Tech Series: The future of GOV.UK architecture strategy

In this session, we were joined by Himal Mandali, former Head of Technology for GOV.UK at Government Digital Service (GDS), to discuss how he and his team were shaping and delivering the future vision for GOV.UK

The Government Digital Service (GDS) has set itself a clear vision for 2021 to 2024: to build a simple, joined-up and personalised experience of government for everyone. Mission 1 of GDS’s strategy is: GOV.UK as the single and trusted online destination for government information and services. GOV.UK is many things. A brand and proposition which encompasses thousands of web services delivered by dozens of government departments, all sharing a consistent design and user experience. It is also a content publishing and delivery platform built and run by the Government Digital Service. It is used across government to publish and serve guidance to millions of users daily on everything from coronavirus to how you would keep a “micropig” as a pet.

Now we are looking ahead. GDS wants to deliver more personalised, proactive and channel-agnostic service, tied together with a GOV.UK Account, and use accounts and connected data insights to provide a more joined-up and seamless experience for all users.

At the time of the discussion, the project was in the experimental stages, with small scale tests of accounts and personalisation, while the team planed the longer-term design, architecture and infrastructure changes. Publishing and serving dynamic, personalised content requires a complete rethink and redesign of GOV.UK‘s architecture and infrastructure. This is an incremental but wholesale change to a large and complex live service made up of approximately 70 microservices and components.