Category: English

In his week 190 at Digital Service, Martin wrapped up work for 2025. He got a blog post on service thinking and service design work out and puts these activities in the context of the modernisation agenda of the Federal government.

In week 189, Martin saw a pending blog post on his international community work published, and he progressed another on service design in German government. He was in a kick-off workshop for new work adjacent to the Service Standard.

Martin went to Paris in week #188 to join a life events workshop at the OECD. He also ran an afternoon session on his discipline on AI.

After supporting the cross-government identity and design system since April, Martin co-hosted a 2-hour interactive session with public servants from all over Germany. Martin also co-hosted an international call on service patterns and a cross-government user research gathering. He also visited the policy team responsible for digital identity common components to discuss the binding Service Standard.

Introducing the Service Standard to service owners and designers in the city-state of Hamburg in more detail, Martin travelled there on Tuesday. He also opened service design roles and had conversations with colleagues at the European Commission and the OECD.

In week 185, Martin went to the city of Wiesbaden, the state capital of Hesse, to co-run the annual Public Service Lab Day. He gave a talk about the Service Standard to local and state government colleagues. Additionally, he conducted 2 workshops on the cross-government identity and design system.

Recovering from the annual round of COVID, Martin saw 2 blog posts getting ready for publication. He took a moment to reflect on the state of blogging and how to address some issues. Martin also looked at formalising internal accessibility procedures and staffing new projects.

While in Paris, Martin took the opportunity to exchange ideas on assessing service quality and measuring user experience at the OECD headquarters. Earlier in the week, Martin co-ran a local meetup on ‘visualising data’ and participated in an accessibility bug-busting session.

Rushing down to the Bauhaus City of Dessau, Martin joined the 12th meeting of the Digital Council of his home state. Digital Service also celebrated its 5th birthday on the same day with a smallish gathering and speeches.

With the ministry’s modernisation agenda in place, Martin unpicked it to understand how it overlaps with his teams’ current work and where synergies can and should be found.