gov.uk has a tendancy to treat everyone like a 5 year old
Which is not a bug, but a feature of the gov.uk website, and it's the best and the most important one. 89 year old you would absolutely appreciate it when you'd need to renew your passport via gov.uk.
Funny you say that, I actually just did a company tax return and confirmation statement a couple of days in the midst of bad COVID (2 hours sleep per night) and I was still annoyed about the multi-step process:
1) gov.uk, search for 'file confirmation statement'
2) Despite there being a sole autocomplete result and clicking on it, taken to the search results page
3) Click the first result. Turns out it's the guidance page
4) Go back, click the second result. We're getting warmer
5) Click "Start Now"
6) Get redirected to the 'Sign in to WebFiling' landing page. You can't actually sign on on this page.
7) Click 'Continue'
8) Another landing/explainer page! ("We're taking you to GOV.UK One Login to sign in to this service")
9) Click 'Go to GOV.UK One Login'
10) You think we're done yet? Think again. Another landing page!
11) Click "Sign in"
12) Think they'd let you just enter an email and password on one page? Nope! Enter email
13) Click Continue
14) Enter password
Finally...
No idea how anyone who doesn't work for GDS can justify this. It's mad
It's a bug when you're neither 5 nor 89 or have used it 10 times before...
Look, I know it's a hard problem, and GDS have a lot of talented, smart people. I appreciate making something work for both an 18 year old and an 89 year old is a hard requiement.
IMHO there is nothing wrong with having those help docs easily available so you can read at your leisure, rather than being 'forced' to wade through it each time
Perhaps we can agree to disagree that it's not a 'bug' based on the Government's general approach to how it treats its citizens and what it deems as a requirement (as compared to eg the Netherlands/Germany which is a bit more 'it's not our fault you're stupid', 'go read the docs!')
It’s important to be empathetic here to how difficult these things can be for less tech literate people.
Adding more guidance and nudges doesn’t prevent capable users from succeeding, it just annoys them. But it means the lowest common denominators have a higher chance to succeed, which is much more valuable than level of annoyance.
No, the GDS should definitely replace all services on gov.uk to be only accessible via MCP. "Claude, I've logged into PayPal via oAuth, now renew my passport" /s
