This is a list of what we’ve been working on since the last update on 11 November 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:
- published a new browse page for passports content to help users find the information they need
- published new versions of the job seeker's allowance and employment support allowance content because of Universal Credit expansion
- started working with our suppliers to fix the bug which keeps occurring in the Inside GOV.UK blog email alerts
- added the personal tax account start page to the ‘Popular on GOV.UK’ section of the homepage
- updated the ‘find a British embassy’ page to reflect changes to guidance in 15 countries
- produced a content review on the commercial fisheries management service
- worked with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) subject matter experts on changes to the ‘simplified expenses checker’ and guidance on tax if you live abroad and sell your UK home
- introduced the ability to delete sections from manuals in Manuals Publisher
- supported HM Treasury to publish an HTML version of the Autumn Statement
- done an Autumn Statement 'dry-run' to test the new HTML tables tool before the first use for the actual report
Improving GOV.UK
To improve GOV.UK in relation to the missions on our roadmap, we’ve:
- completed the first 2 sprints of the marriage abroad improvement theme - new drafts of the Italy and Philippines guidance are being checked for factual accuracy
- continued work on improving content about getting divorced
- conducted user research with headteachers in London and Manchester using the second iteration of the navigation and orientation prototype
- migrated the government groups and worldwide organisations pages to use the Finder format, adding in-page search
- presented our progress on navigation, taxonomy and auditing content at the Department for Education’s ‘Department of State Functions’ board
- kept working with UK Visas and Immigration on simplifying some of our visa content
- finished a 2-week project on the second phase of content improvements for starting a business
- published around 30 pieces of new or substantially improved content for exporters
- migrated the 'document collections' format to Publishing Platform
- defined the service level indicators for Publishing Platform
- completed investigation on how we improve end to end testing for the Publishing Platform
- simplified the ‘getting married abroad’ content to speed up the update process and put more control in the hands of GDS content designers
- built a dashboard prototype to see the APIs we will use to collect performance data in a scalable and reliable way for the content operating model work
Things we plan to do next
In the next 2 to 3 weeks we expect to:
- work with HM Passports Office to remove duplicate use of information in the passports content
- work on new guidance for people who want to get married in France
- continue building the next iteration of Local Links Manager to better meet the needs of GOV.UK admin users who manage links to local council websites
- continue preparatory work that will make it easier to start migrating GOV.UK mainstream formats to the new GOV.UK Publishing Platform
- analyse user research to create a third iteration of the navigation and orientation prototype
- continue to migrate related links and index pages such as policy areas
- expand our draft taxonomy to include parenting, childcare and children’s services
- publish improved content from the second phase of the starting a business project
- run a day-long content improvement workshop and user research with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA)
- work with HMRC on simplifying user journeys into the business tax account
- come towards the end of our template consolidation discovery, ensuring we have our high level user needs
- finish the migration of the statistical datasets, consultations, HTML publications and publications formats
- work with HMRC to improve tax credits content
- continue to build our content performance API and dashboards
