The apostrophe thing: I feel your pain. I get the same when I occasionally come across sites which abhor hyphens. Insane. (And potentially indirectly discriminatory; no idea about the stats, but I suspect there may be ethnicities where hyphenation of surnames is more common than elsewhere. Same, of course, with apostrophes in first names. And I'd LOVE to see someone try to argue some kind of proportional means to a legitimate aim on that one, since the only true reason would be either "our code was written decades ago" or "we can't code to save our lives"...)
gov.uk is the closest thing know to what Tim O’Reilly called “government as a platform”. Everything should be an API. Nice job of highlighting the political aspect in your post!
The story of digital in the UK government has definitely stalled somewhat but using GOV.UK (https://www.gov.uk/government/ministers/minister-for-the-cabinet-office) I could hazard a guess as to a big factor (just like we could probably have similar discussions about any number of policy domains with similar chaotic ministerial responsibility). Here are our Ministers for the Cabinet Office since 2010.
It’s a massive achievement, and one that is greatly underrated. Large organisations often suffer from this department all segregation of IT systems. Private sector organisations are just as bad if not worse. Mergers and acquisitions are the worst source of mutually incompatible systems, which is the main reason why they never realise the benefits they promise. Even AWS which was all built by the same company over the last decade or so has a huge problem with the Geocities style of web site.
DVLA is particularly infuriating for people who have to renew their driving licence every three years for medical reasons. For a condition that they say should be possible to renew online ( my mother, a stable epileptic with no recent fits), computer said NO, requiring paper forms and a passport photo. For myself when I was diagnosed with s notifiable condition it took over a year to get a medical licence, due to slow interaction with my consultant. It's the year 2024, WHY IS IT LIKE THIS???
Totally unrelated, but on the tech theme, there seems to be no way on the Substack app to read footnotes without having to scroll to the end each time. On the desktop version, you can hover the cursor over the number to reveal the content. Mild irritation.
The apostrophe thing: I feel your pain. I get the same when I occasionally come across sites which abhor hyphens. Insane. (And potentially indirectly discriminatory; no idea about the stats, but I suspect there may be ethnicities where hyphenation of surnames is more common than elsewhere. Same, of course, with apostrophes in first names. And I'd LOVE to see someone try to argue some kind of proportional means to a legitimate aim on that one, since the only true reason would be either "our code was written decades ago" or "we can't code to save our lives"...)
Every programmer everywhere needs to read and internalise Patrick McKenzie's classic essay "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names": https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ (this version with counterexamples is also good: https://shinesolutions.com/2018/01/08/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names-with-examples/)
Great post. Agreed, Gov.uk is a pleasure to use, something to celebrate and not everything is quite so terrible(!).
gov.uk is the closest thing know to what Tim O’Reilly called “government as a platform”. Everything should be an API. Nice job of highlighting the political aspect in your post!
The story of digital in the UK government has definitely stalled somewhat but using GOV.UK (https://www.gov.uk/government/ministers/minister-for-the-cabinet-office) I could hazard a guess as to a big factor (just like we could probably have similar discussions about any number of policy domains with similar chaotic ministerial responsibility). Here are our Ministers for the Cabinet Office since 2010.
The Rt Hon John Glen MP
Incumbent
The Rt Hon Jeremy Quin MP
2022 to 2023
The Rt Hon Chris Philp MP
2022 to 2022
The Rt Hon Edward Argar MP
2022 to 2022
The Rt Hon Michael Ellis KC MP
2022 to 2022
The Rt Hon Steve Barclay MP
2021 to 2022
The Rt Hon Michael Gove MP
2020 to 2021
The Rt Hon Oliver Dowden CBE MP
2019 to 2020
The Rt Hon David Lidington CBE
2018 to 2019
The Rt Hon Damian Green MP
2017 to 2017
The Rt Hon Ben Gummer
2016 to 2017
The Rt Hon Matt Hancock MP
2015 to 2016
The Rt Hon Lord Maude of Horsham
2010 to 2015
It’s a massive achievement, and one that is greatly underrated. Large organisations often suffer from this department all segregation of IT systems. Private sector organisations are just as bad if not worse. Mergers and acquisitions are the worst source of mutually incompatible systems, which is the main reason why they never realise the benefits they promise. Even AWS which was all built by the same company over the last decade or so has a huge problem with the Geocities style of web site.
DVLA is particularly infuriating for people who have to renew their driving licence every three years for medical reasons. For a condition that they say should be possible to renew online ( my mother, a stable epileptic with no recent fits), computer said NO, requiring paper forms and a passport photo. For myself when I was diagnosed with s notifiable condition it took over a year to get a medical licence, due to slow interaction with my consultant. It's the year 2024, WHY IS IT LIKE THIS???
Totally unrelated, but on the tech theme, there seems to be no way on the Substack app to read footnotes without having to scroll to the end each time. On the desktop version, you can hover the cursor over the number to reveal the content. Mild irritation.
I don't know about the app, but I read it using the web browser on my phone and can just tap the number to get the footnote displayed.
Enjoyed this- but I do think the accountability deficit highlighted is a serious issue.
Thanks for this.