The work of days done in hours.
That is how Friday’s conference day felt.
After an opening talk on the transformative power of Service Standard and 2 afternoon workshops I gave, I progressed more than I could have in Berlin in a week. It showed me once again that I need to travel the country to do my work effectively.
Talking, running workshops, debating in Wiesbaden
In our service transformation work, continuous research and frequent engagement are vital. We cannot change a thing without talking to other public servants and learning from them. Currently, we need to ensure that colleagues across the country are aware of the now-mandatory Service Standard and have everything necessary to apply it.
In a separate work stream with the Federal Ministry for Digitalisation and Government Reform, we at Digital Service are supporting the pilot phase of the Digitale Dachmarke (literally: digital umbrella brand), a cross-government identity and design system developed to join up messy user journeys. Most people haven’t heard of it, not even the engaged ones. Therefore, we need to go out and change that.
About 80 user-centred public servants from Germany and Switzerland visited Hesse’s state capital Wiesbaden. Hosted in a former state court building, turned vibrant event space, Maral Koohestanian and Jan Klumb invited us to facilitate talks, workshops and exchange on “Doing better: more quality for our services”. With more user-centred capability than ever in the German public sector, we are mature enough to have these discussions. Finally.
Deputy Mayor Maral, responsible for Wiesbaden’s digitalisation, spoke in her keynote about public servants as service providers and pillars of democracy. Tinka showed her years-long transformation work in the State Ministry of Baden-Württemberg. The 5 winners of the Preis für gute Verwaltung, which awards outstanding user-centred work, demonstrated the widespread adoption of user-centred approaches. And how they lead to measurably better outcomes in public health services, climate change mitigation projects, and administrative efficiency programmes.
Katrin, Simone and I have been running Public Service Lab since 2017. As my work evolves, the annual conference format has gotten a new purpose. In the past, it was about sharing good practice and connecting like-minded people. Now, it directly supports my service design work. In that work, we need to sense-check a lot. We cannot do that from Berlin, at least not entirely. Remote interviews and virtual workshops can only get you so far. In the workshops and evening conversations, I learned about the real obstacles and gained a deeper understanding of the richer contexts behind the barriers to change. It’s the intense conversations at a table that a scheduled 30-minute call cannot offer. I am grateful for the extra time I had with colleagues from the cities of Bonn, Munich, and Wiesbaden around the dinner table.
In 2026, the event will take place in Munich, the capital of the state of Bavaria. I am looking forward to it and to the progress we can make in the meantime.
Capturing challenges to fixing broking user journeys
As part of the conference day, I ran 2 afternoon workshops on the digital umbrella brand. Combined, I counted 23 people. They represented state- and local-level government entities.
First, I gave an overview of the digital umbrella brand. Then, I asked a few questions.
- Considering the Service Standard, how do you ensure service consistency and government recognisability today?
- What are your current obstacles to ensure offerings are clearly marked as government services and seen as one coherent journey?
I shared the prototype for a new landing page we developed in summer and asked:
- Which element is the most interesting?
- What would stop you from using the umbrella brand and its elements?
- Where do you see barriers to implementation?
- What questions do you have about individual elements?
Even though, we ran short on time, I closed with 2 final questions:
- What does it take to implement the umbrella brand?
- And who is needed?
The response from participants was overwhelmingly positive. Many were interested in learning more. Many people wanted to understand what the digital umbrella brand is, how they can integrate it, and what would be required to do so. The discussions with Munich were the most specific and detailed ones I had. Others expressed their interest in an integration. I will follow up with them.
There were some expressions of frustration from local government representatives, who want to improve their services and the experience users have. Someone said, “We can’t even get the IT provider to change the fonts and colours – they block us and we, as a local authority, can‘t do anything about it.“ Considering an implementation into running services, another person said: “It‘s easy to tackle new systems – but changing old systems is virtually impossible.” A third person stated their disappointment with the lack of upfront information about the existence of the digital umbrella brand. Even though the Chief Information Officers of the Federal States had approved it in the national IT Planning Council in spring 2024, they had not been informed about it through any of their channels. Not from the German Cities Council, local government consultants, or other digital public sector networks.
I will work with the team to review all the sticky notes collected. The 2 workshops showed me once again how vital it is to talk to colleagues from other levels of government about their structures, governance models, and limitations. Within 2 hours, I got to hear nuanced feedback and input from 8 larger municipalities and cities. Public sector digital units from different state governments were also present.
I noted a few takeaways after the workshop and shared them with the team:
- We need more visibility – be present at many more events, both remote and in-person
- We need the prototyped landing page I tested live as soon as possible – so that we can provide concrete and practical support information, including technical guidance
- We need to engage with private sector IT providers – both small and large, who seem to be a blocker according to local authorities
- We need to determine how the digital umbrella brand, specifically the logo and the KERN design system theme, can be integrated with the existing visual identities of cities and municipalities
- We need something like a newsletter – to keep the people we meet and who are interested informed
We need more workshops, but we are also working on that. The format is tight for 45 minutes, but I would like to rerun it.
Planning November community events
During the week, I made progress with planning 2 community events. One on a national level, the other on an international level. Both are now scheduled for Friday, the 28th of November.
In the morning, we will run our 37th international community call. We will discuss service patterns and hear from UK colleagues about their work in that space.
After lunch, I will host the 3rd NExT user-centred design community call of 2025. We will look at the digital umbrella brand. Various colleagues involved in the work from across government will share their related work on brand design, the design system, and how to implement it.
What’s next
On Monday evening, I will travel to Hamburg again. On Tuesday, I will join the city state’s annual online services conference called ‘OZG Forum Live’. I got asked to give a short opening talk and then run a workshop on the Service Standard. It will be a version of the workshop I co-ran last week in Potsdam. I am very much looking forward to further exchange in another part of the country.