Compare · UK public sector · UK Public Sector GitHub Observatory

Every organisation is harvested by the same pipeline and scored on the same conventions, measured from the file tree at HEAD of its live repositories. Archived repositories are excluded from scoring, and organisations with fewer than 10 live repositories are excluded from the league table entirely — a percentage over three repositories tells you nothing.

The estate

132

organisations harvested

82 large enough to score

23,720

repositories

20.4m

commits analysed

49,105

distinct committer identities

before cross-org identity resolution

What stands out

3,239 people have committed to more than one of these organisations.

Out of 37,662 resolved identities — 8.6%. Identity is resolved on GitHub's numeric account id where the commit carries one, and on exact email match otherwise; display names are never used, because a false merge would attribute one person's work to another. This is a floor, not a count: anyone who changed both employer and GitHub account appears twice.

govuk-one-login scores highest across the board.

Mean of 67 across 8 ordinary engineering practices. These are generic measures - CI, dependency automation, a licence, tests - not GOV.UK house style, so an organisation that has never read the GOV.UK manual is still judged on its own terms.

A low CI score does not mean no CI - it means CI you cannot see.

In-repository CI ranges from 92% (TransportForLondon) to 0% (edinburghcouncil). But edinburghcouncil also carries READMEs in 100% of live repositories, licences in 27% and test directories in 0% - not the profile of an immature organisation. It builds on an internal platform rather than in GitHub, so the pipeline simply is not in these repositories. This scorecard measures visible practice, and that is a real limit on what it can conclude.

12% of all commits across the estate are automated.

Dependency bots dominate. This is the clearest sign that dependency automation has become normal across UK public-sector engineering, whatever else varies between organisations.

League table

Percentage of live repositories meeting each convention. Green at or above 75, amber at or above 40, red below.

Organisation	Live repos	CI (GitHub Actions)	Dependency automation	README	Licence	Containerised	Tests present	CODEOWNERS	PR template	Mean
govuk-one-login Other public body	156	83	74	98	76	39	22	82	62	67
uktrade Other public body	19	79	26	100	84	26	58	89	58	65
westminster-city-council Local government	13	92	46	100	100	23	46	38	62	63
ministryofjustice Central government	1,180	85	46	96	86	59	17	42	11	55
ONSdigital Central government	451	48	10	98	70	26	25	84	56	52
UKForeignOffice Central government	14	71	21	100	64	93	64	0	0	52
nhsuk Health	11	73	55	91	82	0	55	0	27	48
DEFRA Central government	1,137	68	23	97	78	67	36	8	5	48
NHSDigital Health	256	60	30	98	68	25	41	16	27	46
hmcts Central government	1,022	57	10	95	69	39	14	44	32	45
LBHackney-IT Local government	92	25	2	98	55	60	4	97	8	44
NHSLeadership Health	13	54	31	100	54	23	38	38	8	43
alphagov Central government	425	58	39	96	70	35	18	8	21	43
FoodStandardsAgency Other public body	12	50	25	100	92	42	25	8	0	43
Planning-Inspectorate Other public body	53	9	43	85	85	47	11	17	32	41
TechnologyEnhancedLearning Other public body	55	73	27	93	69	4	15	0	47	41
dvsa Other public body	161	53	3	96	77	10	47	6	33	41
HistoricEngland Other public body	22	36	5	95	73	55	45	5	9	40
department-for-transport Other public body	10	40	20	90	50	0	50	10	50	39
Health-Education-England Other public body	67	58	46	90	58	28	4	18	1	38
ukhsa-collaboration Health	130	46	9	98	65	26	28	14	18	38
cabinetoffice Central government	92	47	21	93	62	36	17	9	9	37
nhsbsa Health	126	25	16	92	88	4	45	2	20	37
gchq Other public body	57	42	12	95	82	33	12	4	7	36
MetOffice Other public body	110	42	5	95	90	5	20	10	21	36
ukaea Other public body	68	46	7	90	74	19	41	1	6	35
UKHO Other public body	89	26	15	97	83	7	16	38	1	35
hmrc Central government	1,505	0	1	99	98	5	69	0	7	35
nhsx Health	99	38	1	100	91	9	15	3	19	35
digital-land Other public body	142	50	5	94	77	23	25	0	1	34
defencedigital Other public body	44	39	23	93	59	20	14	18	9	34
The-Strategy-Unit Other public body	130	25	1	94	80	2	15	55	0	34
wmfs Other public body	117	0	0	99	91	3	76	1	1	34
communitiesuk Central government	159	42	21	88	50	23	21	4	18	33
nationalarchives Central government	326	58	21	90	48	19	23	5	2	33
DFE-Digital Central government	645	40	16	87	65	25	15	6	11	33
thepensionsregulator Other public body	21	19	5	81	95	10	29	10	14	33
Crown-Commercial-Service Other public body	168	42	27	99	38	20	25	0	1	31
govuk-paas Other public body	167	20	14	97	73	26	5	0	13	31
UKHomeOffice Central government	1,019	14	5	95	60	44	23	2	3	31
nhsbsa-data-analytics Health	38	47	0	95	68	0	26	0	8	31
companieshouse Central government	591	2	5	89	88	36	8	9	6	30
LandRegistry Central government	85	22	9	81	75	34	9	7	1	30
bank-of-england Other public body	10	10	0	100	100	0	30	0	0	30
stfc Other public body	207	32	8	91	59	12	20	7	9	30
nhsengland Health	217	17	1	94	78	2	17	2	19	29
crossgovernmentservices Other public body	49	0	0	86	53	53	35	0	4	29
bbc Public corporation	925	13	4	94	63	10	33	3	8	29
SkillsFundingAgency Other public body	396	2	0	93	86	4	2	41	0	29
essexcountycouncil Local government	19	26	0	95	58	16	11	5	16	28
mrc-ide Other public body	583	31	0	88	57	10	33	0	1	28
HDRUK Other public body	192	26	3	94	52	21	11	7	4	27
NaturalHistoryMuseum Other public body	178	23	0	91	44	20	23	0	15	27
NHS-Transformation-Unit Health	26	15	0	100	96	0	4	0	0	27
GreaterLondonAuthority Other public body	14	36	0	93	79	7	0	0	0	27
intellectual-property-office Other public body	15	0	0	100	87	27	0	0	0	27
BBCS-PHI Other public body	45	9	0	100	96	0	7	0	0	26
TransportForLondon Other public body	13	92	0	100	8	0	8	0	0	26
CDU-data-science-team Other public body	28	14	0	89	82	0	21	0	0	26
NationalCrimeAgency Police & emergency	15	7	0	100	93	7	0	0	0	26
dwp Central government	434	3	0	85	87	16	14	1	0	26
Civil-Service-Human-Resources Other public body	43	19	0	95	28	47	12	0	0	25
DFEAGILEDEVOPS Other public body	18	0	0	89	56	28	28	0	0	25
NHSE-NDRS Health	12	25	0	92	75	0	8	0	0	25
DFID Other public body	12	8	0	100	67	8	8	0	0	24
east-sussex-county-council Local government	67	0	0	100	91	0	0	0	0	24
BHFDSC Other public body	110	1	1	97	90	0	0	0	0	24
OptiMaL-PSE-Lab Other public body	34	15	0	97	59	9	9	0	0	24
NHS-digital-website Health	24	29	8	96	29	21	0	4	0	23
britishlibrary Other public body	37	11	3	97	54	0	16	0	5	23
WCSCourses Other public body	53	4	0	98	81	2	0	0	0	23
OrdnanceSurvey Other public body	127	6	0	98	53	11	8	0	2	22
warwickshire Other public body	25	0	0	92	40	0	44	0	0	22
scottishgovernment Devolved	24	0	0	83	71	4	17	0	0	22
StatisticsHealthEconomics Other public body	17	18	0	100	18	6	24	0	0	21
ukparliament Parliament	155	13	10	83	25	19	13	0	0	20
BritishMuseum Other public body	19	0	0	89	63	0	0	0	0	19
decc Other public body	36	0	0	94	25	14	14	0	0	18
jncc Other public body	59	0	2	93	15	19	7	0	0	17
biglotteryfund Other public body	15	0	0	87	33	0	13	0	0	17
edinburghcouncil Local government	11	0	0	100	27	0	0	0	0	16
NHS-ESR-IAs Health	33	0	0	6	0	0	0	0	0	1

