DWP - Services and benefits online

http://dwp.gov.uk/eservice/need.asp

by mattwritescode • 13 years ago

61 38 13 years ago

dwp.gov.uk

ZeroGravitas5• 13 years ago

Looks like Siebel (now Oracle owned)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siebel_Systems

mattwritescode3• 13 years ago

I think you are right, probably means they dont have anyone to look after it.

jiggy2011• 13 years ago

Not sure about this specifically, but the DWP use Siebel extensively all over the place.

Stubbs• 13 years 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.

mattwritescode3• 13 years ago

I agree this, was an interesting thing to find.

stevejalim• 13 years ago

This is the DWP homepage if you come via http://gov.uk:

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• 13 years 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• 13 years 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/) and a simple, but useful page listing many common tasks, ordered by verb (http://www.gov.ie/services/).

ZeroGravitas5• 13 years 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-762• 13 years 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.

kokey• 13 years ago

I find it quite ironic since I see being confined to IE as having a disability. It almost serves to me as an inspiration to keep myself intact.

hobolobo3• 13 years 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

RossM• 13 years 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.

UnoriginalGuy• 13 years 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.

sneak2• 13 years ago

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

anu_gupta3• 13 years ago

Nice throwaway comment written without actually having much of a clue about what the UK Government is doing with its web presence.

sneak2• 13 years ago

My comment could also be paraphrased as "Why was this link submitted to HN?"

timack• 13 years ago

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

EwanToo• 13 years ago

The front page of 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-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.

thomseddon2• 13 years ago

At the other end of the spectrum, the Manchester city council site: http://www.manchester.gov.uk/

Definitely not what you might expect!

andyhmltn• 13 years ago

Wow! That's the best looking government run site I've seen

sjtgraham• 13 years ago

Agree. I always think great photography makes a world of difference to a design too.

mattwritescode3• 13 years ago

It looks pretty swish and its responsive,

liotier• 13 years ago

Beautiful - though navigation suffers a bit from the lack of hierarchy.

hipsters_unite2• 13 years ago

Manchester are on it. Free wi-fi in a number of places and MadLab. As a resident I'm not that surprised :)

thomseddon2• 13 years ago

MadLab's good, but TechHub's even more awesome! http://manchester.techhub.com

Isofarro• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

That is grim.

niteshade• 13 years 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.

DWP - Services and benefits online

Related Stories