites use matomo if i m not mistaken
  - angra_mainyu 3y ago
    Makes sense, the French have a strong open source community and I believe the creator is French.
  - 6510 3y ago
    https://commission.europa.eu/europa-analytics_en https://commission.europa.eu/europa-analytics_en
- Gud 3y ago
  I don’t. I despise Google and what they became and so should you. Maybe my 10 visits a day webpage is an anomaly, and I’m truly the only one not using Google analytics - Still, don’t pretend Google analytics is used by everyone.
  - nonrandomstring 3y ago
    For our podcast we specifically set up Plausible to exclude Google analytics. Rather little of value to be gained or lost either way, but it's a matter of conscience and politeness to our users. Sadly we had to put in links to other big-tech application platforms, but those are links to click out of choice if you're a user of those services.
    - Gud 3y ago
      This is always the problem when interacting with the corporate internet. I have a Shopify store on my website where my readers can buy mugs and t-shirts to support me(not that anyone is lol). Lord knows what goes on in there. I hope someone reinvents the services we take for granted with a focus on privacy.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
nonrandomstring 3y ago
Indeed, but everything still works for me even though much of that stuff is blackholed here. These are common efficiencies (mistakes on my opinion fwiw) and hopefully we can further improve data-leakage and bring even more things properly back in-house. Not to be too gushing or naive, I am quite aware that in the UK we recently "sold" big chunks of GCHQ to Amazon, so I'm not all wide eyed that parts of our government IT aren't idiots.
- djhn 3y ago
  Sold parts of GCHQ? Could you elaborate? That sounds rather bad.
  - nonrandomstring 3y ago
    Some but not all of it run-of-the-mill corruption from the usual suspects like Priti Patel. There's not much of Britain left to sell to private equity and Big Tech, but they're always working on finding new "markets". https://www.ft.com/content/74782def-1046-4ea5-b796-0802cfb90260 https://www.ft.com/content/74782def-1046-4ea5-b796-0802cfb90... https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/amazon-signs-deal-with-british-spy-agencies-boost-use-ai-espionage-ft-2021-10-25/ https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/amazon-signs-deal-with-brit...
PaulHoule 3y ago
It's the HTML forms that are good and Angular, React and all that which are bad.
- bzmrgonz 3y ago
  I wonder what technology they are using to wrangle these forms... I remember reading an article a few days ago concerning vuejs project to do something similar.
  - petepete 3y ago
    My form building library is used for all the form wrangling. https://govuk-form-builder.netlify.app/ https://govuk-form-builder.netlify.app/
arpinum 3y ago
gov.uk is not a monolith, different departments can make different decisions. There is no mandate for AWS containers or Fastly CDN.
- switch007 3y ago
  They have to provision from a market place of approve service though right?
- sonthonax 3y ago
  They tend to use the tools provided by Government Digital Services.
  - Aerbil313 3y ago
    Yes, this is the point and the reason it's so good. Centralization and standardization. I'm so glad that my country (Turkey) has made big leaps in centralization of digital services in the recent years with E-Government platform. I even recently wrote the Presidency Public Communcations Center, suggesting every citizen should have a government-issued email address and that an email account must be a right. E-mail is a necessity at this point and it's unacceptable that anyone can lose access to their email account just because Google's ML models decided he's a bot. The government could easily verify every real citizen.
bitcharmer 3y ago
Why does that matter?
tannhaeuser 3y ago
GA and external CDNs require cookie banner/consent under GDPR (which is still valid in UK AFAIK). So that alone should be reason enough to avoid it. But you can never be sure: very recently, I'm seeing (unnecessary) popups coming up informing me about the site not using cookies! To make up for the phantom pain of not having one in EU where "real" sites do have cookie dialogs? The web and its self-referential UI idioms have become a strange place indeed.
ksec 3y ago
>(I worked at GDS until two years ago.) If you could tell, why did you leave?

mtillman 3y ago

Singapore recently did a deal with a company no one has heard of for their immigration process and the results are cameras that don’t work to the point of the officials needing to manually adjust them, forms that don’t contain consistent data across pages, and my favorite “save a photo of the confirm just in case lah.” The old system just worked, the new system insists upon APPs.

delta_p_delta_x 3y ago
> Singapore recently did a deal with a company no one has heard of for their immigration process Source? I've lived in Singapore all my life and have not heard of this. There was an outage on the 31st of March[1], and parliamentary discussion after that[2] doesn't mention any of what you said. [1]: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/changi-airport-terminal-checkpoint-delays-ong-queue-slowness-clearance-delays-ica-3387526 https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/changi-airport-ter... [2]: https://www.mha.gov.sg/mediaroom/parliamentary/oral-reply-to-pqs-on-the-immigration-clearance-system-disruption-at-ica-checkpoints-on-31-march-2023/ https://www.mha.gov.sg/mediaroom/parliamentary/oral-reply-to...
- mtillman 3y ago
  “Recently” is admittedly subjective but I was just there (2 times in 3 weeks) and can confirm it’s a new system to 4 years ago when the foreign passes were all paper. I think it’s called Tacent. It was so bad a local woman couldn’t even get in and they had to have her wait in the foreign line. You can simply visit the existing immigration website, as it’s public, to view the inconsistent data-the same forms that are displayed on their iPads in the reception hall. This wasn’t an outage, just poor technology implementation.

whimsicalism 3y ago

Half of the technologies you named are actually useful and it wouldn’t shock me if gov.uk uses them

gadders 3y ago

>>simple authentication This is my only gripe. Every time I do self assessment or complete my tax returns as a contractor I had to find some arcane combination of government gateway ID, password, authentication app etc etc. It's so secure it stops you paying the government money.

yonatan8070 3y ago

Entirely off-topic, but why do some comments on HN have manual line breaks but most just soft-wrap? On my phone (Hacki app) each line is soft-wrapped, then hard-wrapped after 1 or 2 words, which looks quite off