John Oakley on Odds and Ends of History

[John Oakley]

As I understand it, the Government Digital Service (GDS) architecture was shaped by several key figures, with Mike Bracken and Tom Loosemore being particularly influential in its early development. They were brought in around 2011 to lead the digital transformation of UK government services.

I used to be a systems architect with IBM but left to form my own consultancy with my own practice based in the USA, and the early work and principles published and espoused by Mike and Tom in their formative years formed the basis of several of my engagements, especially for a major US airline and the commercial version of the human genome project. Both of these projects and others had in the past used Zachman's Enterprise Architecture ( being IBM customers ). So, my consultancy used Mike and Tom's approach, albeit in its formative form, to rescue these projects.

I also understand that in GDS the technical architecture was significantly influenced by Ben Terrett (Head of Design), Russell Davies, and James Stewart, among others. They established the core design principles that would become the foundation of GOV.UK, emphasising simplicity, accessibility, and user needs above all else.

The architectural approach was revolutionary for most enterprises at the time, embracing:

- A microservices architecture instead of monolithic systems

- Open source technology

- Platform thinking ("enterprise" as a platform)

- Agile development methods

- Common components and patterns that could be reused across the enterprise

We all had to fight the various antipatterns. The team behind GDS are unsung heroes.

As an aside, the young Jacinda Adhern was also instrumental in getting the GDS principles accepted. She was on a years work experience for the Cabinet Office and kept interfering with common sense.