1. Building a statistical release calendar on GOV.UK
Here to talk to you about the work we did, and the process we went through, with a fellow government organisation to create a new statistical release calendar on GOV.UK
Sam Hall

2. About GOV.UK GOV.UK was released on 17 October 2012
Single domain for a UK government – replacing numerous other sites
Best place to find government services and information
Organisation behind this is GDS...

3. About GDS GDS = Government Digital Service, part of the Cabinet Office
Formed November 2011 in response to call for “revolution not evolution”
Leading the digital transformation of government – moving departments and services on to GOV.UK
They aim to make on-line services so good that people prefer to use them to alternatives
So, our project...

4. The Publication Hub The Publication Hub was launched in March 2009
Response to Code of Practice for Official Statistics requirement to pre-announce releases
Served as home to all statistical release announcements across government
However, by 2014 at the end of its technological life
Expensive to run
Large overhead – over 500 people announcing on it across government (all needing training)
Existed in isolation
GOV.UK offered ideal opportunities - already home to 24 ministerial departments and 331 other agencies and public bodies
GDS also expressing interest in having a calendar facility on their site

5. 10 Design Principles 1. Start with needs 2. Do less
3. Design with data
4. Do the hard work to make it simple
5. Iterate. Then iterate again.
6. Build for inclusion
7. Understand context
8. Build digital services, not websites
9. Be consistent, not uniform
10. Make things open. It makes things better
These are GDS’ 10 Design principles
These underpinned the process we went through...

6. The Process Started working with GDS in late February 2014
Began by identifying the minimum viable product (photo)
Built around user needs

7. Agile GDS have multi-disciplinary teams who working agile
Power of agile - had a working prototype within 4 weeks of starting the project
Followed by further iterations
1800 calendar entries migrated to the new calendar, matched to new topics and QAd
Roughly 16K redirects put in place
Archive of Publication Hub at TNA (took 6 weeks to run)
Presentations and demonstrations with OGDs to get buy-in and communicate change
ONS managed the transition and announced on behalf of OGDs until trained

8. The new statistical release calendar
Launched September 2014
Initial spike in traffic on the new site but now settled to similar levels to the old calendar
Has saved £300K per annum
New announcement process is quicker (half of the overhead for OGDs) and more efficient (from 285 to 2 release announcers in ONS)
Simpler and clearer for front-end users
Housed in more logical place (more visible)
Project nominated for ONS Excellence Award

9. Iterative Continue to improve it Trello Product backlog
Focused on user feedback/need