It’s not the progress we were meant to make. It’s not even the right direction in some parts. We were meant to have user-centred end-to-end services by now. All the strategies, party manifestos, and coalition agreements over the past decade made that crystal clear. In Germany, the UK and elsewhere.
And yet, it’s not where we are. “The average UK adult citizen spends a week and a half dealing with government bureaucracy every single year”, the State of Government review found earlier this year. To move a home in the UK, you must interact with 10 different organisations. Starting a business in Germany takes 4 weeks, and you must provide the same information to every organisation again. Public servants shrug or smirk when you mention “once-only” a decade after the notion emerged.
Some things have worked, many others haven’t. There are more user-centred design specialists in governments worldwide than ever before. There are many services available online now. State secretaries now routinely discuss the “user experience“ and “design”. These are first steps, but we are far from the ambitious goals politicians have as much as we do.
Running a workshop on our service design Groundhog Day experience
On Friday afternoon, Kara and I ran a workshop on “Making end-to-end services finally happen” at the ‘Service Design in Government conference’ in Edinburgh. The delta between hopes and expectations and reality is what we discussed. We were worried the last workshop slot on the afternoon of conference day 3 would be undesirable position. Luckily, we were wrong.
We planned the workshop for 50 people. Over 70 came. The room was so packed that some people were turned away.
We recapped things past. We asked people about the barriers they see in their work. And we gave the participants space to collect ideas and examples to work towards end-to-end services and overcome those barriers. The dedication of public servants in the room was palpable. People from various nations came together to share their successes and failures. And came up with new moves, tactics, and strategies.
We have live survey data from the workshop and have carried out a large number of filled-in idea sheets. We will review these and determine if we have sufficient material for a blog post. I think so. The services.blog.gov.uk deserves a bit more content.
An hour of workshop time was not enough. We need silo-bursting cross-government exchanges more than ever. The session demonstrated how the existing community is willing to discuss the barriers they face and wants to address our growing political, social, and ecological challenges. We collected valuable thoughts. Now, we need to test new ideas quickly. Past years’ emergencies and crises have distracted us from making government policies and services work better for everyone. More distractions are on the way. However, end-to-end services that serve citizens and residents well are a target still worth pursuing.
Catching up on all things public service design
Although I was there all 3 days, I did not see even half of the conference. That is at least how it felt.
The main strands and topics for me were:
- dealing with the chaos in the world that affects our public sector design work
- capturing evidence of our work and framing it for senior stakeholders
- working collaboratively on service patterns
These strands are highly subjective, yet things were woven into the opening keynotes of each day.
I was delighted to see Rachel Dietkus, a social worker-designer, who previously worked at the United States Digital Service. She discussed care as infrastructure. “Care is not a sentiment; it’s an operating system that belongs at the centre”, she argued. She reminded us that the things we are experiencing aren’t normal.
We learnt more about the public design work streams across departments and academia. In a panel discussion, we heard definitions, a bit more on public design evidence reviews, and plans for creating more training programs.
Any evidence collection on the impact of design with solid before-and-after measurement is good. I am happy about. I still need to spend more time with the published reports.
It was also fair to hear critical voices like Tory Dunn’s, who asked why we need new terms.
In several sessions, including workshops and talks, service patterns were at the centre. Nikola Goger launched the GOV Reuse Library that lets you find and reuse digital service elements.
I attended the Ministry of Justice’s three-speaker talk, but I missed a workshop led by the former Head of Service Design at the Department of Education. It was fully booked and I was not let in anymore.
We’ll need to get everyone on an international call. It’s a theme that has been overdue for more than 1 year.
Overall, it was a trip well worth the journey. I had time for valuable exchanges on the side. One problem: The event remains 95% UK-focussed. That is why our international activities are very much needed.
Thinking, sketching, writing while travelling
In between trains, lounges, and hotel rooms, I worked on and participated in a few things during the week. I wrote 600 words of a blog post that provides an overview of our design system and component library work over the past 4 years. It’s not finished, but it’s a good start. It’s one of those posts we should have penned a while ago. But the thoughts weren’t ripe yet. However, now we have so much to tell that it will likely turn into a lengthy piece.
I also did some investigative and conceptual work for a potential project with a ministry. It was pretty fast-paced and got us engaged. I am curious to see whether this could be a fruitful investment.
Doing interviews, answering questions
On Wednesday and Thursday, I participated in interviews, but quite different ones.
Morten Meyerhoff Nielsen from the UN University, which, despite its name, is a think tank, wanted to learn about our Service Standard work in Germany. Together with a colleague, he interviewed my colleague Stefan and me. We ran over time, spending 90 minutes providing an overview of the past 9 years, including the scope and governance, and discussing the obstacles we face. I first learned about Morton’s extensive research on international government design quality standards at the Amsterdam conference in April. He and his co-researcher have been examining around 20 standards from around the world. He had not heard about any work in Germany before we spoke in April.
While they are wrapping things up and finishing their reports, I was glad that they still found the time to talk to us and add the German standard. By the end of the year, they plan to publish a generic service quality standard and a playbook on governance. That will be helpful to have. It can inform our work with the ministry going forward.
On Thursday, I agreed to join a windy walk interview. Irishman Gerry Scullion conducted a few conversations, holding a 360 camera on a selfie stick while we walked around the conference venue. Gerry had been running his ‘This is HCD’ podcast for some years, recording over 300 episodes.
We discussed my work and role in the German government, including what’s different from the setup in the UK, the remit, and what it encompasses. It was incredibly breezy – so windy that our hats flew off. I am unsure if this came together nicely.
What’s next
On Monday, Marion and I will give a remote input to our French colleagues at DINUM. They are interested in our work and setup in Germany.
On Tuesday, we will have Richard Pope joining us for a remote guest talk.
On Thursday, we’ll have an off-site with our entire organisation. For the time after lunch, I was asked to co-host a breakout session on design patterns with Andrea Donath, the programme lead for GovStack at GIZ. I am looking forward to that – even though I have no clear idea of what we will be doing.