4 ms·

GDS gets lots of love here but if you actually try and use the pages for things like HMRC and Companies House you quickly find it's lipstick on a pig and some h

GDS gets lots of love here but if you actually try and use the pages for things like HMRC and Companies House you quickly find it's lipstick on a pig and some horrible mess of legacy systems underneath with lots of bugs. For example, if I want to update company information, the wizard type thing for it rejects my auth. If I use it's password reset function, it successfully changes my password but then rejects my new auth. Instead I have to find a log-in page for an entirely unrelated action and then navigate from there to the page that will let me edit what I need. I reported it and they just gave some flannel that it was a temporary fault but it still behaves like this years later. The system is crap and their response to bug reports is crap too.

flurdy 3y ago
Good description. Some year ago I may have worked on part of an auth solution for HMRC and the main problem for auth is summed up perfectly with https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ There is basically many legacy and partial rewritten auth services and abstraction layers across gov.uk. Some parts are actually good but it is confusing which funnel will trigger which auth flow. Not helped with several huge maintenance contracts to large consultancies that have no interest letting go of their legacy service.
IshKebab 3y ago
I agree. The interface is mostly nice but the functionality is not there. Tax free childcare is the worst because you have to constantly interact with it. Go through the whole security dance including 2fa and 3 "security" questions every single month. It asks you when you want to pay. Today! you say, tediously typing in today's date, instead of clicking a "now" button. Submit. "Nope! You can't do that." You try tomorrow. "Nope!" Ugh I guess it's a weekend. Next you see how much you can pay in... "you have £0 left for this entitlement period". An entitlement period is 3 months. When does it end? God knows. The most annoying thing is that they have a big banner asking for feedback, but clearly have nobody at all working on this.

flurdy 3y ago

Good description. Some year ago I may have worked on part of an auth solution for HMRC and the main problem for auth is summed up perfectly with https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ There is basically many legacy and partial rewritten auth services and abstraction layers across gov.uk. Some parts are actually good but it is confusing which funnel will trigger which auth flow. Not helped with several huge maintenance contracts to large consultancies that have no interest letting go of their legacy service.

IshKebab 3y ago

I agree. The interface is mostly nice but the functionality is not there. Tax free childcare is the worst because you have to constantly interact with it. Go through the whole security dance including 2fa and 3 "security" questions every single month. It asks you when you want to pay. Today! you say, tediously typing in today's date, instead of clicking a "now" button. Submit. "Nope! You can't do that." You try tomorrow. "Nope!" Ugh I guess it's a weekend. Next you see how much you can pay in... "you have £0 left for this entitlement period". An entitlement period is 3 months. When does it end? God knows. The most annoying thing is that they have a big banner asking for feedback, but clearly have nobody at all working on this.