DigitalService opened its doors again in Martin’s week 72 there. He helped organise and run a public-facing meetup on ‘designing a more digital Berlin’. He also worked more closely with some teams, prepared performance reviews and saw the first peer-review report against the Service Standard getting published.
Week #71 at the Digital Service: Notes for 4–8 September 2023
In week 71 at Digital Service, Martin welcomed 20 new Work4Germany fellows with a talk about enabling factors for public sector transformation. He also prepared the next Service Standard report for publication and announced local events for autumn.
Week #70 at the Digital Service: Notes for 28 August–1 September 2023
Colleagues from the Federal Ministry of Justice joined for a 3-hour workshop around applying the Service Standard to new justice services and what that means in practice. Martin also participated in several workshops throughout his week 70 at Digital Service – discussing matrix org structures, cross-discipline objectives and improved ways of working together.
Week #68 at the Digital Service: Notes for 14–18 August 2023
Martin got a blog post on community work published, opened the second user research role and prepared various autumn activities. He also visited colleagues at the government’s open house weekend in week 68 at Digital Service.
Week #67 at the Digital Service: Notes for 7–11 August 2023
During his week 67 at Digital Service, Martin was glad to see the 3rd Service Standard report published – documenting the team’s work on the digital identity service component ‘BundesIdent’. Throughout the week, he made progress with preparing articles, talks, and events for the coming weeks and months.
Week #66 at the Digital Service: Notes for 31 July–4 August 2023
Martin’s week 66 at DigitalService offered some challenges. He reflects on why some are similar to previous work contexts, and others are specific to Germany. He also made progress with some international and public speaking work.
Week #65 at the Digital Service: Notes for 24–28 July 2023
In only 3 working days in week 65 at Digital Service, Martin got a few things done. He continued talking about the Service Standard inside and outside of the organisation, covering improvements, related training, reviews and reporting.
Week #64 at the Digital Service: Notes for 17–21 July 2023
The values of the Digital Service are now manifested in handy stickers – available on vinyl, slides, Slack and Miro. Martin put them to good use in his week 64 at Digital Service while working on Service Standard reporting.
Discussion: The long slog of public service transformation
At the Creative Bureaucracy Festival in June, Kara Kane from the UK Government Digital Service moderated an open panel discussion on the long slog of public service transformation. Together with members of the International Design in Government community and participants, she discussed how to keep creatives motivated in public service roles, help build resilience for change, and recruit and retain talent for this type of work.
Week #63 at the Digital Service: Notes for 10–14 July 2023
In week 63 at Digital Service, Martin participated in an internal accessibility check. He spent 1.5 days in various workshops and joined a lunch conversation on resilience.