Two GDS projects to watch : GOV.UK Accounts and “Forms discovery”
GOV.UK Accounts
Folks who regularly read my blog will have seen my previous posts about this (first, second). In short it’s a reversal from the original GDS position of login-less service design that I personally largely agree with despite some reservations.
I’ve been impressed about the frequency and quality of blog posts the team developing this is doing and hope that they not only continue but that they inspire more regular team-level blogging from GDS and other government departments. Maybe even week notes one day — one can but dream.
The latest post, Respecting users’ privacy on GOV.UK accounts, contains a good set of Data Privacy Principles and I think the Full Privacy Notice it links to is excellent — and should be used as an example of the kind of thing that is provided for every government online service. We talked a lot at GovCamp this weekend about the next iteration of the Government Service Standard and the mandatory inclusion of something like that would be great.
It’s also good to know that the team is seeking external oversight of their work — to quote:
We ensure that the development of the GOV.UK Account is subject to internal oversight and governance. For example, we engage accountable risk owners and the Cabinet Office Data Protection Officer (DPO) via our Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) processes. We also value external views of the work we’re doing and we speak to users through our user research work and to organisations like the National Cybersecurity Centre and the Privacy and Consumer Advisory Group.
In addition they’ve asked for further feedback from any interested parties via gds-privacy-office@digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk. I hope this is something taken up by individual advocates in this area as well as organised groups like the ODI, the ICO, the Open Rights Group and Big Brother Watch. When GOV.UK Verify first started it had an Oversight Board (possibly with a different name) made up of representatives of 3rd party organisations. I’d love to see something like that in place as GOV.UK Account expands its remit.
And that is where I start to have potential issues. GOV.UK Account looks great. However, it has the possibility of becoming a huge register of personal data being used for multiple services in government. It also has the possibility of eventually becoming part of (or even the core of) the kind of cross-gov data-sharing platform, similar to X-Road in Estonia, that’s been long proposed for a long time and will likely be high on the agenda on any incoming new Government Chief Data Officer.
It’s not where it is — it’s where it’s going and how we can ensure the right amount of review from people outside of government that concerns me. That’s far from an insolvable problem so I’m keen to see how it develops.
The new GDS “Forms discovery”
I’ve put the name of this one in quotes as it’s not clear from the first great blog post from Product Owner Harry Vos about this what the official name is.
Readers may remember some years ago the discovery for a “central gov form builder” service called GOV.UK Submit. Harry makes it very clear that the purpose of this new discovery is not recreating Submit and I certainly respect that. Times have moved on and it’s great that the new team is reassessing the relevant user needs. It’s also going to be very interesting to see if there’s any change in GDS policy regarding this kind of Government as a Platform service now that there’s a new change in leadership.
I’ve blogged many times over the years about my dream of a central “service builder service” co-owned and co-developed by the whole government digital community to move us away from the endless repetitious building and maintenance of service infrastructure in multiple siloed organisations. Unfortunately, to implement that fully we need the kind of “data services” that Jeni Tennison ran a session about in GovCamp on Saturday (notes here). However, while we’re waiting for that I’m keen to follow what Harry’s team is doing in this area (can we please have an RSS feed to this Harry so we don’t need to keep checking GitHub for updates).
