The Identity side of GDS has definitely been the worst. I wonder if due to the politics around that service, the thinking has stopped and the Just Get It Done, Even If It's Silly crowd has replaced it.
The identity side has allways been a problem (P)politically and technically.
I think the original GDS was completely correct in basically forcing services not to have them, they are unnecessary for almost/all transactional inerteractions - where they are useful is for things with long term, cosistent interactions i.e. where theres an actual relationship, such as benefits or tax - unfortunatly HMRC and DWP both want to "own" the relationship as individual departments (or even benefits) rather than as a part of the government, and the UK is adverse to anything that looks like a national identity system (ignoring the fact we already have national insurance numbers for everyone(?), passport numbers, etc.)
Where I think the loss of critical thinking bites the most though are the small things:
- cookie banner on gov.uk
- my DVLA password, had to have numbers etc (despite password compostion rules not been a recommeneded best practice for almost 10 years [thanks NIST / GCHQ])
- forms are now so simple due to the mantra of "only ask one thing at a time" that you lose all context as you now have a page for "name", "date of birth" etc. instead of one page for "personal details"
I've participated in some user research with the team building it and I've also designed GOV.UK services pre-One Login that needed to verify people's identity. It's obviously a very difficult problem to solve when there's no universal central ID database. The people working on it are definitely cognizant of the failure of Verify and they're keen not to repeat it.
I do hate the 'GOV.UK One Login' name though. It's previously been called 'GOV.UK Account' and 'GOV.UK Sign In', I'm not sure what was wrong with either of those.
Renaming stuff is the easiest job, so it gets done first :) Thanks for your work on gov.uk. I interviewed (a five hour interview!) with GDS about 6 years ago, and it was a nice place. I declined the offer in the end, but it always looked very promising.
I think the original GDS was completely correct in basically forcing services not to have them, they are unnecessary for almost/all transactional inerteractions - where they are useful is for things with long term, cosistent interactions i.e. where theres an actual relationship, such as benefits or tax - unfortunatly HMRC and DWP both want to "own" the relationship as individual departments (or even benefits) rather than as a part of the government, and the UK is adverse to anything that looks like a national identity system (ignoring the fact we already have national insurance numbers for everyone(?), passport numbers, etc.)
Where I think the loss of critical thinking bites the most though are the small things:
- cookie banner on gov.uk
- my DVLA password, had to have numbers etc (despite password compostion rules not been a recommeneded best practice for almost 10 years [thanks NIST / GCHQ])
- forms are now so simple due to the mantra of "only ask one thing at a time" that you lose all context as you now have a page for "name", "date of birth" etc. instead of one page for "personal details"