This week had a different kind of intensity.
Co-writing a standardisation specification
The consortium for writing DIN SPEC 66336 ‘Quality requirements for online services and portals in public administration’ got together for the third time.
For an afternoon and a morning, some 40 people from all levels of government, IT suppliers, and other bodies debated ideas, phrases and interpretations.
Progressing a ‘national mini-ISO standard’, the output will be linked to a statutory instrument referenced in law. That is why every word has significant weight and might be tested by people trying to escape a mandated standard. Hence, a thorough consideration is needed.
Week’s biggest achievement: Getting to a 98% version of a new German industry DIN standard on ‘Quality requirements for online services & portals in public administration’—the foundation of #ServiceStandard version 2—in a 53-people working group. Done after lively debates about ideas and wording.
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) December 6, 2024 at 8:55 PM
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With the German standardisation body declaring it a 98% version of the specification, people were relieved after the 2-day sprint. I proposed alternative wording for a section heading on user research and discovery. Eventually, I did not get the votes for the change suggested, recording a 12 to 8 majority. Smaller iteration rounds still follow until the end of January.
With the prospect of turning the Service Standard into a statutory instrument, it’s approaching an impetus and mandate it never had before in Germany.
It’s a fascinating process to participate in, giving one an idea of how multinational agreements are made. Preparing background conversations is of the essence here to explain and convince a majority of consortium members why a thing is worth doing and necessary to name.
I am curious how things unfold in the coming weeks and how the final version will be received. It is supposed to be published with an open-source licence.
Witnessing the umbrella brand launch
Can you trust a government website? When there are over 10,000 different domains, how do you know a thing is the real deal?
On Thursday, German government started its most serious effort to build trust with citizens in the digital space and address phishing.
Proudly, we at Digital Service have embraced the new umbrella brand in the first few services we are developing on the launch date. The umbrella band comes with 4 distinct components or building blocks that service teams can implement individually. You can find the first one, a slim banner, atop the justice services and platform we are creating.
It’s been quite a journey until here. Over 2.5 years ago, Federal Press Office colleagues approached me (see weeknote #3) to share their first ideas of a new strong brand to signify digital public services – no matter which level of government is communicating. That is a radical approach. Often, there is little unity between the federal, state and local government levels. With a lot of devolved power, public officials have had little interest and incentive in bringing things together across levels.
In the late 1990s, the German federal government took a groundbreaking approach by creating a robust, unifying brand system for its ministries and federal agencies. The Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom and various other countries copied that approach. But in the past decade, Germany started to fall behind. It lacks consistency when citizens interact with different institutions digitally and online. In their online journeys, citizens engage with a colourful circus of government brands across domains—offering attack vectors for malicious actors.
The digital umbrella brand wants to address that with 4 components:
- A slim banner with the German flag—following the approach followed by US government institutions and the EU
- A new domain for government services to run on: gov.de
- A visual mark with a 3-coloured eagle naming all 3 levels of government
- A design system that’s developed in the open
While I did not have the chance to be part of the working group, I joined various workshops over the past 1.5 years to offer feedback. Things are consciously beta. There will be much to adjust and improve in the coming months. Yet, this is the most promising approach to unifying digital services—with a long road ahead.
Behind the scenes, there have been vivid debates about the need for consistent branding. In a vote earlier this year, only 13 of the 16 federal states agreed to implement it. Unfortunately, the reluctant ones represent 45% of the population. Now, some services take the first step in making visual adjustments. To meet citizens’ expectations, genuine service quality assurance via the Service Standard must come next. Otherwise, this remains a lipstick exercise.
Kudos to my colleagues across various parts of government—for their vision, leadership, persistence and determination to get this out of the door before the end of this parliamentary cycle. I hope we can implement further brand elements soon.
Discussing better policy design
Without intending, we discussed flaws in contemporary policy design quite intensively on Thursday and Friday.
On Thursday afternoon, Anna Whicher and Piotr Swiatek from PDR visited our office. With them were Felix Kosok and about a dozen master students in graphic and product design from the German University in Cairo. Both the PDR colleagues and we shared what we are doing. I was joined by my colleague Bene presented his teams’ work on digital-ready policy checks. It included examples of their consulting task force operating very upstream close to the genesis of a new law. I spoke more broadly about the organisation, its setup and its capabilities.
