Private beta starts… now!
Last week, I said that we’d be launching our digital service in private beta, and that you should check back this week to see if it all went up in flames.
Well, good news, everyone! We did it!
Technically, the whole service isn’t launched yet. Our service has three component services; one for conformity assessment bodies, one for internal staff, and then one that will be public facing. The first of those services went live on Monday. Here’s the proof:
Whilst it’s not the full service, we do know that people have started using it and so far nothing seems to have gone wrong.
We’ve also published yet more GOV.UK guidance, in preparation for putting the service properly on GOV.UK. The new “Find registered digital identity and attribute services” page is our attempt to test what our “Start Page” might look like, because we can’t have an actual Start Page yet because we’re not in public beta.
We also can’t point that page to our actual service yet, because its not yet officially deployed and it has no data in it. There are 50-odd companies relying on there being some data in it, so it would be a bit silly to point to it now! Instead, we’re just linking to the existing spreadsheet we had before.
This situation is objectively not great, but I am trying to encourage the team to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The imperfect guidance won’t be there for long in its imperfect state, and this small change doesn’t get in the way of anything people might need to rely on. No interruption to your usual service.
Anyway, back to the service… the other two parts of the service get the green light on Monday. Check back next week to see if I’ve got any nails left.
Some other bits
Where are the missions?
On the topic of imperfect GOV.UK content, I noticed a weird omission this week. No one seems to have published the new government’s “missions” on GOV.UK.
There is a press release about the “first [6] steps for change”, which mentions the “five national missions” but the missions themselves? If you Google them, they show up on the Labour Party’s website; but there is nothing seemingly on GOV.UK.
Maybe it’s deemed too political to be put on the official, usually quite sterile, government website. But every second sentence inside government at the moment is about “delivering on the missions” – as you would expect – so it’s just odd. Right?
A new report on digital identity
A new report from Careful Industries about digital identity in the UK has been published this week. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet; but it’s on my list!
Keeping tabs on Parliamentary activity
I’ve stumbled across these, official Mastodon and Bluesky bots and RSS feeds that help you keep tabs on different activities going on in Parliament. Handy stuff for civil servants like me, and I’m sure many others too!