I'm slightly biased from past experience but my feeling is a lot of the critical thinking that went into gov.uk has been lost. I just can't see the original form of GDS having an cookie banner on gov.uk for example. These were the guys that rightly pointed out that there is no actual need for people to have user accounts to access most govenment services and that no one cares about what govt department they are forced to interact with and yet, I reccently had to create a DVLA account to get an updated drivers liscence (something that happens once a decade).
I just re-registered to postal vote from overseas, and the information and links were a labaryinth, often sending me in circles.
Out of exasperation – since I thought my use case didn't match what I was looking for – I clicked the big green "Start" button on the wizard and it worked swimmingly.
When re=applying for a passport in the recent past it was great too, even allowing me to upload a photo from my phone.
Perhaps they have focused on some key interactions that would typically be seen as complex.
A week later, I got a Find My notification that they had been spotted – at the same sports field. I figured what the hell, put on a podcast and drove the hour to see if I could find them. Worst case scenario, a couple of hours of driving.
Using Find My and the directional feature points you in the right direction to within feet, I found them in the tall grass.
The case had been perfectly watertight, and they'd barely lost a percent of power in a week. Remarkable really all round.