Yep, that's what they do. They do a good thing, and they do it well. I know a number of people in and around GDS, it's really, really, strange for me to see their name in that list.

Throwing in lots of three letter acronyms will typically scare people by implying that there's something sinister going on.

Just wait till you learn of the French VDM...

> Just wait till you learn of the French VDM...

The doctor gave me a cream for it... cleared up nicely.

It's not that strange. Many people do not consider improving the efficiency with which the state can oppress its citizenry a good thing.

And to many libertarians, something as seemingly innocuous as tax collection or child protective services are oppressive.

Hence the hate.

So, you'd rather pay an inefficient government more taxes to oppress you inefficiently.

I look forward to hearing more of these libertarian ideas.

Google Analytics may be modern but that doesn't make it good (or legal) to install on government websites.

To be fair, they are actually very transparent about their use of Google Analytics [1][2], and anonymise some of the data [3]. That is not too bad keeping in mind they share a huge chunk of that data with the public [4][5].

[1] https://www.blog.gov.uk/cookies/#googleanalytics [2] https://insidegovuk.blog.gov.uk/2015/05/22/upgrading-to-univ... [3] https://assets.digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk/spotlight/javas... [4] https://www.gov.uk/performance/web-traffic [5] https://www.gov.uk/performance/about

Being transparent doesn't make it right. It (and the fact they use and advocate the use of Gmail in government) worries me. They're the people's government and that implies they're there on behalf of the people, to serve the people. That sentiment doesn't exist at GDS. They believe they're right about everything they do, are recalcitrant and take criticism very badly.

They are good at web pages though.

why? not all sites need the full adbobe / ensigten tools set and its costs.

For a lot of sites GTM and GA is quiet good enough