The UK government's Github

by lutfidemirci • 14 years ago

36 20 14 years ago

No, the Government Digital Service (http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/) GitHub account.

They're building a new, single Government website, currently in beta at http://www.gov.uk, to replace the current http://direct.gov.uk and other government websites.

jamiecurle• 14 years ago

From a presentation I caught earlier this year they're planning to start rolling this out later on in the year. The approach they've taken is very refreshing on eye and quite joyful to use - the new vat rate page[0] compared to a current vat rate page[1] is a nice example.

Also, it's been featured here before, but it's worth adding that I love how visible they've made their design principles[2].

[0] https://www.gov.uk/vat-rates

[1] http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/MoneyTaxAndBenefits/Taxes/Beginn...

[2] https://www.gov.uk/designprinciples

kierank• 14 years ago

It only looks refreshing because it lacks detail. Anyway this whole project is blatantly political. Directgov was a product of the last government so why not spend money making a new one and show how we've made all government services go online in a web2.0 fashion when we could fix the current one.

eckyptang2• 14 years ago

Now I'm not bashing anything by this comment, but I'm surprised they built it in Ruby/Rails.

It doesn't really match the traditional integration paths that they're going to have to deal with across direct.gov.uk and I'm genuinely not sure it'll scale up that high if they are pushing people down that route.

We all know what happens once a year when we have to do our tax returns and that's all on a huge Java EE cluster apparently.

smcl• 14 years ago

Is it not the intention to replace directgov, rather than integrate with it?

eckyptang2• 14 years ago

Yes. I am considering the integrations which are going to have to be moved from direct.gov.uk to their new Rails platform.

justincormack• 14 years ago

direct.gov has been a monumental failure, which is why it is being canned (at vast cost due to contractual terms, I believe). If the "traditional integration paths" are broken they will need fixing too.

46Bit• 14 years ago

That RoR isn't typical for government is much of the point. They've been spending 20x too much for one-tenth of what they should have: moving to traditional web tech is a pretty brilliant step forward.

As regards scaling, it's a valid concern but one I suspect they'll have considered. A good number of brilliant people work there (I've visited and know the crowd).

sylvinus• 14 years ago

How much of it is UK-specific? It would be interesting to have other countries forking these tools ;-)

DrJokepu• 14 years ago

I wonder what the legal background of this is. My understanding that every work created by the UK government is protected by crown copyright which is only waived in certain very specific cases (and this is not listed amongst those). Can anything under crown copyright really be considered open source?

(It doesn't say anywhere that it is, by the way, although there is a BSD-style license).

grabeh• 14 years ago

As you suggest, I would imagine crown copyright still applies but is simplu being licensed out.

Pwrhaps ironically, the existing direct gov page has information on permitted uses of crown copyright materials.

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/SiteInformation/DG_020460

TazeTSchnitzel5• 14 years ago

I believe this may be licensed under the Open Government License: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licen...

Daviey• 14 years ago

I was really excited to see this.. then saw that most of it was in Ruby. Sad4us.

TazeTSchnitzel5• 14 years ago

What's so bad about Ruby?

AlexMuir• 14 years ago

At least you were able to see what it was in. That alone in a massive step forward. And I don't see any problem with Ruby - at least it isn't some proprietary Accenture framework.

lifeisstillgood• 14 years ago

I am utterly utterly overjoyed seeing this, even with caveats.

Government has been described as the engine of a lawn mower and the brakes of a Rolls-Royce - so it's good to see the brakes off for a while.

I do worry about those brakes though. In the design principles they disparagingly refer to an article on beekeeping as not a core focus for government (you did not know Ron Paul was a RoR guy did you?).

But beekeeping is on the live site because it represents a constituency of the live governemnt. Although they are under the cabinet office and so theoretically able to say no, I think hoping you can slim down government through web design is a bit - optimistic.

Dirctgov started off as optimistic as these guys - and what is not on github is the decision making process - when their mailing list is world readable as well as their code then we shall have open government

till then, the beekeeping lobby will have it's way - eventually.

philipashlock• 14 years ago

There's also the US Government's Github including the White House:

* White House: https://github.com/WhiteHouse

* Other Federal Agencies: http://gsa.github.com/federal-open-source-repos/

Some state and local ones are listed at:

* http://wiki.civiccommons.org/Public_Software_Repositories

The UK government's Github

Related Stories