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GOV.UK roadmap

GOV.UK is the digital home for the UK government. It’s run by the Government Digital Service (GDS), and we’re always working to better meet user needs. This is our current roadmap, which takes us through to early 2022.

Updates

Our vision
Work at GDS
Inside GOV.UK blog

What we’re working on

Be available, accessible and accurate

Improve site resilience, security, navigation and publishing

Recently shipped

  • Made continuous updates and improvements to the most used content on GOV.UK
  • Launched a new menu bar to appear at the top of all GOV.UK pages, which structures pages by topic, department and government activity
  • Improved translations of page labels and headings on non-English language pages
  • Improved the way we manage subdomains of GOV.UK for the rest of government
  • Completed cookies work, including guidance for other government departments
  • Built and tested updates to the design of the GOV.UK homepage

Working on now

  • Update the most used content on GOV.UK, such as guidance on visas, immigration, benefits, tax and the environment
  • Iterate our postcode lookup tool, to improve how we provide content that’s different based on the user’s location (for example, contact details for local councils)
  • Run the annual accessibility audit and make necessary changes
  • Test a new hosting platform for GOV.UK applications with GOV.UK developers who will be affected by the move
  • Improve our site-wide monitoring and alerts so we spot problems faster
  • Start work on new publishing tools and processes to help government departments create and manage content more effectively
  • Identify new ways of working to help us manage the most used content on GOV.UK more efficiently

Exploring

  • Test designs for improving our taxonomy to simplify the navigation system
  • Identify applications that can be retired to reduce the support burden and make future enhancements to GOV.UK quicker and easier
  • Test the new design for topic pages including mainstream browse (for example benefits)
  • Design and test improvements to content page navigation including related links and breadcrumbs

Support the government’s priorities of the day

Communicate critical, changing information, and support government’s goal to make complex tasks easier

Recently shipped

Working on now

  • Continue iterating coronavirus guidance and products so that they reflect government policy and encourage people to protect themselves and others from coronavirus
  • Improve user journeys to NHS coronavirus services and information
  • Investigate content navigation tools to help users find and stay up to date with the latest travel rules

Exploring

  • Identify which complex user journeys we'll work on next, and define how we’ll work with multiple departments to improve them

Improve and connect data and insights to optimise user experience

Understand our users and their needs by analysing trends, patterns and feedback

Recently shipped

  • Polled a representative sample of the UK population to understand their perception of GOV.UK and inform future developments

Working on now

  • Build tools to create data visualisations so it's easier to analyse how users interact with digital government services
  • Analyse how users move across platforms and services, to improve their experience of ‘whole user journeys’
  • Simplify how feedback is analysed and gathered, so we can better measure our impact and identify issues

Exploring

  • Find more ways to automate feedback analysis, so government can identify and respond to user problems and suggestions faster
  • Experiment with different metrics, such as reading time, to develop benchmarks we can measure user engagement against
  • Improve our understanding of cookie opt-in rates, so we have a more accurate idea of actual visitor trends

Ensure user journeys are simple, joined up and personalised

Develop site-wide account and personalisation features to offer users relevant and helpful information

Recently shipped

  • Tested a mockup user journey in the GOV.UK account, to see whether users would be comfortable with their information being shared between government departments
  • Suggested relevant content to users looking at similar pages around starting a business
  • Experimented with a page that routes users to different government accounts, to avoid confusion as we add more features to the GOV.UK account

Working on now

  • Allow users to more precisely tailor GOV.UK email updates, by letting them subscribe to individual pages on GOV.UK
  • Pilot features that could be part of sitewide accounts on GOV.UK, such as personalised content and notifications
  • Work with service teams across government to research and prototype ways the GOV.UK account can join up multiple-service journeys
  • Think about how to tag and categorise content segments to support personalisation work

Exploring

  • Look at ways users could manage different profiles (for example business and personal) within their single GOV.UK account

Meet users where they are

Make GOV.UK's content available across different channels, such as search engines and voice assistants

Recently shipped

  • Made use of schema.org standards to integrate content and services into search engine results

Working on now

  • Continue work to use schema.org standards on GOV.UK
  • Structure content into small sections so it can be re-used across GOV.UK and other channels
  • Develop our publishing applications so we’re able to create structured content that can be used on other channels

Exploring

  • Work with multiple third parties to test integrations of GOV.UK content and products where users are
  • Through a discovery, research how app technologies could help users by offering more proactive and personalised government services

GOV.UK in numbers

From 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2021

We can only count visits to the GOV.UK website if users give us permission to.

1.8   billion visits
4.1   billion page views

Last updated: January 2022