5 ms·

DWP - Services and benefits online

61 points by mattwritescode 13y ago

ZeroGravitas 13y ago
Looks like Siebel (now Oracle owned) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siebel_Systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siebel_Systems
- mattwritescode 13y ago
  I think you are right, probably means they dont have anyone to look after it.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  Not sure about this specifically, but the DWP use Siebel extensively all over the place.
Stubbs 13y ago
To be fair to the DWP, this is their old site. One of the things the British Government is doing properly at the moment is their digital strategy, their new web site gov.uk has won multiple awards. If you go to the DWP's home page it does tell you it's an old site, and should probably redirect, but it's unfair to criticise something that's not the current implementation. Most of the links from that front page go to the new gov.uk version, and I guess you'd have to work hard to find that error page if it wasn't already bookmarked.
- mattwritescode 13y ago
  I agree this, was an interesting thing to find.
- stevejalim 13y ago
  This is the DWP homepage if you come via http://gov.uk http://gov.uk: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-work-pensions https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-w... As a Brit, the new Gov.uk site makes me feel very proud, even though I had nothing to do with it. :o)
  - mbesto 13y ago
    As an American in the UK who constantly needs to find information about living here, it reduces massive amounts of frustration. Good on ya lads!
  - edoloughlin 13y ago
    This prompted me to check my own government's main site (gov.ie). While not as slick, it does have pointers to a Citizens' Information site (http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/ http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/) and a simple, but useful page listing many common tasks, ordered by verb (http://www.gov.ie/services/ http://www.gov.ie/services/).
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago
  It doesn't redirect because this is the only way to apply online for "Attendance Allowance (AA), Disability Living Allowance (DLA adult and child), Overseas State Pension – if you are a non-UK resident (including Channel Islands)". You can download a PDF to mail in from the nice new site, but if you want to do it online the new site will direct you back here. (Not wanting to seem harsh, some things are being done well, but let's not get carried away and forget all the many, many things that are still truly dreadful and need fixed.)
  - UVB-76 13y ago
    DWP are in the process of transitioning to their new gov.uk site. It's all well and good criticising their old website, but what do you propose they do about it? Transition to a new site? That's exactly what they're doing.
    - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
      I'm proposing that we don't pretend that this is an old, unused site that someone has stumbled across because goverment IT is doing such a good job not breaking old hyperlinks. It's still in active use and it's still terrible. Those are simple facts that doing the relatively easy job of moving a bunch of PDFs and static web content to a new site are not going to change. Government IT (in the UK and elsewhere) has been, and still is, totally fucked up. Let's not hide from that fact because it's only by publicizing the sorry state that it's in that things like alpha.gov.uk can get any traction compared with the traditional way of doing things. But even that's low-hanging fruit compared with the regular billion pound disasters that government IT procurement regularly delivers.
      - UVB-76 13y ago
        Nobody is pretending anything. It's the old DWP website. The DWP has a new home on gov.uk, which is much better, and is transitioning — actually rather quickly, given all the red tape that must be involved — to this new site as we speak. The old website only persists because a few remaining functions have not been transitioned yet. It's rubbish, but it's actively being replaced. Criticising it is pointless. It's interesting that you refer to alpha.gov.uk. The gov.uk site left the alpha stage and officially launched in October 2012, and as much as government IT projects are usually a disaster, you can't deny gov.uk is a major step in the right direction.
- hobolobo 13y ago
