This is a list of what we’ve been working on since the last update on 1 April 2016, and what we plan to do next. As usual we’ve divided the work up into lists of what we’ve been doing to keep GOV.UK running, and what we’re doing to make it better.
Running and supporting GOV.UK
To keep GOV.UK accurate, available and secure, to support government publishers and to meet the most pressing needs of end users, we’ve:
- adjusted search weighting for HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) manuals to ensure that the most relevant search results are presented to the user
- upgraded ElasticSearch to a newer version to maintain security updates
- updated hundreds of pages to take account of the new tax year (eg new tax rates, thresholds and costs)
- published a guide about a new student finance loan
- updated Tax on savings interest and Tax on dividends to include the new ‘Personal Savings Allowance’
- updated Tax on your private pension contributions to include information on the new rules about lifetime and annual tax allowances
- updated smart answers and content for the new state pension
- updated content for the new minimum wage for the over 25s (National Living Wage)
- met with Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to help them with their publishing processes
Improving GOV.UK
To improve GOV.UK in relation to the missions on our roadmap, we’ve:
- continued to migrate Whitehall Publisher to the new tagging infrastructure
- continued our inventory and audit work on the education theme
- completed contextual research analysis for 'early years' content to bring together our findings to date
- improved content about the Digital Marketplace
- had a very useful session with the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) to discuss content and ways of working together
- restarted work on improving state pension content now that most people will retire on the new state pension
- conducted content reviews for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), Charity Commission, Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), and Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) services
- made email alerts from Travel Advice Publisher more reliable. We’ve also improved how we monitor these and our ability to respond to any incident alerts in situations if they fail to send
- rebuilt lots of functionality for Specialist Publisher including email alerts, attachment handling, and making it possible to edit manuals sections
Things we plan to do next
In the next 2 to 3 weeks we expect to:
- kick off inventories for the further education and higher education sub-themes
- hold a show and tell session on our research findings at Department for Education (DfE)
- restart our work on improving GOV.UK content about mental health as a disability
- prepare for the launch of a new online service for users to manage their tax credits online
- prepare for the launch of a new Digital Marketplace framework (Digital Outcomes and Specialists)
- prepare for the launch of new passports service
- start work with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) on a content improvement project for people starting a business
