It’s been 4 months since we ran our last public-facing meetup. Much has happened in the world since then. Back in early November, the US elections had not concluded, and most Germans still thought they had plenty of time until the elections.
Responding to our times, we are preparing next week’s meetup, ‘Better voting, better democracy’.
Discussing urgent topics openly
Initially, we wanted to run it before the snap election. As potential speakers were too busy, we moved it by a couple of weeks.
Secretly, I still consider myself the primary audience for the meetup, and I continue to be grateful other people are interested in the same topics. We have 2 speakers confirmed. Once again, one works for a government organisation, while the other works for an NGO.
While we continue to aim for 3 speakers, most of the time, we end up confirming 2, which is perfectly fine, and we still get a broad enough and more profound viewpoint on the topic as there is more time for both.
I finished the poster design over the weekend. I tried 2 other routes before and ended up with a lighthearted take on the ubiquitous crossed circle on the ballet. An image we have seen so much in den election run up and afterwards. Given the title ‘Better voting’, better democracy’, I drew an incomplete ‘tic tac toe’ game in an attempt to illustrate some of the shifts in the political landscape.
A poster design on the same topic 4 months earlier would likely have looked quite differently. Our realities have moved quite a bit since then.
Seeing good work disappearing
More and more, I – we collectively – realise: The things we do are much more fragile than we think. The sudden erasure of US government unit 18F over the weekend proved that again. How we retain our work is a question that has been heavy on my mind for a while.
Guides, blog posts, tools – records of a decade’s work – are gone. It’s not the first time we have seen this, albeit not in this forcefulness. In an instant, 18F’s widely referenced and linked material became inaccessible.
I continue to be so, so, so grateful for all of my int’l #GovDesign colleagues working in the open. I am delighted to have just read an 18F blog post about a task we will have in the next few weeks and months. #WorkingInTheOpen means people saving time, avoiding mistakes, and leapfrogging a bit.
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) February 26, 2025 at 5:01 PM
Just earlier this week, I happily read and shared an 18F blog post describing almost exactly the work a team at DigitalService is doing right now. Now, no browser could find their server. My US colleagues are shocked, angry and still puzzled about a unit being gone. I deeply feel with them.
What an utter waste of taxpayers’ money deleting such valuable public sector transformation resources from the internet 🤬
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) March 2, 2025 at 12:44 AM
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A fear of fragility is one of the reasons I run meetups. It’s why I set up and ran blogs in UK government, started publishing a newspaper a decade ago, and have ensured over 100 case studies are up on YouTube. To capture the good work of great people.
I had my reckoning moment in 2018 when MindLab, Denmark’s groundbreaking cross-gov innovation unit, was suddenly shut down. A signature from a new senior official can change your reality overnight. It left a little scar on me.
A “duty to document”, Nicolas Bouliane called it when speaking at our most recent ‘Öffentliches Gestalten’ meetup. That phrase distils it for me.
Working in the open means people saving time, avoiding mistakes, and leapfrogging a bit while standing on the shoulders of others. That’s why I am immensely grateful for all my int’l #GovDesign colleagues working in such a way.
So, for User Needs First conference in Amsterdam, Kara, Katrin and I are putting the next The Service Gazette together. It will explicitly discuss the fragility of our work and again document a substantial bit of it through stories from public sector contributors from around the world. There is so little we can do. But documenting good work is something we can and will.
Running more advanced value calculations
Following a summer lunch and learn on measuring the value of service transformation, see notes from week 113, we picked it up this week.
Currently, 3 groups of folks in the organisation have been looking into value measurements: justice service, family benefit services, strategy and operations. All have worked on their metrics from a different angle, with Joshua and Jo co-creating the most advanced calculations to measure the costs and potential benefits of digitally transforming the legal aid service.
We got together in a small session to compare notes, see where everyone currently is and how we can advance our overall approach to models.
One reason we need this is to address some critical arguments brought up against the service standard. A few critics emphasise the costs but don’t mention the benefits. This is where we can help with our calculations. I want to see these things progress in the coming 4 weeks, accumulating things in a blog post or media publication.
What’s next
We will run our meetup on Thursday.
Torsten and I have not yet completed the skill matrix for content design, but we need to.
The new project mentioned last week is also gaining some momentum after working on it for almost 2 full days this week.