Key information
Request reference number: MGLA300721-9600
Date of response:
Summary of request
You requested:
Please could you provide me with some information regarding user engagement and your use of open source and open standards for your digital services?
User engagement
When did you last conduct research into how your website users are accessing digital
services?
How has your digital uptake increased over the past 12 months (as measured by the
government’s guidelines)?
Open source and open standards
What percentage of your source code your council develops - or which is developed on
your behalf by external parties - is made open?
What percentage of your components are standard government technology components?
Is your website designed using open standards for government?
Our response to your request:
Please find below the information we hold within the scope of your request and the answers to your questions.
User engagement
We carry out user testing regularly on London.gov.uk. For example, from January to June
this year we tested new design work, an immigration status checker, a translation hub with COVID guidance etc. We also carried out extensive discovery work in 2020 involving Londoners, partner organisations and staff to better understand their needs in relation to London.gov.uk and related digital products.
The GLA is a strategic authority and so while we work to the government service standard as best practice, digital take-up for services online vs other channels is not a measure that is generally relevant for our work.
Open source and open standards
At the moment 55% of the code repositories that we own are open. Progress on this is actively ongoing, as we are currently rebuilding our digital estate and expect it to be over 72% by the time that project is complete.
As of the beginning of August, we have 78 repos, 30 of which are open. However, some of those where the code is not open have not been included in the percentage as they relate to internal work, are old products where the code is due to be archived or are private duplicates of public repos.
The estimate covers corporate IT and digital products: there are also several applications we have developed externally, that we do not have the source code for and therefore cannot open.
The GLA is a strategic authority and while we do provide some direct services the
standard GOV.UK services / components referred to here, such as Notify, Verify and
Pay are not relevant for our websites and are not used.
Our website is follows open standards for government as best practice.
If you have any further questions relating to this matter, please contact me, quoting the
reference MGLA300721-9600.