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.

As the Service Standard regulation came into effect this week, Martin co-led a workshop at the Smart Country Convention to introduce more people to it and understand their potential challenges with it. Martin also welcomed a team member.

After waiting for months, Martin was delighted to learn that the minister had signed the Service Standard-related regulation. Within the coming days, it would come into partial effect, giving the ongoing communication and support efforts a vital impetus. Martin participated in a company offsite and co-hosted a workshop there. He also talked to French counterparts during the week.

Travelling to Edinburgh, Martin attended the annual ‘Service Design in Government’ conference. There, he co-ran a workshop on the barriers to end-to-end service design. He also did an interview with a UN think tank and an Irish design podcaster during the week.

For 2 days, Martin supported service design training in his week 176 at Digital Service. That came with a little epiphany on how to evolve and bundle the training with other activities. He was also preparing for a visit from a senior official and a conference workshop.

In week 175 at Digital Service, Martin facilitated a service pattern collection exercise among the design team to steer some vital alignment work for the justice service platform and beyond. Among other things, he also designed a little poster for an upcoming guest talk.

Martin went to record another podcast on the Service Standard in his week 174 at Digital Service. He also wrote a talk on rapid prototyping and participated in kick-off workshops for new work.

In week 173, Martin returned to the ministry for digital for a workshop and became a house tour guide. He also interviewed service designers, planned workshops, talks and a meetup.