Decision records

No cookies on gov.uk/alerts - 3/3/2021

We have decided we will not have cookies on gov.uk/alerts for the following reasons

• We don't have a need for Google analytics. We think we can get per second requests and break down by URL stats through Fastly which will be sufficient
• We don't have any other use cases for why we need to have any other cookies
• We don't want to damage users trust in the emergency alerts and whether we are tracking them etc
• we don't want users to see a big cookie banner first rather than the important content telling them what to do to potentially save their life

This decision could be reversed if we discover new needs for cookies and feel their benefits outweigh the downsides of having them

Host gov.uk/alerts as a S3 static site - 3/3/2021

We have decided for the interim to host gov.uk/alerts as a static website in S3 for the following reasons

• We think this is one of the quickest ways to get a website created
• We think it will be relatively easy to build and run
• We think S3 will offer us the ability to handle high load (although Fastly will protect us from most of it)
• We think it will be more reliable than GOV.UK PaaS
• We get easy built in security permissions and access logging in AWS that match the rest of our broadcast infrastructure for free, without needing to replicate them in a different environment like the PaaS

This decision is likely one to last a few months, until we find that we outgrow this solution. When we do more exploration into publishing alerts in real time, our infrastructure needs will become more complex and we should be open to completely changing this decision if we see fit. The team has already discussed some of the many alternatives we may have at that point.