| Term used | What it means |
|---|---|
| AA accessibility standards | A set of guidelines that specify how to make content accessible, primarily for people with disabilities—but also for all user agents, including highly limited devices, such as mobile phones. |
| Agile Project Management | A widely-used approach to managing IT development teams that enables them to respond to unpredictability through incremental, iterative work cadences and using feedback/testing. The team is empowered to make decisions and is focused on delivering the required product as set from user requirements. |
| Analytics | Data that is produced on how people use digital services. At its most simple this can be how many times a web page is viewed, but it can range to customer demographics and eye tracking recordings of customer interactions. A variety of tools are available to assist in building a comprehensive picture of all aspects of customers’ online activity to improve digital services. The most well-known is Google Analytics |
| Assisted digital support | Proving help for people that who need to use a digital service but don’t have the skills or access to do so on their own. This can be in the form of someone entering data on the customer’s behalf, or just assisting them while they do this themselves. Such support can also be provided by private or voluntary organisations. |
| API | Application Program Interface – also called web services – allow different technologies to talk to each other to exchange data and enable digital services to work. An API describes what functionality is available, how it must be used and what formats it will accept as input or return as output. |
| Source code repository | A file archive and web hosting facility where large amounts of source code for software, but also for web pages are kept, either publicly or privately. They are often used by open-source projects and other multi-developer projects to handle various versions of the software. |
| Digital services | A service required by a customer (such as ‘reporting a pothole’) that is delivered by the internet and is largely or entirely automated so that it requires minimal human intervention to be processed. |
| Government Digital Service (GDS) | Part of the Cabinet Office, the Service implements the digital transformation of Government services and is a centre of excellence in digital, technology and data. They are also responsible for the GOV.UK website |
| Government as a Platform | The next phase in the development of government digital services to assist in transformation through creating web services as well as web sites.These services are designed to be common ‘building blocks’ to meet all possible use cases and can be swapped in and out easily. Examples are payments, bookings, verification services, notification services and registers of common information. |
| Hackathon | A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest or codefest) is an event in which people collaborate intensively on software projects over a short period of time, usually to solve a specific problem or create new applications. |
| LocalGovDigital | A network for digital practitioners in local government which has an aim to raise standards in web provision and the use of digital by councils across the country. |
| Local Government Digital Service Standard | A common approach for local authorities to deliver good quality, user centered, value for money digital services, developed by LocaGovDigital. It is based on the Digital Service Standard used by GDS but tailored to better meet the needs of local government. |
| Open Data | Open data is data that anyone can access, use or share. It should be linked, so that it can easily be shared; be available in a standard, structured format; have a guaranteed availability and consistency so it can be relied upon, and have a licence depicting how it can be used. |
| Open Standards | In digital terms, open standards mean that software is written in a way that can be implemented by a diverse range of suppliers, removing barriers to competition. |
| Responsive design | An approach to web page creation that detect the visitor's screen size and orientation and change the layout accordingly. This enables web pages to be seen on any device (desktop PC, tablet or mobile phone) |
| Secure protocols | Added security used to ensures secure delivery of data between two parties. This is particularly important for services that involve the submission of personal information by online forms. Secure website addresses begin with https:// rather than http:// |
| Service Patterns | Agreed, authoritative designs for how online services should look and act. This can include obtaining a customer’s date of birth, or having them register an account. They have been thoroughly tested on customers to ensure the optimum response. |
| Smart Oxford | The Smart Oxford initiative is overseen by the Oxford Strategic Partnership (OSP), a set of collaborating organisations from across the public sector (for example, the City & County Councils, NHS, & Police), academia (e.g. University of Oxford & Oxford Brookes University), business (e.g. Unipart) and voluntary and community organisations (e.g. Oxfordshire Community and Voluntary Action). |