  I can't speak for their digital strategy but their universal jobmatch site is abysmal. A truly awful piece of work. https://www.gov.uk/jobsearch https://www.gov.uk/jobsearch
  - RossM 13y ago
    That's just redirecting to the old Directgov/Jobcenter site, which I've always felt was quite good at what it did. It might not be the prettiest, but it's not awful.
    - hobolobo 13y ago
      I don't claim to have an eye for design so its aesthetic appeal is difficult to judge but as far as functionality goes, it leaves a lot to be desired. The site has removed the ability to search by category which, for me at least, was an important way of searching.
  - UnoriginalGuy 13y ago
    I think you're seriously over-stating how bad it is. I mean it was designed to be used on a touch-screen interface by people of all ages, they're going to have to lose some functionality for that alone.
    - hobolobo 13y ago
      What functionality is precluded by the use of a tablet?
sneak 13y ago
BREAKING: Government bureaucrats fiendishly bad at IT. Film at 11.
- anu_gupta 13y ago
  Nice throwaway comment written without actually having much of a clue about what the UK Government is doing with its web presence.
  - sneak 13y ago
    My comment could also be paraphrased as "Why was this link submitted to HN?"
    - anu_gupta 13y ago
      No, it couldn't. if that was your intent, flag the submission. Or set aside your bias and take a look at what the GDS team is doing.
timack 13y ago
I like the way they apologise in advance to those with accessibility issues. That's a nice touch.
EwanToo 13y ago
The front page of http://dwp.gov.uk/ http://dwp.gov.uk/ says in pretty big writing "We have moved to www.gov.uk/dwp" Which is a much nicer site: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-work-pensions https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-w... Of course, they could break every link out there to their old site if they wanted, but instead they're implementing redirects for all the high-traffic pages.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
thomseddon 13y ago
At the other end of the spectrum, the Manchester city council site: http://www.manchester.gov.uk/ http://www.manchester.gov.uk/ Definitely not what you might expect!
- andyhmltn 13y ago
  Wow! That's the best looking government run site I've seen
  - sjtgraham 13y ago
    Agree. I always think great photography makes a world of difference to a design too.
  - mattwritescode 13y ago
    It looks pretty swish and its responsive,
  - liotier 13y ago
    Beautiful - though navigation suffers a bit from the lack of hierarchy.
- hipsters_unite 13y ago
  Manchester are on it. Free wi-fi in a number of places and MadLab. As a resident I'm not that surprised :)
  - thomseddon 13y ago
    MadLab's good, but TechHub's even more awesome! http://manchester.techhub.com http://manchester.techhub.com
    - hipsters_unite 13y ago
      shameless plug! Yeah, I go there for Bootstrap Business Club and it's a good space.
Isofarro 13y ago
This is a good reminder about how the "support popular browsers" approach of web development is flawed. And how sites, and thus the code driving them, live a lot longer than expected. This kind of technical debt accumulates, fixing it involves rebuilding it (probably a clean slate approach, since there are issues caused by the underlying Siebel baseline). It's also a great comparison with the GDS Team's gov.uk initiative, the difference in quality is distinctively noticeable. That quality is based, not on the popular browsers of today, but based on the fundamental premise of the web as an open and platform neutral environment. I guess, in 5, even 10 years, this iteration of gov.uk will still be a reference example of a high quality web development build. I know a couple of the GDS Team behind the gov.uk project are regulars here. To them, thanks for the amazing work, the attention to detail. I think this is the first time where a UK government organisation/agency is leading web development by example. This is a great example of high quality web development being done at the fraction of the budget given to high profile government IT project failures. Certainly, smaller, agile, internal, passionate team of skilled individuals outperforms the huge contracts to IT/Consulting companies.
XarotheOne 13y ago
That is grim.
niteshade 13y ago
Why is everyone ready to kissarse the Gov's new website? Its still is an utter pile of shit, they've only cleaned up a bunch of pages, all the main stuff is still stuck in the old ugly website.

