GOV.UK: What Open Source Has Been Waiting For?

I've been writing for what seems decades about the UK government's failure to take advantage of open source. And I've been writing for what is certainly years about its promises to do better. It finally looks as if it is finally making good on that promise. It's only one site at the moment, but it's arguably the most important one of all - currently called simply gov.uk

This is a beta, and is the first of three phases:

Public beta test of the site delivering the mainstream, citizen-facing aspects of GOV.UK.

Private beta test of a shared GOV.UK ‘corporate’ publishing platform, aimed at replacing most of the activity currently hosted on numerous departmental publishing environments.

A first draft of a GOV.UK ‘Global Experience Language’, to provide clear, consistent design, user-experience and brand clarity for those developing sites for the single GOV.UK domain. (see BBC.co.uk/gel for an example).

Even in this early stage, it's attractive and seems to work pretty well. But for the purposes of this column, what's much more interesting is what is to be found under the bonnet...