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Experimental UK Gov site: alpha.gov.uk

90 points| gorm | 15 years ago |alpha.gov.uk | reply

41 comments

order
[+] Pheter|15 years ago|reply
Not the kind of error page that I would expect to see for a government website! http://www.alpha.gov.uk/fail
[+] nicepaul|15 years ago|reply
Exactly! Revolution not evolution.

But in terms of branding, this error page is for when the entire prototype fails. It is not part of the prototype, and therefore doesn't adhere to Gov branding. It's more branded with the team's informal whimsy, and it obviously wouldn't appear in a live site.

[+] markbao|15 years ago|reply
Incredible rethinking, atypical of big governments.

This, for the US, now. USA.gov works okay. It could really be better.

[+] flomincucci|15 years ago|reply
Here at Buenos Aires city government we're working on something like this. It's not even in alpha yet, but we want it online by the end of the year.
[+] robgough|15 years ago|reply
I really like this, and I'm excited about the fact this was apparently developed "in house" rather than by some speculative design firm.

Obviously it needs work, and a few design elements/features need tweaking - but it's a massive step in the right direction. Hopefully someone internally will see and understand how great this is and help it move forward.

[+] jrwoodruff|15 years ago|reply
Holy baloney. I'm just blown away, this is amazing. As a current state employee, I've seen the insane bureaucracy we have to battle just to redesign one internal site.

I would love to know how they did this. Are these contractors? Is it a seperate team? Is the redesign rolling out across all government departments? What is their CMS?

Oh man, I need details. If you were involved with this at all, please contact me...

[+] nicepaul|15 years ago|reply
I'm involved. Follow us on Twitter and ENGAGE! ;-)

@alphagov is us, @nicepaul is me. Read the blog, leave the feedback.

[+] swombat|15 years ago|reply
Sounds like a great move. Looking forward to see what happens on there.

Again, I must say, this govt seems to actually be moving its ass and doing things (even if they're not always perfect). Impressive and completely unexpected.

[+] seabee|15 years ago|reply
Especially regarding IT, keeping up with technology is a rare thing; there's no reason we can't have a modern website for all government services. But impressive as this may be, in other areas I'd reserve judgement as to whether it's a good thing.
[+] JonnieCache|15 years ago|reply
I typed my question into the box, and I had the right information instantly!

This is so much more efficient than any other government site I've ever interacted with, by many orders of magnitude.

[+] balac|15 years ago|reply
I'd be interested to see what this would actually be able to make it from alpha to reality. I get the feeling that the dev team want to build some real use statistics and get as much feedback as possible in order to pressure their higher ups to allow them to do it for real. I hope they succeed.
[+] Luyt|15 years ago|reply
It renders correctly in my customized firefox, unless many sites on the web nowadays. However, Google, WikiPedia and HackerNews render without problems too.

My settings are: Zoom Text Only, do not allow pages to choose their own fonts, Comic Sans MS for all fonts, minimum font size 20pt.

[+] neurolysis|15 years ago|reply
20pt Comic Sans? You are beyond saving.
[+] richardhenry|15 years ago|reply
"Comic Sans MS for all fonts"

... I don't know what to say. At 20pt, too?

[+] nopal|15 years ago|reply
According to a tweet [1] from their technical lead, they're using Rails, Sinatra, Django and more. He says there should be a blog entry outlining the technologies soon.

[1] https://twitter.com/#!/jystewart

[+] jdietrich|15 years ago|reply
Coalition governments are brilliant.

See also the Open Government License[1] - it might not seem much to Americans, but compared to Crown Copyright it is a revelation.

[1] http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licen...

[+] pnathan|15 years ago|reply
I have just finished reading Churchill's description of the WW2 coalition government, frankly, I love how the two parties were able to come together and function well, such that the opposition leader was in the cabinet.

It seems like such a fantasy of ever happening in the US.

[+] daleharvey|15 years ago|reply
This is actually pretty decent, its clean and usable which is enough of a surprised, but it looks like it might actually be useful as well. Geolocation was broken for me and @alphagov asked me for more information

Something feels strange about the govement asking me on twitter to give feedback on getsatisfaction

[+] abailin|15 years ago|reply
The X on the popup modal doesn't work when the site first loads.
[+] seabee|15 years ago|reply
You can use the blue button to close it, though.
[+] antihero|15 years ago|reply
Still, doesn't make up for hushing up the fact that police arrested people at random under Section 60 for things such as wearing zombie paint, protesting against the royalty, filming the police, on the 29th.
[+] mattmanser|15 years ago|reply
At first I was a bit meh, so what, especially as the welcome splash screen wouldn't close and required a screen refresh to get rid of it.

However, the blog's an interesting read on what they're trying accomplish. The point is to make the user's journey much better for common tasks (their example is a lost passport):

http://blog.alpha.gov.uk/

Check out http://blog.alpha.gov.uk/blog/alpha-gov-uk-design-rules for example. They're openly ignoring IE6 and accessibility while they iterate interactivity, fairly brave for a government site.