The last piece of ‘work’ this week was co-delivering a pub quiz as part of our summer party on Friday night.
For the third year in a row, it was a core part of our organisation’s celebration – following speeches from the executive team, food and drinks. Since my colleague Chris joined Digital Service a couple of years ago, I have teamed up with him on quizzes. Some people very much look forward to this annual activity. Some people from the winning teams collect some exclusive stickers on their laptops.
The questions are on the more difficult end, according to participating colleagues. We ran 3 rounds this time. The first covered current events and trivia, the second digital transformation of government, and a third one with songs to guess. Our own domain area is always the section I like best. So Chris looked after the other ones while focused on this.
Here are some of the questions we asked this year:
- The eID was promised to simplify interactions with the administration and online shopping. Which year was it introduced (+- 1 year)?
- Which year did bundestag.de go live?
- What’s the average internet speed connection in Germany (+- 15%)?
- We have just reached 202 code repositories on DS Github – how many of them are active (aka not archived)?
- Match the GitHub names to the colleague …
- Who has co-authored the most posts on our Digital Service blog?
- The Dashboard “Digitale Verwaltung” tracks the ease-of-use rating of their online services, from 1 to 5 stars. Which of the four participating states (Baden-Würtemberg, Bremen, Hamburg, Rheinland-Pfalz) have the best rating?
- Which year did Digital Minister Dr Karsten Wildberger publish his most recent academic paper?
- With our DigitalCheck project, we are supporting ministries in writing digital-ready legislation? Which have we not partnered with?
- Which 2 colleagues are named as contributors to the DIN SPEC 66336 ‘Quality requirements for online services and portals in public administration (Service Standard)’?
People told us the questions were really difficult. No team even got half of the points, so maybe it will make it a little bit easier next year. In any case, it has been great fun for everyone involved.
Educating senior stakeholders on our way of working
On Tuesday, I had the chance to visit the new ministry together with members of our executive team, Christina, Magdalena and Stephanie.
We went to help educate senior stakeholders about our ways of working. We had 90 minutes for an exchange with people reporting to the minister and shared with them the approaches we had been taking in the context of justice and digital identity. We shared some of the mapping and visual prioritisation approaches we use to make sense of things. The session was well received, and we are expected to return for more. I‘m curious to see what work may result from this session
Co-leading a cross-government session on the new Service Standard
Together with great support from my colleague Stefan, I ran a NExT community session on ‘user-centricity with the Service Standard’. It was the second community session of the year, and it was a little more spontaneous.
My community co-runner, Maria, wasn’t around, so I asked for support. Our Service Standard project co-lead, Stefan, and NExT’s Head of Research, Theresa, came to help and to guide the circa 30 participants.
We gave a short overview of what the standard is and how it came to be. Stefan talked about the work of the last few months. I gave an overview of our peer review format. Then, we asked the participants a few questions:
- How do you work with holistic standards in your organisation?
- Which Service Standard criteria are you best equipped to meet?
- What kind of help could you use?
We asked the participants to review the criteria 1, 2, 4, and 6. On a virtual whiteboard, we placed a copy of the respective pages. We asked people to comment on the things that are clear, helpful and coherent, on the things that are not yet clear or incomplete and other things that they would need support with to meet the criteria. People left colour-coded feedback, which we will review in the coming days.
Getting podcasts out
This week, two podcast got published. Both were recorded in April two weeks apart.
The first one is German. I discuss our service design efforts and how our Service Standard work helps making public services in Germany better.
Did a podcast in German — on #ServiceDesign in the public sector and the role of the #ServiceStandard in government transformation. 🇩🇪 🎧
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) July 3, 2025 at 6:24 PM
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The second podcast may have already been published a few days ago. It wasn’t advertised by the makers yet. So I only learned about it by searching for it manually. It is the conversation Kara, Morton, and I had with UX Randy during the User Needs First conference in Amsterdam.
Another podcast: @karakane-kk.bsky.social and I compare approaches in various countries and share what inspires us today. We touch on design leadership, the power of senior support—incl. the king—and how both culture and structure enable innovative work. 🎧 🇬🇧 👇🏻 open.spotify.com/episode/4ide…
— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com) July 4, 2025 at 8:59 AM
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This year seems to be a podcast year for me. There are already 4 podcasts out, and there’s another one to follow later in the summer.
What’s next
On Monday and Tuesday, I will be in a leadership offsite. It will take place further south of Berlin. All members of the much-grown leadership team will get together to review our half-year objectives. Once we have done that, we plan to set new ones for the next 6 months.
In the second part of the week, I will try to make real progress on the discipline page. It’s easily pushed aside, as many things are deemed more important. Hopefully, I can make some progress as we have another review session planned with members of the comms and talent team.