Comments on: The CGSW is dead. Long live the CGSW.*

By: The beginning and end of customer journeys | Public Strategist

The beginning and end of customer journeys | Public Strategist — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:22:59 +0000

[...] is nothing new about that as a principle, of course, but the fact that it has taken substantial iterations over many years to get even as [...]

By: William

William — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 22:39:13 +0000

Ahem. *cough* Do we not mention open.gov.uk? It doesnt seem to be on the waybackmachine….
Dear God I feel old now.

By: Simon Everest

Simon Everest — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 21:58:25 +0000

To be fair, there’s a lot of work going on on that front. @nicepaul mentioned earlier that he’d done some work in the territory, and there’s other projects addressing some of the issues you raise. No doubt once the dust settles, and there’s something substantial to report, there’ll be more info around.

Simon

By: Paul Clarke

Paul Clarke — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 20:10:26 +0000

Yes, I tweeted earlier about my surprise (and mild disappointment) that the flagship car tax service still has its own massively outdated orange DG skin.

This is not a technical barrier, nor I imagine one of will. The original idea of white-labelling a transaction was to permit reskinning when needed, and I can’t imagine that any GOV.UK (yes, I agree on the shoutiness) product owner could really enjoy sending people away from the excellent new design to that awful old site.

So why no new skin, to complement all of the rest of the shiny?

And therein lies one of the real questions that has to be answered as we move to the next stage of progress, and to better transactions.

The current answer is that a combination of legacy contractual dead-locks, the inability to direct suppliers to prioritise “cosmetic” changes, and a governance issue about who is really responsible for user experience, prevent a tiny change being made which could have greatly enhanced the service for which DG was best known.

That, quite simply, has to change.

By: Robert Dallison

Robert Dallison — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 12:01:54 +0000

I see that some of DirectGov is alive and well behind the shiny new storefront. Example – go here http://www.gov.uk/book-practical-driving-test and click “Start now”.