GOV.UK Performance

Design lead

Showing how government services are doing, like how much they cost to run and how many people use them.

We built GOV.UK Performance so that services could display their performance data in an open and accessible way. We believe that making stuff open makes things better.

Bringing an idea to life

I joined the project at early discovery stage, and took it through to beta with multiple services enrolled. We started from scratch - building interactive graphs, mapping needs, designing a service that would make data pleasurable to consume.

A GOV.UK Performance dashboard for the DVLA’s SORN service.
The SORN dashboard

GOV.UK dashboards

The first dashboards went live a week after GOV.UK, and displayed web analytics for various parts of GOV.UK.

A screenshot of the GOV.UK Performance dashboard from 2012
GOV.UK dashboard shortly after launch.
A screenshot of the Inside Government dashboard from 2012
Inside government dashboard.

Interactive graphics

We wanted users to be able to explore the data, so made the charts and graphics interactive. They’re built using the very flexible d3.js, with custom interactions.

The ‘traffic yesterday’ graph compared hourly visitors with the historic average.
The ‘traffic yesterday’ graph compares hourly visitors with the historic average.

Metrics that matter

Every government service gets a dashboard. A url on the internet dedicated to performance data.

The dashboards are used by many people, including government service managers and their teams, journalists, students and researchers, and members of the public.

GOV.UK Performance used during the 2015 election

The graphs are used to track key measures, such as increasing tablet and mobile usage.

How people access GOV.UK.

Or how many people are currently using a service.

Real-time visitors to a GOV.UK service.
Photo of a service dashboard being used on a smartphone.
The SORN dashboard being used on a phone.
Quarter by quarter digital take-up.