Massive kudos to whoever it is in a position of authority, be a politician or a senior civil servant for allowing a modern dev team to grow and cultivate a culture that works. Too many people in authority are motivated by fear of failure, blame apportioning and self-interest meaning their aversion to risk is so high, nothing happens, so nothing goes wrong.
I really hope that because this is associated with the cabinet office other teams elsewhere in govt. can draw encouragement from this team and use it as an example.
Excellent to see the source open and hosted on github. Such code is rarely made publicly despite it not being confidential.
Will the govt. sit up and notice that small focused team with a remit can deliver. Or will the next system change mean a complicated procurment process for a large consultancy who will hive the work off shore to the cheapest sub-contractor and deliver nothing but spend millions of tax payers pounds.
@liammax and @MTBracken (twitter) are "UK CTO" and director GDS, and currently the leading lights in this one.
One thing to note is the Open Source software, in guidance handed to all government departments, should be preferred over proprietary software. (link in here somewhere http://www.oss4gov.org/policy_activism)
In addition the "G-Cloud" - a online catalog of pre-vetted service providers, has 80% SMEs on it and a govt buyer can simply sign up online for a Saas service there and then with a govt credit card, legally
I feel that Open Source in government will have serious network effects globally, so getting this right now for the UK could lead to a very long tail / virtuous circle for UK devs in the future.
I really hope that because this is associated with the cabinet office other teams elsewhere in govt. can draw encouragement from this team and use it as an example.
Excellent to see the source open and hosted on github. Such code is rarely made publicly despite it not being confidential.
Will the govt. sit up and notice that small focused team with a remit can deliver. Or will the next system change mean a complicated procurment process for a large consultancy who will hive the work off shore to the cheapest sub-contractor and deliver nothing but spend millions of tax payers pounds.