I returned to the CityLAB Summer Conference. I attend it every 2 years, it turns out.
I joined it in June 2022, where Charlotte and I talked about service design for government.
I then rejoined in June 2024 to report on how we are transforming justice services, alongside my colleague Caro.
This year, I teamed up with Thomas Bendig, senior policy officer at the Federal Ministry for Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation.
Speaking about quality-enforcing standards
Our 25-minute talk gave an overview of our most recent work, which we do jointly and in service of the ministry.
The talk was titled ‘Services that work and build trust: with Service Standard and umbrella brand’. We started with the problem: showing examples of services that aren’t very good and how they are perceived by users, and discussed in the press. Then we illustrated how one framework ensures teams are doing the right thing, and the other helps users identify what an actual state offering is. Thomas mostly covered the Service Standard. I spoke about the umbrella brand and its promise.
The talk was well received. The room was packed with people standing. We had over 60 attendees, of whom some had to squeeze into the room. The 3 questions we had time for were not unexpected. People wanted to know whether things are mandatory: whether usability tests are mandatory, whether the design system could become mandatory, and how mandatory the Service Standard is overall. Some people asked from a position of hope and support, others from the perspective of compliance and enforcement.
I stayed for much of the day and especially enjoyed both Professor Birgit Mager’s and Merici Vinton’s talks, which offered great insight into service transformation in large, slow-moving environments. I hope local government leaders took notes on utilising user-centred design for transformative change.
On other things Service Standard: I spent 2 hours with designers Linda and Sabrina on Friday afternoon to rework the introductory service design training. Instead of running it as a nice-to-have side activity inside of Digital Service, we are now folding it into our package of activities around the Service Standard. It will allow us to open it up to more colleagues and scale it across government.
We also had an exchange with colleagues at the Norwegian Digitalisation Agency this week after receiving a somewhat out-of-the-blue email. They shared their thoughts on ‘The future of citizen dialogue in Norway’ with us. They reached out after reading my colleague’s blog post about our work on the umbrella brand. They are the unit driving digital transformation in the Norwegian government. They look after shared websites, common components, a form builder, a design system, and design patterns around life events. We shared some of our ongoing work, and so did they. We both were convinced that the others were ahead with their work. This angle is never right, as we have rather different circumstances that allow us to progress in different areas.
I would like to hear more from them and also see them share their work with the international community.
Enquiring about money and taxes
The night before CityLAB’s big event, we hosted our own small one, together with them. We ran the 13th edition of our public-facing meetup. This time it took place in our office again. And we moved back up to the top floor, so that people could enjoy the rooftop, given the weather.
This time, we were opportunistic. As Merici Vinton, formerly with the U.S. Digital Service and the Internal Revenue Service, was in town, we asked if she would be up for speaking at our evening meetup. She agreed, and we made it an edition on ‘Money and taxes’. Merici shared reflections on her work in the U.S. federal government. Afterwards, my friend Manuel Grossmann talked about his work at German tax tech scaleup Taxfix. Lastly, my colleague Sonja presented our strategic tax user research work for the Federal Ministry of Finance.
People had plenty of questions, and we filled 2 complete hours without a break with the 3 talks and the many follow-up. The event was again very well perceived. We received 5 reviews from attendees, and it got a 4.8 out of 5-point rating.
We received the talks and will make them available online shortly.
What’s next
Next week will be short and different.
I will only work regularly on Monday. On Tuesday, I will be at the ‘Zukunftskongress’ (Future Congress), participating in a panel on inclusive and resilient organisations and reshaping the public administration. I still need to sort my notes and possibly prepare a few slides.
In the evening, Berlin celebrates 20 years as a UNESCO City of Design. The Berlin Senate hosts an event for the occasion. The celebrations include an evening panel discussion, which I would like to attend. Counterparts, design leaders from Detroit, Helsinki, and Singapore, are attending and sharing their notes.
Right after, I will jump on the night train to Copenhagen so that I arrive early in the morning for the Future Days. I discovered the series last year, but then had to skip the event. In the meantime, it moved from Lisbon to Copenhagen, which I find a little exciting but also more accessible. I have looked at the programme, but I still don’t know what to expect. I am very curious about the premise, have novel conversations and see at least some familiar faces.
In the meantime, I will be missing various activities in Berlin. Creative Bureaucracy Festival will take place on Thursday. It’s the first time that I will skip it since the pandemic. It was not an easy choice, but I felt that Future Days would offer me even more novel perspectives. I will miss the book launch of ‘Creative Bureaucracy: Where Next and How?’, edited by the festival founder, Charles Landry. I contributed a piece on AI titled ‘A tool to refine, not magic to fall for’. I expect to receive my copy afterwards.
I will also miss the PolyFutures extension. Part of the EU Policy Lab will be in Berlin for the Creative Bureaucracy Festival and host a morning event the day after. Several members of my team will attend.
Next week, I’d like us to publish our blog post on the delivery principles. It’s really due.