This is a list of what we’ve been working on since the last update on 28 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:
- added pagination to finders to improve the page load speed and reuse the pattern used in site search
- fixed an issue that was causing blank fields appearing in finder filters
- done a content review of the Environment Agency flood warnings beta service
- trained over 250 content designers in the last 25 days
- run 13 workshops for content designers to develop skills and improve working patterns
- moved ‘Maslow’ to a new Elasticsearch cluster for security reasons (it’s also cheaper)
- continued the work to make the ‘Getting married abroad’ tool more simple to use - this week we worked on the Sweden information
Improving GOV.UK
To improve GOV.UK in relation to the missions on our roadmap, we’ve:
- collaborated with HMRC to improve tax credits content
- started auditing content patterns in user journeys from GOV.UK to the personal tax account to start making them easier and more consistent for users
- migrated the policy areas, topical events and services and information page templates
- completed user research with people working in higher and further education, where we tested sections of our new taxonomy
- completed work on the third iteration of the navigation and orientation prototype
- user tested some of the new ‘Getting marriage abroad’ content
- finished building the next iteration of Local Links Manager - it’s now a bit better for GOV.UK admin users who manage links to local council websites
- continued with the preparatory work to simplify and speed up the process of migrating mainstream formats to the Publishing API for 11 out of 13 mainstream formats and making needs content available in the Publishing API
- been collaborating with the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) on content design for their new apprenticeships services, and related content on GOV.UK
- spent the day at the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) in Southampton, agreeing on plans to improve GOV.UK content for seafarers and other maritime user groups
- run a cross government content meetup in Leeds for 49 content designers - over 88% of those who gave us feedback found it useful
- come to the end of the joint GOV.UK UK Visas and Immigration discovery project, with a series of updates to improve immigration and visa content coming soon
- almost finished the 'out of court pathways' project with Ministry of Justice and Citizen's Advice, with substantial updates to help users with children who are divorcing or separating
- continued to build the basic features for the Content Performance Manager alpha
- completed writing the first draft of basic end to end tests which allows testing range of interactions between the Publishing Platform and publishing applications
- analysed our user research and written our user needs for GOV.UK email subscriptions and notifications
- carried out a review of the feedback received about the current GOV.UK email service and identified themes to feed into our user needs
Things we plan to do next
In the next 2 to 3 weeks we expect to:
- do more work on improving journeys from GOV.UK to the personal tax account
- do some discovery on improvement work on early years education-related content
- do user research on the third iteration of the navigation and orientation prototype in London and Birmingham
- test our new taxonomy with social workers
- complete the work to migrate right hand panel links to the new Publishing Platform
- work with HM Passports Office to improve the user journey for people who are abroad and want to get a new passport
- move onto the next step in simplifying and speeding up the process of migrating mainstream formats to the Publishing API by moving the page withdraw functionality out of Panopticon and into mainstream Publisher
- do real-time auditing and fixing of contextual links from GOV.UK to the business tax account with HM Revenue and Customs, to take users exactly where they need to go to complete specific tasks
- have a workshop with Ministry of Defence (MOD) to review performance of GOV.UK content for the armed forces community and agree on plans to iterate
- set up our next GovContent meetup in Wales with the Office of National Statistics and the Intellectual Property Office
- run our first introduction to user-centred design for content designers
- integrate new online application methods for certain visas
- finish the migration of the statistical dataset, consultations and HTML publication templates
- continue with format work on database integrity and speeding up queries within the publishing platform
- finish discovery on email subscriptions and notifications and start planning for the alpha phase