50 organisation(s) with fewer than 10 live repositories are excluded from scoring, because a percentage over three repositories is noise: nhsuk-archive, dstl, UK-Export-Finance, govuk-forms, govuk-pay, SCC-Planning, TransportScotland, southampton, DundeeCityCouncil, MHRA, Lichfield-District-Council, UKSpaceAgency.

Read this table with one caveat.

It measures what is visible in a public repository. An organisation that runs its builds on an internal Jenkins or an enterprise platform scores zero on CI while being no less rigorous — HMRC is exactly that case, with almost no in-repo workflows but READMEs, licences and tests almost everywhere. The mean column is a summary of observable practice, not a ranking of engineering quality, and it should never be quoted as one.

Scale

Repositories per organisation

Commits per organisation

Public corporation
Central government
Parliament
Devolved
Health
Police & emergency
Local government
Other public body

Convention by convention

CI (GitHub Actions)

Dependency automation

README

Licence

Containerised

Tests present

What each organisation is written in

Share of source bytes by language, top ten organisations by size.

ministryofjustice — HTML

hmcts — Java

DEFRA — JavaScript

hmrc — Scala

alphagov — HTML

ONSdigital — HTML

UKHomeOffice — Java

bbc — C

DFE-Digital — HTML

companieshouse — HTML

Movement between organisations

Reported in aggregate only. Individuals are never named, edges below the suppression threshold are withheld, and no email address appears anywhere on this site — the public-interest case for examining how public bodies build software does not extend to publishing a career history of the people who do it.

How many organisations each person commits to

Counting resolved identities. The overwhelming majority appear in exactly one, which is what makes the minority who do not interesting.

Organisations that share engineers

Edges with fewer than 3 people in common are suppressed: at that size an edge describes individuals rather than a pattern, and this page reports aggregates only. 666 pair(s) suppressed on that basis.

Head to head

Ministry of Justice vs HM Courts & Tribunals Service

HMCTS is an executive agency of MOJ, so this is the closest thing the dataset has to a controlled comparison: same department, same policies, separate engineering organisations.

Convention	MOJ	HMCTS	Diff
CI (GitHub Actions)	85%	57%	-28
Dependency automation	46%	10%	-36
README	96%	95%	-1
Licence	86%	69%	-17
Containerised	59%	39%	-20
Tests present	17%	14%	-4
CODEOWNERS	42%	44%	+2
PR template	11%	32%	+21

272 committer identities appear in both organisations — 6% of everyone who has committed to HMCTS. MOJ carries 2,551 repositories against HMCTS's 1,867, but HMCTS has 1.5× the commit volume.