A startup within UK government

“government = innovative + agile + value for money?”

Development Hall 45 min

  • What is the talk about?

    James: GOV.UK is a breakthrough approach within government to building digital services that are so good citizens prefer to use them.

    This talk will look at multi-award winning GOV.UK, how and why it was built by a collaborative, cross-disciplinary team at the Government Digital Service (GDS), and share how the team works. It will cover the technology choices, how we revisited those choices along the way, why we've chosen to reject the traditional government option of large vendor stacks, the open-source culture and how we code in the open, the tools used and architecture of the web site, the benefits (tens of millions of pounds saved), how others have built upon our work and what it's like to work at a startup growing at a massive pace in a government environment.

  • Who is it for?

    James: Developers, architects, agile practitioners and attendees who would like to work with the government, but are worried that they're not big / entreprisey enough.

  • What will the audience get from it?

    James: The audience will learn how the Government Digital Service delivers world-class digital services to citizens, and how anyone can do these things, regardless of the context in which they work. They will see that there's not that much difference from a startup having an idea, a credit card and access to AWS, and what people can achieve in government.

  • What do you presently work at?

    James: https://www.gov.uk/

  • Which of your existing achievements do you value the most?

    James: Being part of an amazing team that shipped the GOV.UK, saved the UK taxpayer lots of money and had a lot of fun in the process

  • What would you like to achieve?

    James: A happy life

  • What do you look forward to at the WebExpo?

    James: Visiting a new place, meeting new people and learning new things

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James Abley

Technical Architect Government Digital Service