Half of my work week was spent at the annual congress of the IT Planning Council in Hanover.
Quite a few of us came together, using it to talk about our work, meet new people, and understand the most important topics for senior government leaders.
Arrived for #ITPLR Fachkongress—1 of the few German public sector events by public servants for public servants, without commercial intermediaries. Quirky thing: Some 1/2 of the attendees queued with printed paper tickets 🎟️ to get their QR codes scanned—while the topic is “digitalisation: just do”
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) March 26, 2025 at 1:16 PM
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Talking Service Standard and cheerleading colleagues
Together with Digital Service colleagues, I attended various sessions, did some note-taking and cheerleading and supported our slots as a photographer and live-poster.
I enjoyed not having a speaking slot and related responsibilities.
A thing that keeps coming up is senior leaders comparing the desired experience that citizens should have with government services with Amazon. They will not get sick of it. And neither do they seem to realise that buying an air fryer is different from renewing your visa. Most often, the stakes are much higher.
It only took 9 minutes into #FITKO’s #ITPLR Congress for a state secretary to reference shopping experiences with Amazon as the benchmark for interacting with public services. 🤦🏻♂️
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) March 26, 2025 at 1:17 PM
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The probably most surprising work was presented by civil servants from the City of Hamm. They shared how they are taking smaller and bigger steps towards making their municipal services more proactive.
They presented a lightweight framework for describing degrees of proactivity. They talked about barriers and challenges linked to the capability of their vendors and IT suppliers. And they also shared a few tangible examples I had not heard of from any place in Germany – even though they are wonderfully straightforward: proactively reminding people that their passports and ID cards are about to expire in a few weeks so that they don’t ruin their holidays, for example.
Barriers to more proactive services are related to legal issues or data-sharing, the digital team of the city of Hamm reports. It’s easier for social services where eligibility is clear, and no further income data is needed.
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) March 26, 2025 at 4:45 PM
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I approached one of the speakers as I like to hear more about their work – and I believe others should also hear more.
Later that day, Thilak, formerly the German government’s Head of Open Data, now at the think tank Agora Digitale Transformation, gave a superb summary of platform approaches. He carved out where Germany is today and what it should consider reusing from other countries.
4 hours and 30 minutes into #ITPLR congress, the updated #ServiceStandard gets the first mention by @thilak.de — with the suggestion to include the umbrella brand and the KERN #DesignSystem in #GaaP considerations.
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) March 26, 2025 at 5:38 PM
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Thilak also gave a proper shoutout to GOV.UK work, including the GOV.UK Prototype Kit and GOV.UK Forms.
Shoutout to GDS’s platform components, specifically GOV.UK Forms and the GOV.UK Prototype Kit by @thilak.de at #ITPLR congress.
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) March 26, 2025 at 5:27 PM
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In the last breakout session of the day 1, our ministerial partners Luise and Ralf and DIN Institute’s coordinator Amelie shared our collective work on bringing 41 organisations together to co-produce a definitive specification for service quality criteria. Nearly all seats were occupied. I chipped in at the end of the session for answering questions and providing examples of content transformation work.
Now, pretty much full house for an input on how we updated Germany’s #ServiceStandard — led by @bmi.bund.de’s Ralf Käck and Luise Kranich and the DIN‘s Amelie Busse — on how #DINspec66336 was co-developed by 41 orgs. #ITPLR
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) March 26, 2025 at 6:16 PM
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In the meantime, our justice teams launched a new justice service. Some months after the eligibility checker went live, the full court claims submission service followed suit on Wednesday afternoon.
Launched a new justice service! 🚀 The 🇩🇪 Federal Ministry of Justice and @digitalservice.bund.de launched the ‘Claim money for flight problems’ service on service.justiz.de. In August, the team already launched an eligibility checker. Now, the full court claim follows. Huge claps 👏🏻 for the team!
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) March 27, 2025 at 12:08 PM
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Making the next Service Gazette
On Friday, I took my last remaining 2024 vacation day. I made good progress with the new Service Gazette edition.
As we follow a deadline-driving delivery approach, this is once again an in-time production. Hillary Hartley, the author of our cover story, only discovered in her spam folder on Thursday – and a few weeks delayed – that I had given her instructions, questions and an earlier deadline for her text. She had not seen any of it and had not written a single word. Then, she turned things around in a matter of hours. Hillary delivered precisely the piece I hoped she would write.
So Kara, Katrin and I had a vivid stream of messages throughout Friday and Sunday to make all edits, assemble pages and make things work as a whole.
By Sunday evening, the issue is almost complete – just missing some final tweaks and the cover story’s illustrations. That is sometimes the hardest and then needs to be finished in the shortest time.
What’s next
Next week, we’ll run our 9th meetup. It’s been in the making for too long. The topic is ‘Checks and balances’. We have been trying to make it happen since November.
Now, the topic is even more relevant than back then.
How do we make sure our government institutions work well? Effectively, according to its own rules and unbiased? We will be discussing #Checks&Balances at our next public sector innovation meetup in #Berlin next Wednesday. Join us there — at @tsbberlin.bsky.social’s CityLAB on 2 April from 6 pm!
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) March 28, 2025 at 11:29 AM
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It’s another rather late-announced event. We have seen that others can attract more people currently than we have been able to. It’s a little unclear how we bring more people to our format.
We have some less abstract and more tangible topics for spring and autumn up our sleeves. They might draw a different crowd again.