How we release software for GOV.UK

This talk will be given in English

Abstract:

GOV.UK is the new digital home of the British Government.

In the first week of GOV.UK being released, code was deployed to production 74 times. And for the last five months alone the release process for operations has gone through large changes.

In this talk I'm going to provide some background on GOV.UK and GDS, describe the different release processes we've gone through, explain how we've enabled an open and accountable release process, and detail some of the wins/pitfalls along the way.

Specifically, these include:

• How we optimised for moving fast
• How we restructured, aiming for stability of the platform; and
• How we've come to our current release process

There will, of course, be a description of our technical infrastructure and tools. However, the biggest discussion point will be how we're trying to deliver high quality public services, quickly, with the multidisciplinary teams we have.

The entire talk will be presented as a historical account of how we've changed as we've gained more people and how this has guided the way we work.

Speaker:

Kushal Pisavadia

Kushal is a Software Developer at Her Majesty's Government Digital Service, part of the UK Government, where he is helping build GOV.UK.

He is mainly interested in functional programming, browsers development, and simpler configuration management. Previously he has worked as a developer and/or systems administrator for agencies, startups and things in-between.

When not working, Kushal can be found uploading code to [GitHub][1] or climbing walls outdoors. He also helps organise the London Clojure User Group and the London Clojure Dojos.

Twitter: @KushalP

[1] https://github.com/KushalP