GDS Blog

How is formatting important though? Semantic formatting, sure, but again, a 20-year-old HTML file still has that preserved. The em-perfect formatting inherent in PDF seems entirely purposeless unless you for some reason need to be able to reproduce a printed copy of the document exactly. Formulas are a special case, but the great majority of documents I see distributed in PDF would be more useful as HTML, and I don't buy the argument that it would risk archivability. At the end of the day, HTML is a plain-text format which is quite human-readable even if all the world's HTML renderers were somehow lost to the ages.

The only use-case I can conceive for perfectly-reproducable layout if you are not a print publisher is in fields where it is convention to reference text by page+paragraph number; in those cases, the page number is actually semantic information so could quite trivially be encoded in the content of the document to maintain that referent.

> Search works fine in PDF.

Search works fine in PDFs that don't use hyphenation or which properly implement it, and when they don't it breaks silently in ways that are potentially disastrous.

> Mobile is not optimal, but platforms optimized for mobile require different design considerations.

And my point about mobile was you don't need to optimize for it.

>Few webpages look or function identically on mobile.

Again, it doesn't need to look identical. That is a falce requirement. There is no value in that. The only web pages…

> I think many (most?) people people are aware at some
> level of the media manipulation of populations using
> crude psychological ploys, the hegemony of the big banks
> and multinationals and the hidden agendas of so-called
> benevolent nation states and governments.

I think everyone acts in their own self interest, and trying to gussy it up as a conspiracy is pretty counter-productive.

If you take any kind of historical perspective, then the ability of the rich and powerful to control the proletariat or bend the world to their will is at an all time low. I welcome any research or sensible citation that counters that, because to me it seems prima facie, and 2 minutes Googling suggests we live in a more democratic world than at any time in history.

US special interest groups are still worrying, as is their ability to influence the foreign policy of the world's biggest military force, but surely they're more worrying because we know more about how they work than ever, and there's considerably more transparency? Arguably the big let-down of the Obama presidency was his inability to work effectively within the system he was part of (as, say, a contrast to Bill Clinton). Labour organizations / Unions unambiguously count as special interest groups, which is sort of ironic.

Anywho, your real point was:

> More interesting is what we (can?, should?) do about it?

I think you can get involved with good faith technological and political movements that want…

I can't speak for the natural sciences, but I'm an academic in an engineering department at a major university in the UK. My main criticism of the article is that it sort of lets non-humanities off the hook.

I've been sat in seminars in my group (on computer science or engineering topics) and had the same feelings as the author. People invent jargon to describe simple ideas and then convince themselves that it's more precise when it rarely is or, when it is precise, the precision isn't necessary. All it ends up doing is reducing the impact of the research. But it does help with the imposter syndrome of being an early-career academic – everyone else is using all this complicated jargon and you feel a bit like a fraud, so you need to get to grips with it quickly.

This isn't a problem unique to academia though it might be more severe there. There's a section on the gov.uk's 'Writing for GOV.UK' [1] article that I like:

"Government experts often say that because they’re writing technical or complex
content for a specialist audience, they don’t need to use plain English. This is wrong.

Research [2] shows that higher literacy people prefer plain English because it
allows them to understand the information as quickly as possible.

For example, research [3] into use of specialist legal language in legal documents found:

- 80% of people preferred sentences written in clear English - and the more complex the issue, the greater that preference (eg, 97% preferred ‘among other…

I recall GDS being initiated for internal DOH stuff circa John Major, going into Blair era (yip was there when Blair took over the role).

Not that I'd attribute it to any PM, believe it was driven by the government security services (which department/flavor I could not say).

That all said, it may of been a different aspect but certainly has a longer story than told. With that, it started as an intranet project iirc.

https://gds.blog.gov.uk/story/ has some insight but that seems more to cover the more public web aspects and even they say it is "a story" not "the story".

So be fascinating to peace the "full story" and history together.

GDS was a whole catchment in the early days, that included the phone services and that was contracted to Mercury telecom at one stage, or aspects were. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_Communications

If any credit should be laid, it would be upon the civil servants and associates that came up with the initiative, who sadly will probably remain nameless even if their names were known. Politicians just green light so much and claim credit, so much goes on behind the scenes of any government. With that, best think of politicians as orchestra conductors who depend upon musicians knowing how to do things, often able to do things right without eye sight of the conductors at times.

Exactly, through recall this was Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government, so Nick Clegg (you might have head of him) may have a claim.

Actually the credit should go to the brilliant and dedicated people in GDS doing great work; though I do not know enough to pick out names. The UI/UX and implementation was first class from the get go.

As a Brit my life is made remarkably easier as a citizen and startup entrepreneur. The benefits to the UK ecomnomy are enorous but not measured. In contrast my personal experience of govt engagement when setting-up and running startups in US between 1991 and 2013 were painful. And would have been very painful without help (thank you YC).

Finally if we are going to give leadership credit it should go to Francis Maude [0]. He happened to be my local MP, so I met him quite a few times, and he was most helpful and astonishingly effective in helping us navigate two big challenges we had in facing down, shall we say, "unethical quango-business partnerships". A remarkable, thoughtful man and effective operator, who was in government over three decades [1].

[0] https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2012/10/16/gov-uk-the-start/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Maude

The United Kingdoms, Gov.UK had similar plans. The site, designed by the Government Digital Service, combines all of the UK government’s websites into a single domain and has been executed very well. Department by Department, Service by Service it was/is being slowly moved over.

It is possible and so much it won the Design of the Year in 2013.

Deyan Sudjic, Director of Design Museum said:
"GOV.UK is a remarkable success on so many levels. It makes life better for millions of people coping with the everyday chores, from getting a new passport, to paying their taxes. It’s a reflection of the government understanding how to communicate with the country in a way that works, it’s simple, direct, well mannered, all the things that we would like to take for granted from the government, but in a sea of red tape and jargon, usually can’t. The rest of the world is deeply impressed, and because it has rationalised multiple official websites, it saves the taxpayer millions, what’s not to like?"

Government Digital Service
https://gds.blog.gov.uk/

They Keep it Simple, a lot of white space.