Great exchange on #policyDesign practices and using user-centred design in lawmaking and policy-making. Prof Anna Whicher and Piotr Swiatek from PDR/FCDO and Prof Dr Felix Kosok visiting us at @digitalservice.bund.de with international master students from Egypt.
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) December 5, 2024 at 4:20 PM
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Anna, also looking after the policy design team at the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, shared some known and new facts.
There are 10 government labs in the UK now. Only 3% of designers are in the policy profession, while 80% work in digital and data. And there might be around 31,000 designers in the UK public sector.
Some tips she shared for creating and running policy labs were:
- Develop a vision – now, next and later
- Determine the governance model
- Develop a clear offer
- Build capacity beyond the lab
- Integrate design into skills frameworks
- Build expertise in 2–4 methods
- Map the user journey with the lab
- Build a bank of evidence and examples
Various of these tips also apply to running a government unit like Digital Service.
Great slide on “Why design for policy?” by PDR’s Anna Whicher. #PolicyDesign #Design #Policy
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) December 5, 2024 at 4:31 PM
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On Friday, my colleague Anna and I had another catch-up with UK colleagues from the Central Digital & Data Office. It’s been some months since we last talked. There has been more interest in their digital-ready check. But, as I had to highlight, there has been too little information about it out there. Hence, the awareness has been low, even among interested policy design folks.
I was a little puzzled by how different UK policy people seem unaware of their overlapping good pieces of work.
People don’t know about good foundations for excellent work to happen. 😿 I keep interacting with UK #PolicyDesign folks. There are at least 3 separate strands of work around standards for effective, user-centred #policy making. How can we get better at this? So, people know what’s happening.
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) December 6, 2024 at 12:30 PM
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Enjoying the policy presentations, I missed some other rather good content from my team this week.
Having my team present locally and internationally
Charlotte and Marlene both took the state at the local Service Design Drinks Berlin at CityLAB Berlin’s office. It was the end-of-year event, and it even featured a DJ. I missed it as I had cultural obligations.
Charlotte spoke about ‘Transforming government with co-design’ and offered 5 ingredients for successful co-design setups, where power is indeed shifted towards the users:
- Assess maturity
- Manage time and expectation
- Find suitable formats
- Expect conflicts
- Attitude is key
Marlene asked if the justice application office could become user-centred – immediately answering ‘Yes!’. She shared how effective collaboration across hierarchical levels is possible and what it looks like, highlighting that it takes plenty of time, trust, and dedication. Furthermore, she highlighted how the close collaboration with pilot courts enables inclusive service development that meets both legal and user needs.
Apparently, the questions after the talks just kept coming and had to be cut short after a while. It seems there was great interest in the work we do.
The same evening, my colleagues Julian and Paul presented virtually at Code for America’s Form Fest 2024. Reflecting from a design and engineering perspective, they presented their triangle of success: involving policy, operations and users in the form design process right from the start.
I listened to the rehearsal last week, and it has only improved since then. Afterwards, I was delighted to read Caroline’s post praising their talk publicly.
Another great #FormFest presentation Paul Pistorius and Julian Rösner, @martinjordan.com's colleagues at the German Digital Service Notable quotes: "Asking unnecessary questions in a usable way is still asking unnecessary questions" "The form is longer but easier to use" #FormDesign #GovDesign
— Caroline Jarrett (@cjforms.bsky.social) December 4, 2024 at 7:56 PM
All 3 talks were recorded. I am looking forward to seeing and sharing them shortly.
What’s next
There are 2 weeks to go until the end of the year. I don’t see me; I see us slowing down just yet.
Next week, we’ll have a leadership offsite. I will try to do some blogging, and we’ll have a Service Standard retrospective with our ministerial partners.
As the work week came to a close and another colleague is going to be on parental leave very soon, I quickly sketched some baby onesie designs on Saturday morning. Posting them and asking for further ideas resulted in various excellent submissions from gov design folks abroad.
Enough babies in the team – or in the making … I can no longer justify procrastinating on designing custom baby onesies. So here are some quickly sketched options. Who has some better puns to offer for the collection?
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) December 7, 2024 at 9:54 AM
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In the coming days, I will investigate how we could sustainably produce some of the designs in small quantities.