Application: whitehall

Publishes government content on GOV.UK

• GitHub: whitehall
• Ownership: #govuk-whitehall-experience-tech
• Category: Publishing apps
• Links:
  • whitehall-admin.publishing.service.gov.uk
  • Sentry (error tracking)
  • App dashboard: request rates, errors, durations
  • Kibana App Logs (Production, last 3 hours)
  • Kibana Worker Logs (Production, last 3 hours)
  • Argo CD (whitehall-admin)

Relevant manual pages

• Add an organisation’s brand colour or logo
• Rename a country

Example pages published by whitehall

• Companies House
• Verify your identity for Companies House
• HM Revenue & Customs
• Cases of invasive meningococcal disease notified in Kent
• Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency
• About our services
• Proving your identity with the GOV.UK One Login app
• The Renters’ Rights Act Information Sheet 2026
• Download the HMRC app
• Verifying your identity for Companies House

README

Whitehall (also known as ‘Whitehall Admin’ or ‘Whitehall Publisher’) is used by publishers to create and manage content (e.g. http://whitehall-admin.dev.gov.uk/government/admin/news/new).

Running the Application

Use GOV.UK Docker to run any commands that follow.

Technical documentation

This is a Ruby on Rails app, and should follow our Rails app conventions.

You can use the GOV.UK Docker environment to run the application and its tests with all the necessary dependencies. Follow the usage instructions to get started.

Running the test suite

These commands assume you have the GOV.UK Docker environment running and its binaries in your PATH.

# run all the test suites
govuk-docker-run bundle exec rake

Javascript unit tests can also be run separately:

# run all the JavaScript tests
govuk-docker-run bundle exec rake jasmine

Further documentation

See the docs/ directory.

• Content Audit Trail
• CSS
• Edition model
• Edition workflow
• Internationalisation
• JavaScript
• Timestamps
• Troubleshooting
• Adding a data migration

Licence

MIT License