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E-Petitions – Day 1 Learning

The e-Petitions site went live today at noon so that people could start signing petitions raised in the first week and raise new petitions.

Interest in the site exceeded our expectations – some key figures from the first day:

  • More than 1700 visitors a minute to the site
  • Over 2,400 petitions raised
  • Over 14,000 signatures in the first 4 hours.

Read more

Alpha.gov.uk wrap-up

So then, how did the experiment go? First, let’s remind ourselves of the prototype’s primary objectives

  1. To test, in public, a prototype of a new, single UK Government website.
  2. To design & build a UK Government website using open, agile, multi-disciplinary product development techniques and technologies, shaped by an obsession with meeting user needs.

Read more about wrapping up the alpha prototype

Directgov – our story

Directgov was launched in April 2004 to allow people to access public services and government information in a single place. We know that people care little about the structures of government and do not want to go searching around the internet so the original aim of Directgov was to join up services online.

Read more about Directgov

Innovation – the first strand: Delivery

Government ICT has gained the reputation for being about massive projects, with very long time scales, very high costs and being primarily delivered by a small number of very big suppliers.

Read more about the innovation project

An introduction to Assisted Digital

There are an estimated 9.2 million adults in the UK who have never used the internet; many of these are among the more vulnerable and disadvantaged in our society including:

  • 31% of those earning less than £10,400 per annum
  • 55% of those who have no qualifications
  • 60% of those aged over 65

Read more about assisted digital

Sketching our way to Alpha.gov.uk

We’ve talked about our initial analysis, our design rules and our technology. This post is about how we tried to get from those starting points to that technology — to the built thing — which is what you can see at Alpha.gov.uk.

Read more about sketching our way to Alpha.gov.uk

A vision for online consultation and policy engagement

This is a short post about a huge topic: what government should do to consult, engage and involve people more openly in the work it does, online.

Consultation is a big part of government. Doing it better online is a coalition commitment. Alphagov’s vision would be incomplete without addressing it head on.

Read more about a vision for online consultation and policy engagement

What was the evidence? Users’ information needs and analytics

As mentioned in other blogs, one of the first and primary tasks for the Alphagov project was to build a site that provided the information and services users need. So where were we going for the evidence? Within the timescale and resources of the project we saw value in taking a quantitative approach – looking at analytics and particularly search analytics across the central government web estate.

Read more about users’ information needs and analytics