We'll post roadmap updates (formerly 'weeknotes') twice a month to tell you what the GOV.UK team has recently changed and what we’re working on next. The second post in each month will include an updated product roadmap (until then, the latest version is here).
Things we’ve done recently
For end users
In the past couple of weeks, we've:
- released the new version of mainstream browse, simplifying more than 200 browse pages into a single interface
- transitioned a number of sites (including 17 in one week), leaving 67 sites to move by Christmas
- replaced the Office for National Statistics (ONS) release calendar with new statistics announcements on GOV.UK
- launched a new services and information page for service organisations like this one for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency with many more to follow
- built a 'finder' for international development funding
For government publishers
For our users around government, we’ve also:
- built a publishing API to enable HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to publish tax manuals to GOV.UK
- improved publishing tools including more robust scheduled publishing, automated broken link reports, better user permission management and support for publishing API users
- improved the ‘find in admin’ bookmarklet (download it again via the Whitehall Publisher dashboard) so that it now works for collections and statistics announcements
- added a leaderboard to the Transition Tool to encourage agencies and arm's length bodies to fix errors with URL mappings
- added ‘draft’ tags enabling transitioning organisations to set up specialist browse pages behind the scenes and publish them when they’re ready
Technical improvements
In the past few weeks we've:
- made progress in switching the Transition Tool to run on the Postgres database, enhancing the long term viability of the tool
- added the ability to import URL mappings from spreadsheets directly into the Transition Tool, to reduce manual work
- continued work on a single publishing pipeline, so all applications can publish content to GOV.UK in a consistent way
- improved the Signon access log information for administrators
- built a new crawler that will allow us to mirror GOV.UK much faster (we mirror all the published content so that we can serve GOV.UK from anywhere in an emergency)
Things we plan to do next
For end users
In the next couple of weeks, we plan to:
- introduce curated lists to sub topic browse pages
- add pagination to GOV.UK search results page
- add support for detailed guides in foreign languages
- add the ability to mark content as beta
- add support for more organisation-specific jobs links on their homepages
- build a finder for drug safety updates and for alerts and recalls for drugs and medical devices
For government publishers
We'll:
- make improvements to the publishing interface for statistics announcements
- make it clearer in Whitehall Publisher how to set the right date for old publications
- make it clearer in Whitehall Publisher how to differentiate between people (eg ministers and board members) with the same name
- improve markdown to make editing and creating content quicker and easier
- continue work on the HMRC API - including looking at the size and shape of integrating the Manuals Frontend to Content Store
Technical improvements
On the tech side, we'll:
- continue work on the single publishing pipeline with a focus on URL arbitration (stopping applications from trying to use the same URL for different pages)
- continue work on conversion of Transition Tool to Postgres
- continue work on retiring Redirector, simplifying the transition architecture and reducing the number of applications we need to support
6 comments
Comment by Ngozi Ikeyina posted on
I note you've built a publishing API to enable HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to publish tax manuals to GOV.UK. When can we expect the transition to happen?
Comment by David Mann posted on
Work on the API is nearing completion, however, there is no fixed date for the manuals transition yet. HMRC will communicate this well in advance of it happening.
Comment by Antony Hopker posted on
I thought GDS had a drive for plain English? A roadmap is surely a map with roads on it.
Comment by Neil Williams posted on
That is true. However, this blog is a behind-the-scenes look at GOV.UK product development, and I would argue that in that context "roadmap" is a pretty well understood term.
Comment by George posted on
Are you in a position to comment on individual site-transitions for the remaining organisations and agencies yet to move to GOV.UK? If so I'd be interested to know how the Highways Agency move is going.
Thanks
George
Comment by Alyson Fielding posted on
The Highways Agency is currently transitioning to GOV.UK and is due to go live at the end of September. Not all content will be transitioned immediately. Tools and transactions, for example, are out of scope for the moment, and we’re working on the user journey between that content and GOV.UK.