The GOV.UK content platform has been built with a focus on tools over content. That is manifest in the existence of numerous small applications that provide focussed solutions to specific user needs, or offer a suite of similar but distinct solutions; alongside the 'publisher/frontend' editorial tools there are apps like 'smart answers', 'planners', and so on.
To bring that all together as a single site a single interface was required to attach consistent metadata to the pieces, connect them together as 'related items' and generally have a complete overview of all the solutions/artefacts in the system. That's this app: Panopticon.
Panopticon provides:
- an admin UI where items can be created and their metadata edited. This is authenticated in conjunction with sign-on-o-tron.
- a writeable API where applications can register the content they provide. This is authenticated using HTTP Basic.
- a read API for retrieving metadata about a given item