Making life simpler for UK citizens

After five days in the UK, participating at the Global Service Conference, I decided to report one of the talks I found to be one the most interesting.It is about how government needs to move to a service culture, putting the needs of citizens ahead of those of departments. I really want to stress on this topic, especially because I come from and currently live in a country where government is still very far from this kind of mindset.

Today I talk about GOV.UK, the current single domain for the british government, designed by the Government Digital Service.

But how did everything start?

In november 2010 Martha Lane Fox, an English businesswoman and public servant, was asked to write a report about british government and digital service. She came up with a brief 15 pages report, where she basically called for a REVOLUTION and not an EVOLUTION. The revolution she was talking about consisted of a radical switch to Digital by Default, which was also the report’s title.
In the report she pointed out four key of recommendations:

1. Create GDS (Government Digital Service):
Set up a place, in the Cabinet Office, in charge of making government work better digitally.

2. Fix publishing
By publishing she meant all the websites related to the government: DIRECT GOV (for finding info about school, taxes,…) and BUSINESS THINK (business information) and all the apart government websites, there were over 200 government websites in total.

3. Fix transactions
Transact with government, when a citizen gives an information and the government gives some information back.

4. Go wholesale

Big success!
From end 2010 up to now, the first two points are done.
They managed to set up GDS office and to create a single place for all the government services and information online. This place is called GOV.UK.
In 2013 they focused more on fixing transactions and the fourth point is more a longterm objective.
This year they also won the Design of the Year 2013 award.