Week #136 at the Digital Service: Notes for 2–6 December 2024

In week 136, Martin participated in another co-writing session for a standardisation specification linked to the updated Service Standard. He witnessed the German government’s new umbrella brand launch and talked to UK colleagues from FCDO and CDDO about better policy design.

Week #135 at the Digital Service: Notes for 25–29 November 2024

In week 135, Martin saw some end-to-end testing for civil court claims taking place. He invited other public sector colleagues working on common service components to join as observers. Martin got a blog post about the Service Standard peer reviews out and published a related how-to facilitation guide. He also ran a cross-government community gathering on holistic service design and reviewed the standardisation document linked to the updated Service Standard.

Week #134 at the Digital Service: Notes for 18–22 November 2024

Community was key in Martin’s week 134 at Digital Service. He attended the NExT network’s annual conference to exchange with other community leads. He also joined cross-government accessibility specialists and gave a talk about his ongoing efforts to make services accessible for all.

Week #133 at the Digital Service: Notes for 11–15 November 2024

In his week 133 at Digital Service, Martin co-ran a workshop on the updated Service Design that is in the works. He participated in a review session of the final report on the learning clusters of digital strategy’s lighthouse project. He also looked at how many people in the design and user research discipline work part-time.

Week #132 at the Digital Service: Notes for 4–8 November 2024 

Photograph: City of Leipzig

Week 132 was an odd one for Martin. While German governemt fell apart, he watched the first Service Standard peer review of an external service offering. He co-hosted a meetup with civic tech projects presenting, and he co-ran his annual Public Service Lab conference.

Talk: The power of community

Opening the Helsinki Conference 2024 of the International Design in Government community, Kara Kane and Martin Jordan talked about the power of community and how communities help deal with the long slog of government transformation.