Government Digital Service

Plenty done

13 October 2016

A few weeks ago was my fifth anniversary at the Government Digital Service. I’ve had the opportunity to work on a huge number of important projects in various roles including software developer, technical lead, product owner, delivery manager, troubleshooter and technical architect. From building GOV.UK to travelling to DVLA in Swansea every week creating new […]

Plenty more to do

16 August 2015. 1 Comment

It’s been a fortnight of big announcements. Mike has announced he’s leaving. Leisa is going home. Tom, Ben & Russell have decided to move on. We’ve also said goodbye to some others – Andy, Lindsey, Sam and Mark. There’s been lots of noise about what this means for GDS, for ongoing digital transformation, for the […]

Spending time with users

14 June 2015

Last week I spent a day in Manchester with my team’s user researcher. She’s visiting people all over the country to help us better understand how people interact with government services. Taking part in research like this gives you a great opportunity to meet people outside of your normal circle. As a civil servant, I […]

A busy start to 2015

2 February 2015

January is usually a fairly quiet month. It normally takes people a while to get back into things following the Christmas break. This year however, everything seemed to have hit the ground running. Lots of projects have moved forward quickly and it looks like the first half of this year is going to be rather […]

Keeping motivated

9 September 2014. 1 Comment

When you’re deep in the day to day detail of projects, it’s quite easy to lose sight of the big picture. If you’re making lots of small, incremental changes, you can quickly forget what things were like when you started. I’m currently taking a couple of weeks away from my DVLA projects, partly because it’s […]

Simpler, clear and faster car tax online

20 February 2014. 1 Comment

This afternoon, one of the projects I’ve been working on in Swansea launched into public beta. For the past 3 months, I’ve been working with a small team at the DVLA to look at how we can make the process of buying tax for your car online simpler. Taxing a car online isn’t exactly new […]

365 days later

17 October 2013. 1 Comment

A year ago today two of the government’s biggest websites, Directgov and Business Link, were switched off and GOV.UK became the official site for information and services. The last 12 months have flown by. It’s interesting to see how much the site has changed over the year as it continues to develop. It’s now the […]

Talk: Digital by Default – Civil Service Live 2013

4 July 2013. 1 Comment

Yesterday (3rd July 2013) I have a talk about Digital by Default at Civil Service Live (an annual conference for civil servants) in Bristol. There was quite a bit of interest in the talk (the venue we had was packed), so I thought it would be useful if I replicated the talk online and provide […]

Exploring local government services online

14 November 2012

Back in February I wrote about how GOV.UK helps people get from a central government website to services provided in their local area. For each of these services, from paying council tax to reporting a dangerous building, we try and direct the user to the most useful place on their local council website. We do […]

Hello GOV.UK

22 October 2012

Last week we finally launched GOV.UK. On Tuesday afternoon I got to issue the pull request to remove all the beta messages from the site, then a team worked through the early hours of Wednesday morning to redirect as many Directgov and Business Link URLs to GOV.UK as possible*. On Wednesday, the site received over […]