[signalsmith]

This is off-topic, but I really like the current GOV.UK (several years old now). I don't really have opinions on the visual stuff, but I find it really pleasant to use.

Filing my self-assessment tax return (only required because I run a side-business) is a fantastically straightforward experience. Step-by-step information entry, pre-filled with what they already know (e.g. main employer's salary), then they give you a number at the end which you pay by card.

Having done the paper version exactly once before moving over to doing them online, I feel grateful every time I see that distinctive custom font.

[jackdeansmith]

As a US guy, I've never looked at this site before. The extreme clarity of pages like https://www.gov.uk/vat-rates is really refreshing.

[lioeters]

Indeed, that's a nice example. I felt the design could even improve public relations. If I were a UK citizen, I'd be relieved to find the information so well-designed and presented.

I've read here and there about the UK Government Digital Service, and have a very good impression. Reading a recent related article, it sounds like they have their priorities right!

https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2019/11/05/transforming-gov-uk-the-f...

[dmix]

The UK has long been an early adopter of proper web design for government websites.

Seeing the average Canadian gov website, and hearing stories from people who've worked on some at the federal level, makes my head hurt.

[frosted-flakes]

The Canadian and provincial governments are getting better though. See the OSAP (Ontario Student Assistance Program) application page, which is fully mobile and vastly simplified from the hot mess it used to be. Also, just look at https://ontario.ca in general, which is clearly inspired by Gov.UK.

[dmix]

All it takes is one group to do it right and everyone wants to copy them.

Good job UK, this Ontario site looks like a semi rip-off of the gov.uk sites (which is a good thing).

Everything slowly gets better online, it just takes time.

[bflesch]

In Germany, I can't even find the VAT rate info page at the ministry via google. I end up with this: https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Web/DE/Themen/Steuern...

[mattmanser]

Fantastically straight forward? I strongly disagree. I've done the SA many times, and trying to find out your balance or payments list or anything useful is now a kafka-esque nightmare. Last time I knew they must owe me money but they didn't say at the end, and it took me about 15 minutes to find out how much, with no indication of when it would arrive. At the end of the SA they even had some sort of message saying make sure you pay what you owe, which turned out to be nothing. This is all complicated because you pay on account, paying the next year's tax 15 months before you submit your return (they guess your next tax bill based on the previous one, as you don't submit the return for 9 months after the end of the tax year, so you don't get in too much credit).

The new SA process is no different from the old one, with minor cosmetic enhancements, but they've made it almost impossible to get to the old account sections.

Notice how there's no login button. On a website that relies on logging in. Now search for "self assessment login" or "self assessment account" or "self-assessment balance".

See any login button? See anything resembling a login? last year you could still get to the old account screen after some hunting, but that's gone now. The new account screen is a mass of text with links sprinkled through out, where the old one was a compact menu.

Plus, when you finally do find your accounts, you can only see one year at a time, have to use a drop down to change year, the amounts you owed are on one page, they amounts you paid are on another, some of these figures are still provisional, and nothing adds up.

As for submitting your company accounts, what a joke that used to be when they re-did it. I knew exactly what type of account I needed to submit. But to get to that form, I think they had a labyrinth of 16 web pages, each just one question per page, that you had to answer while they unhelpfully tried to pick the form you needed for you. Get the wrong form? No way to go back to see what answer you got wrong, no way to fix it, you just had to start again. It meant I had to go through it 3 or 4 times before I finally got the right form.

Before they "renovated" it, you just picked the form you needed.

They even did a whole blog post about how great the one page per question concept was, which turned out to be utterly bullshit.

I've lost all faith in the gov.uk team, I feel they're trying too hard to be cool and "innovative". They have thrown out convention, and are often making poor UIs and user journeys because of it.

[maxcbc]

I’m biased, I used to work at GDS.

The lack of a ‘login’ button is a huge issue IMHO, but the main blocker to it isn’t the tech teams, its at the ministerial/senior civil service level.

The problem isn’t the button itself but the infrastructure behind it. I.e. it requires a single database of users (i.e. a national register of citizens).

This needs doing, but politicians come out in hives because it involves setting up a system similar to national ID cards (politically difficult). Senior civil servants dislike it because its a question of which department owns it, if its GDS its the cabinet office, and that means the Home Office, DWP, HMRC surrendering some control (i.e. being increasingly dependent on external systems), which is something departments seem to dislike.

It’d save millions (billions probably) in the long run, but there isn’t the political will to do it. It would need an influential cabinet minister to push it through and would take 3-5 years to get properly embedded.

[pja]

Finding where to login for SA is the one frustration I have with SA right now. Everything else works really smoothly, but I have to resort to Googling "self assessment login" every time.

Solving this doesn't require a unified login - it needs proper signposting within gov.uk of the most likely user flows. Right now, finding the login for SA is something like 5 levels deep within the hiearchy of pages, and even then it's not well signposted.

gov.uk -> "Money and Tax" -> "Self Assessment" -> "Register for and file your Self Assessment tax return" -> Sign In

Having to choose "Money and Tax" and then "Self Assessment" is fine. But then you're faced with an enormous menu of choices, only the 19th of which leads to a login prompt. Once you've reached that page, "Sign In" isn't even at the top of the page - it's below the fold on my 1440 pixel high screen!

Just putting common tasks at the top of the list, with everything alphabetised underneath for when you're looking for something specific would make a huge difference.

[maxcbc]

I get what you’re saying I have the same problem with SA, but the key is better personalisation, which login can help with.

Gov.uk provides hundreds of services, like SA, which each user will only use a small subset of. That subset will be different for each user. I now need SA whereas 5 years ago prominently signposting that would have been useless to me. For others education services, welfare services and health should be highlighted. All this is quite difficult without knowing who is accessing the site.

Though In the specific case of SA, I think its not as well conceived a service as it can be. 95% of the time i’m not ‘registering for self assessment’ or ‘filing a self assessment tax return’ , i’m ‘checking what tax i owe’

[kwhitefoot]

> it involves setting up a system similar to national ID cards

No it doesn't. We have a register of everyone resident or tax paying here in Norway and no ID cards. The government keeps on trying to make ID cards happen but the relevant departments always seem to be dragging their feet.

You already have a national register in the UK: National Insurance numbers. The difficulty is that it is simply not properly joined up with taxes, banking, etc.

I very much doubt that there is any serious political objection to joining these databases amongst the general public; as you say the civil service departments feathering their own nests is the biggest problem.

[maxcbc]

Its seen as setting up a system similar to national ID cards.

Weirdly National Insurance numbers are not always unique, and people can have more than one. Also while they are used by for tax and benefits (HMRC and DWP) other departments have a different ID number, the biggest being NHS numbers, military service numbers, passport numbers and driving license numbers (DHSC, MOD, Home Office, Department for Transport). So you’d need to unify it, under one of these, effectively creating a ‘National ID Number’, even if you don’t call it that it’d be spun as that by opponents (libertarians, big brother watch etc). You’re probably right in that the public probably aren't too worried about it, and would probably be appalled to see the waste that goes on as a result of it not existing. But politicians and parts of the media will get riled up by it.

[kwhitefoot]

> would probably be appalled to see the waste that goes on as a result of it not existing.

There's no probably about it. I breath a sigh of relief every time I get back home to Norway after visiting family in the UK (which I left 34 years ago). So much is just simpler here.