Alex Muller and Jenny Duckett Developers, GOV.UK 
 Government Digital Service 
 @alexmuller, @jenny_duckett

How GOV.UK started The way we work on GOV.UK How we moved hundreds of organisations to GOV.UK

How GOV.UK started

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The way we work on GOV.UK

GDS 10 Make things open: it makes things better

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GDS Not everything is open source but almost everything is coding in the open

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GDS We’re huge fans of version control

GDS -ssl_ciphers HIGH:!ADH:!kEDH;
+ssl_ciphers HIGH:!ADH:!kEDH:!aNULL;

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GDS GitHub gives us great collaborative tools, but we value our repositories too

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GDS GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, CodePlex, Perforce…

GDS We still build things on top of GitHub

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GDS Be as open as possible Iterate your product …and your tools

How we build GOV.UK…

…without breaking the web

GDS https://www.flickr.com/photos/psd/8040082207/

GDS https://www.flickr.com/photos/psd/8741310890/

GDS We moved 312 government organisations onto GOV.UK

GDS Users shouldn’t have to understand the structure of government

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GDS https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/afghanistan

GDS 1 Start with needs* * user needs not government needs

GDS http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/newsroom/news_releases/2010/101015-structure-charts.aspx

GDS Why bother redirecting URLs from the old sites?

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GDS https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/work/problems-at-work/dealing-with-grievances-at-work/

GDS https://www.flickr.com/photos/psd/8026292387/

GDS https://www.flickr.com/photos/psd/8029199882/

GDS https://www.flickr.com/photos/psd/8035353087/

GDS Users don’t have a choice about interacting with government

GDS We built tools to handle 800 old websites across 1,500 domains

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What we built first

GDS Redirector: the first attempt

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really big CSVs

GDS A mapping defines a URL’s behaviour after it’s transitioned

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Mapping is not an exact science

GDS It’s not easy to find all the old URLs

GDS It’s not easy to decide where to redirect to

GDS 5 Iterate. Then iterate again.

What we built next

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GDS Changes to mappings take effect immediately, without a deploy

GDS Applications scale better than nginx config

GDS Applications are easier to maintain for developers

What about government users?

GDS Departments can manage their own mappings

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GDS https://insidegovuk.blog.gov.uk/2014/03/17/transition-technical-glossary/

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GDS https://github.com/alphagov/transition-config/pull/1135

GDS 4 Do the hard work to make it simple

GDS We can show traffic data to users

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GDS 3 Design with data

What do end users see?

GDS http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/governmentcitizensandrights/gettinglegaladvice/ gettinglegaladviceandlegalaid/index.htm

GDS https://www.gov.uk/legal-aid

GDS http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/newsroom/news_releases/2010/101015-structure-charts.aspx

GDS http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/newsroom/news_releases/2010/101015-structure-charts.aspx

GDS http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20101213114420/http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/ newsroom/news_releases/2010/101015-structure-charts.aspx

GDS http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/this-url-never-existed

What’s happened since?

GDS 802 sites 1,664 domains 495 government users 338 organisations 1,995,874 mappings 3 million requests per day

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GDS https://www.gov.uk/design-principles

GDS github.com/alphagov

We’re hiring - come and talk to us! https://gds.blog.gov.uk/jobs GDS

Alex Muller and Jenny Duckett Developers, GOV.UK 
 Government Digital Service 
 @alexmuller, @jenny_duckett