Mastodawn

I've signed this open letter asking NHS England to keep its code open.

> Code paid for with public money should be open to the public. This principle is enshrined in the UK Government Design Principles and the NHS Service Standard. It is now being walked back. We are signing this to restate the case.

Please consider signing, particularly if you've ever contributed to UK public-sector software.

https://keepthingsopen.com/

#GOVUK #GDSTeam #NHSDigital #WorkingInTheOpen #opensource

An open letter asking NHS England to keep its code open.

Code paid for with public money should, by default, be open to the public.

James

Apr 25

Coding in the open: so many benefits; so few downsides!

https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2017/09/04/the-benefits-of-coding-in-the-open/

#gdsteam #govuk #workingintheopen #publictrust

The benefits of coding in the open – Government Digital Service

...This promotes a common culture and way of working when you can see how other teams manage certain issues. Anna Shipman (left) Quite often, teams will make small improvements to...

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James

Apr 25

> Public services are built with public money. So unless there’s a good reason not to do so, the code they’re based on should be made available for people to reuse and build on.

#govuk #gdsteam #workintheopen #publictrust

James

Apr 25

Point 12 of the GOV.UK Service Standard:

> Make new source code open
>
> Make all new source code open and reusable, and publish it under appropriate licences. Or if this is not possible, provide a convincing explanation of why this cannot be done for specific subsets of the source code.

https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/service-standard/point-12-make-new-source-code-open

#govuk #gdsteam #workintheopen #publictrust

12. Make new source code open

Make all new source code open and reusable, and publish it under appropriate licences. Or if this is not possible, provide a convincing explanation of why this cannot be done for specific subsets of the source code.

GOV.UK

Go Free Range worker co-op Apr 10

A week late, but here are our #weeknotes for last week which was a break between the project at the Government Digital Service and and a new (to us) project at NHS Digital.

They include a video of the GFR theme song played live at the Albert Hall!

https://gofreerange.com/week-898

#cooperative #ruby #rails #gdsteam #nhs #stornoway

Week 898 — Go Free Range.

A software development worker cooperative based in London, UK.

Go Free Range worker co-op Dec 19

A busy week at GFR to round off the year!

* New client project at #gdsteam working on #govuk publishing 💼
* Value propositions for #jamcoop 🍓
* Mocha library release ☕️
* CoTech website revamp 🎨
* #codeclub up and running 🤖
* Mission Patch bug fix 🚀
* Dotfiles on a new laptop 💻

🎄Merry Christmas🎄 and a 🍾Happy New Year🍾!

https://gofreerange.com/week-883

#weeknotes #ruby #rubyonrails #cooperative

Week 883 — Go Free Range.

A software development worker cooperative based in London, UK.

James

Oct 22, 2025

> ‘Significant exposure’: AWS outage exposed UK state’s £1.7bn reliance on tech giant

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/21/significant-exposure-amazon-web-services-outage-exposed-uk-states-17bn-reliance-on-tech-giant

Although the GOV.UK PaaS [1] was initially built on AWS, it used Terraform with the intention of using other providers, but then it was decommissioned [2] - perhaps it’s worth reviving…?

[1]: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/platform-as-a-service/platform-as-a-service
[2]: https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2022/07/12/why-weve-decided-to-decommission-gov-uk-paas-platform-as-a-service/

#gdsteam #govuk #aws #cloud #paas