You never know what’s possible! It’s been almost 3 years since I left Government Digital Service and joined DigitalService.
I didn’t know what I would find or what I would be able to do when I decided to move to another country. I did it with a good leap of faith.
This week, 5 colleagues and I took the stage at one of our sector’s most relevant conference series. In talks, panel discussions and a podcast, we reported on what we have done and discussed what’s next.
Talking at User Needs First conference
For a good part of the week, I was in Amsterdam to attend the User Needs First Conference, organised by the Gebruiker Centraal community.
I made good use of the journey to work on our talk, which we titled ‘Protecting our practice: how to not let things get undone’.
En route and writing— And so is @karakane-kk.bsky.social from her side of Europe. Tomorrow morning, we’ll have the honour to give a talk at the #UserNeedsFirst #GovDesign conference in Amsterdam. We’ll discuss “Protecting our practice: how to not let things get undone”—cause that’s necessary.
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) April 8, 2025 at 12:06 PM
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On day 1, Kara and I had the opportunity to discuss what we need to do to ensure this vital government transformation design work continues. How we fortify our practice — to make sure our collective efforts don’t get washed away after a change of a senior leader or change of government.
We first gave a recap of what happened in the past few weeks in the US before zooming out to conclude that digital government units have been closing or scaling down since at least 2018. And that it can happen to any of us.
With plenty of examples, we walked through 6 ways to fortify our practice. These are based on Hillary Hartley’s Service Gazette article “Digital service resilience — what endures when gov innovation units close”. We’ve pulled out the things she describes as having staying power and have built on them. In addition, we have surveyed experienced colleagues from various countries who have been going through some shakeups.
- Growing and distributing talent
- Methods and practices that spread
- Shared infrastructure that’s baked into the system
- Policy is harder to erase quickly
- Cross-sector partnerships
- Cultural shifts
We recognise that not everything we mentioned is naturally what user-centred design folks do. We believe, they should, though. Because these activities are fundamental to us being able to do user-centred design work.
So we asked colleagues to consider doing some of these things:
- document work in the open
- measure the value of work
- consider scalability
- go beyond digital
- stay close
While the audience on the so-called pre-conference international day was smaller, we received substantial good feedback.
This morning, the #UserNeedsFirst #UserNeeds conference in Amsterdam kicked off! @zuydweg.nl and team have done a fantastic job creating a 3-day event full of learning, sharing and connection-building. @karakane-kk.bsky.social and I had the opportunity to give an opening talk on our challenges.
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) April 9, 2025 at 2:40 PM
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On day 2 of the conference, my colleagues Marlene and Sonja gave an overview of how they are transforming justice services together with 13 federal states and 31 courts.
Paul shared his triangle of successful form design, which he also delivered at the Form Fest last year.
Charlotte explained how we bridge silos in German government.
And my boss Stephanie took the stage to illustrate our ‘change through delivery’ approach — from service design to policy design.
Kara Kane, Morten Meyerhoff Nielsen, and I sat down for a podcast with UXRandy to reflect on international good practice.
I recorded all the talks of my colleagues. Randy is preparing the podcast as part of a series recorded at the conference. All content should be published in the coming weeks.
Letting people read stories
Just in time, our latest edition of The Service Gazette arrived in Amsterdam. Since Brexit and non-EU import rules, it’s become a hassle to print in the UK and get the newspapers delivered somewhere in Europe. It’s also getting much more pricey. That has been the case for the issue we made for the Helsinki edition, which was delivered to Finland, and now the Amsterdam edition. We must see how we go forward as we plan a German edition for the Creative Bureaucracy Festival in Berlin in June.
It’s out! 🗞️ Our latest edition of The #ServiceGazette arrived just in time for this week’s #UserNeedsFirst #GovDesign conference in Amsterdam. Almost 1,000 copies were picked up by the 700 conference attendees. It assembles 13 authors from 7 countries and 3 continents who share their views.
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) April 13, 2025 at 3:01 PM
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Attendees well received the newspaper. As various speakers contributed to it, they also referred to their texts. At the end of the conference, moderator Wouter Welling invited everyone to take some extra copies for absent colleagues and offices. From the 1,500 copies printed, we stored 500 for upcoming events in Berlin.
Taking notes, making connections
When not recording sessions of my colleagues, I had to choose from vast options of breakout sessions. The schedule was packed, and there was plenty of great content, so much so that I approached multiple people about giving their talks again on a future international call.
One of the timely talks was Morten Meyerhoff Nielsen’s. He shared some findings from his forthcoming publication on international Service Standards. I had not seen or heard of his work. He analysed the work of standard-setting colleagues from about 15 countries in the most systematic way yet. Throughout the conference, we spoke multiple times. I must follow up as his view on our current work would be highly valuable.
‘From standards to service: Designing digital government for real user needs’ —in a keynote from Morten Meyerhoff Nielsen from the UN University, making the foundational user and org case for good usability for government services at the #UserNeedsFirst #GovDesign conference
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) April 10, 2025 at 11:45 AM
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Encounters like this are what make organising and attending events like this so highly beneficial. Partially serendipitous discoveries of overlapping work are more likely in person all too often.
We received the feedback that a more regular frequency of gatherings is welcomed. People enjoyed seeing each other just half a year after coming together in Helsinki in October. We talked to various colleagues about future events of different sizes, including folks from the EU Policy Lab. They are interested in exploring an event in Brussels in spring 2026.
Navigating the uncertainty ahead
After all of our team’s contributions this week, I’m massively proud of what we have achieved at DigitalService in the past few years – despite the many cultural and structural challenges we face in the German public sector every day. We have developed products, services, processes, standards that all contribute to make the experience with the state better. We created and published plenty of evidence what is possible. As always, it’s not enough. We are not enough. Others in the room face different challenges. Their circumstances allow them to progress differently than we can. In most cases, we can do very few things about that.
Again, we are at a point where I don’t know what’s next. A new German government is forming. The recently published coalition agreement outlines a new Federal Ministry for Digital and State Reform. This is an all-new thing. We have no idea how the existence of that new ministry will impact our work.
But as always, I hope for the best and approach things with a leap of faith. Onwards!
What’s next
I am returning to work for only 2 days before going on the Easter holiday. It will mostly pick up some loose ends.
However, before the Easter break, we might still be able to open a new UX/UI design role.