Looks like Siebel (now Oracle owned) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siebel_Systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siebel_Systems

mattwritescode 13y ago
I think you are right, probably means they dont have anyone to look after it.
jiggy2011 13y ago
Not sure about this specifically, but the DWP use Siebel extensively all over the place.

Stubbs 13y ago

To be fair to the DWP, this is their old site. One of the things the British Government is doing properly at the moment is their digital strategy, their new web site gov.uk has won multiple awards. If you go to the DWP's home page it does tell you it's an old site, and should probably redirect, but it's unfair to criticise something that's not the current implementation. Most of the links from that front page go to the new gov.uk version, and I guess you'd have to work hard to find that error page if it wasn't already bookmarked.

mattwritescode 13y ago
I agree this, was an interesting thing to find.
stevejalim 13y ago
This is the DWP homepage if you come via http://gov.uk http://gov.uk: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-work-pensions https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-w... As a Brit, the new Gov.uk site makes me feel very proud, even though I had nothing to do with it. :o)
- mbesto 13y ago
  As an American in the UK who constantly needs to find information about living here, it reduces massive amounts of frustration. Good on ya lads!
- edoloughlin 13y ago
  This prompted me to check my own government's main site (gov.ie). While not as slick, it does have pointers to a Citizens' Information site (http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/ http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/) and a simple, but useful page listing many common tasks, ordered by verb (http://www.gov.ie/services/ http://www.gov.ie/services/).
ZeroGravitas 13y ago
It doesn't redirect because this is the only way to apply online for "Attendance Allowance (AA), Disability Living Allowance (DLA adult and child), Overseas State Pension – if you are a non-UK resident (including Channel Islands)". You can download a PDF to mail in from the nice new site, but if you want to do it online the new site will direct you back here. (Not wanting to seem harsh, some things are being done well, but let's not get carried away and forget all the many, many things that are still truly dreadful and need fixed.)
- UVB-76 13y ago
  DWP are in the process of transitioning to their new gov.uk site. It's all well and good criticising their old website, but what do you propose they do about it? Transition to a new site? That's exactly what they're doing.
  - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
    I'm proposing that we don't pretend that this is an old, unused site that someone has stumbled across because goverment IT is doing such a good job not breaking old hyperlinks. It's still in active use and it's still terrible. Those are simple facts that doing the relatively easy job of moving a bunch of PDFs and static web content to a new site are not going to change. Government IT (in the UK and elsewhere) has been, and still is, totally fucked up. Let's not hide from that fact because it's only by publicizing the sorry state that it's in that things like alpha.gov.uk can get any traction compared with the traditional way of doing things. But even that's low-hanging fruit compared with the regular billion pound disasters that government IT procurement regularly delivers.
    - UVB-76 13y ago
      Nobody is pretending anything. It's the old DWP website. The DWP has a new home on gov.uk, which is much better, and is transitioning — actually rather quickly, given all the red tape that must be involved — to this new site as we speak. The old website only persists because a few remaining functions have not been transitioned yet. It's rubbish, but it's actively being replaced. Criticising it is pointless. It's interesting that you refer to alpha.gov.uk. The gov.uk site left the alpha stage and officially launched in October 2012, and as much as government IT projects are usually a disaster, you can't deny gov.uk is a major step in the right direction.
hobolobo 13y ago
I can't speak for their digital strategy but their universal jobmatch site is abysmal. A truly awful piece of work. https://www.gov.uk/jobsearch https://www.gov.uk/jobsearch
- RossM 13y ago
  That's just redirecting to the old Directgov/Jobcenter site, which I've always felt was quite good at what it did. It might not be the prettiest, but it's not awful.
  - hobolobo 13y ago
    I don't claim to have an eye for design so its aesthetic appeal is difficult to judge but as far as functionality goes, it leaves a lot to be desired. The site has removed the ability to search by category which, for me at least, was an important way of searching.
- UnoriginalGuy 13y ago
  I think you're seriously over-stating how bad it is. I mean it was designed to be used on a touch-screen interface by people of all ages, they're going to have to lose some functionality for that alone.
  - hobolobo 13y ago
    What functionality is precluded by the use of a tablet?

sneak 13y ago

BREAKING: Government bureaucrats fiendishly bad at IT. Film at 11.

anu_gupta 13y ago
Nice throwaway comment written without actually having much of a clue about what the UK Government is doing with its web presence.
- sneak 13y ago
  My comment could also be paraphrased as "Why was this link submitted to HN?"
  - anu_gupta 13y ago
    No, it couldn't. if that was your intent, flag the submission. Or set aside your bias and take a look at what the GDS team is doing.

timack 13y ago

I like the way they apologise in advance to those with accessibility issues. That's a nice touch.

EwanToo 13y ago

The front page of http://dwp.gov.uk/ http://dwp.gov.uk/ says in pretty big writing "We have moved to www.gov.uk/dwp" Which is a much nicer site: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-work-pensions https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-w... Of course, they could break every link out there to their old site if they wanted, but instead they're implementing redirects for all the high-traffic pages.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

thomseddon 13y ago

At the other end of the spectrum, the Manchester city council site: http://www.manchester.gov.uk/ http://www.manchester.gov.uk/ Definitely not what you might expect!

andyhmltn 13y ago
Wow! That's the best looking government run site I've seen
- sjtgraham 13y ago
  Agree. I always think great photography makes a world of difference to a design too.
- mattwritescode 13y ago
  It looks pretty swish and its responsive,
- liotier 13y ago
  Beautiful - though navigation suffers a bit from the lack of hierarchy.
hipsters_unite 13y ago
Manchester are on it. Free wi-fi in a number of places and MadLab. As a resident I'm not that surprised :)
- thomseddon 13y ago
  MadLab's good, but TechHub's even more awesome! http://manchester.techhub.com http://manchester.techhub.com
  - hipsters_unite 13y ago
    shameless plug! Yeah, I go there for Bootstrap Business Club and it's a good space.

Isofarro 13y ago

This is a good reminder about how the "support popular browsers" approach of web development is flawed. And how sites, and thus the code driving them, live a lot longer than expected. This kind of technical debt accumulates, fixing it involves rebuilding it (probably a clean slate approach, since there are issues caused by the underlying Siebel baseline). It's also a great comparison with the GDS Team's gov.uk initiative, the difference in quality is distinctively noticeable. That quality is based, not on the popular browsers of today, but based on the fundamental premise of the web as an open and platform neutral environment. I guess, in 5, even 10 years, this iteration of gov.uk will still be a reference example of a high quality web development build. I know a couple of the GDS Team behind the gov.uk project are regulars here. To them, thanks for the amazing work, the attention to detail. I think this is the first time where a UK government organisation/agency is leading web development by example. This is a great example of high quality web development being done at the fraction of the budget given to high profile government IT project failures. Certainly, smaller, agile, internal, passionate team of skilled individuals outperforms the huge contracts to IT/Consulting companies.

XarotheOne 13y ago

That is grim.

niteshade 13y ago

Why is everyone ready to kissarse the Gov's new website? Its still is an utter pile of shit, they've only cleaned up a bunch of pages, all the main stuff is still stuck in the old ugly website.