It took various attempts to run this meetup. After postponing the topic since November, we finally ran an event on ‘Checks & balances’.
The topic’s relevance has only grown as we originally planned to run it. That was before the U.S. Elections results were there.
Discussing checks and balances
Some 40 people joined us on Wednesday night.
The description they followed was this:
How do we make sure our government institutions work well? Effectively, according to public sector rules and unbiased? Specific processes and people operate as checks and balances to ensure the public can trust its public institutions and the people working for them. Some work on the inside, some on the outside – but they work towards a common goal: applying healthy scrutiny to strengthen our trust in democracy and our current form of government.
In our April meetup, we want to hear from different institutions that hold government and public sector entities accountable.”
Over the past few months, about a dozen speakers were attached to the event. But many fell through for scheduling reasons. So we were glad we could eventually run it with Ann Cathrin Riedel from NExT and Niklas Kossow from CityLAB.
Niklas committed himself at the very last minute, building on his PhD thesis that looked at corruption and digital public service provision. Ann Cathrin talked about the importance of public sector networks and communities of practice as internal checks and balances.
What a great exchange on ‘checks & balances’ last night at our #ÖffentlichesGestalten #publicSector innovation meetup! @nextnetz.bsky.social’s @anncathrin87.bsky.social & @tsbberlin.bsky.social’s Niklas Kossow answered dozens of questions after giving inputs on cross-gov collaboration & corruption.
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) April 3, 2025 at 10:58 AM
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Attendees had plenty of questions throughout the evening.
We wrapped things up with 2 more questions:
- What mechanics are we missing?
- How do we protect the checks and balances we have in place today in a politically changing world?
As always, we recorded the input talks but not the discussions.
The meetup series remains at a solid 4.8 out of 5 rating on meetup.com. Meetup #10 is scheduled for 15 March – for Global Accessibility Awarenesss Day.
Promoting and clarifying the Service Standard
On Monday morning, Robert and I travelled to Potsdam to the DigitalAgentur Brandenburg. They are the coordinating digital unit of the neighbouring state of Brandenburg. Currently, they employ about 20 people.
#ServiceStandard on tour! @digital-agentur.de invited us to a sharing breakfast session in Potsdam. Lots of people came and were eager to chat. We spent two hours discussing the updated standard and its application in various areas and answering questions. These exchanges are vital for adoption!
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) March 31, 2025 at 1:57 PM
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15 colleagues joined for a breakfast exchange for a full 2 hours. We brought a handful of slides, but we barely managed to get through them – as they instantly launched with questions, we went into a vivid exchange.
We left with a few loose ends and will need to have further conversations soon. I hope to get some DigitalAgentur Brandenburg folks involved in future peer reviews and co-write guidance, too.
On Monday afternoon, Robert and I convened with the rest of the Service Standard team at the Federal Ministry of the Interior in Charlottenburg. Together with our ministerial partners, we got together for a 2.5-hour content workshop for the updated standard. Our content designer, Linn, prepared it superbly and allowed us to move swiftly.
Structuring things ahead of us
As our teams might grow further towards the end of the year, we agreed to sort structures and rework processes where necessary.
One of the areas where this is necessary is staffing. My delivery head colleagues Clara and Christian partnered with Fabian from Strategy and Operations to draft staffing principles. The rest of us came in a little later to edit them.
- We optimize the economic perspective as far as possible.
- Staffing decisions are based on required skills, regardless of discipline.
- We consider team member compatibility during team composition.
- Rotation out of existing teams is possible.
- Rotation must not jeopardize existing projects.
- Teams for new projects are composed of a mix of existing (‘veteran’) and new DigitalService staff.
We presented these principles during our weekly staffing session on Thursday. It was mostly received with nodding. There were a few questions.
On Thursday, I joined a well-prepared workshop on ‘5 years of Digital Service’. Some weeks ago, I asked designer Bianca what she thinks we should be doing for the 5-year birthday of our organisation. It’s only in October, but I thought I would ask. She responded by putting together an interactive session following the 1-2-4-All format from Liberating Structures. Together with most communications team members, I helped create and structure possibly suitable ideas for celebrating the anniversary.
Finishing a new newspaper
After a 5-year hiatus of the English editions of The Service Gazette, we are gaining momentum again. We made an issue for the October Helsinki conference. Now, we have finished another one for the upcoming Amsterdam event.
Once again, things were a little rushed. But all the content came together nicely. We have 10 texts written by 13 contributors from 7 countries and 3 continents.
I designed the cover only late on Sunday night and finished illustrating Hillary’s exceptional cover story by Monday evening.
New Service Gazette created in ~4 weeks! We love an ambitious timeline and thankfully we have great writers and collaborators that join us in the fun sprint to our print deadline.
— Kara Kane (@karakane-kk.bsky.social) April 1, 2025 at 3:55 PM
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On Monday, Marion gave some sharp feedback on our accessibility article, refining it well. I am glad we have content in the paper again.
The paper went to Newspaper Club, our trusted printer in the UK, on Tuesday midday. The 1,500 copies we ordered should arrive in the Netherlands just in time for the conference.
What’s next
I’ll be travelling to Amsterdam on Tuesday morning. On Wednesday, the User Needs First conference starts. It comes with a packed 3-day agenda.
Kara and I will kick things off with a talk on ‘Protecting our practice’. It will be a brand-new talk that reuses barely any content from our long slog talks. Instead, we will recap the more recent developments around closed digital service units and share observations and tips on how we don’t let things get undone. We have a couple of days to finish writing the talk. I will come together just in time.
The Amsterdam event will be the biggest since the Rotterdam conference of 2019. It’s also organised by the Dutch Gebruiker Central community. They are expecting some 700 colleagues from all around the world.