Government is incredibly fragmented. And almost every experience shows that. No step in a service journey feels like another, and users never know what to expect behind the next click.
That’s why we discuss the umbrella brand in an extended 2-hour remote session with almost 50 people on Friday.
Approaching 1 year of piloting the umbrella brand
Trust and consistency matter and are intertwined. That’s why, 1 year ago, in early December 2024, the Digitale Dachmarke was launched – a cross-government identity and design system. It’s a big, 4-part plaster to patch things together. It’s also there to fight Conway’s Law. Organisations tend to externalise their internal structures and create a separate visual identity for each initiative, rather than the state speaking with one voice.
The cross-government identity and design system consists of the following 4 elements:
- Header: a narrow line at the top identifies official government websites
- Word mark: a modern interpretation of the federal eagle, representing all federal levels
- Domain name: the domain suffix .gov.de identifies the government organisation as the source
- Design system: KERN UX-Standard provides a toolkit for designing new services
Since April, a small team at DigitalService has been supporting the Federal Ministry for Digital and Government Modernisation in figuring out how to operationalise and improve the identity system. My colleagues Anne and Lena shouldered most of the work. I had the honour and joy to work closely with them.
In the first few months, our team conducted 30 interviews with service owners of the piloting services, interested service teams and the initiative’s cross-government coordination group. We learned tons in these conversations and collected numerous insights, questions, and ideas for improvement.
After discovering their blog posts, we also spoke with international experts, including colleagues doing similar work at Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Government Digital Service (GDS). They generously shared what they have done over the past few years. They even demoed the custom tools they built and patiently answered our many questions. Their working in the open approach allowed us to accelerate our thinking, and we were in absolute awe after the exchange calls.
Gaining momentum with the cross-government identity and design system
Today, 147 online services and websites across all levels of government are already using the new identity and design system. The teams behind dozens more have expressed their interest. 50 .gov.de subdomains are assigned, and others are in the queue.
As our team listened, observed, and processed the many inputs, we started getting itchy. After mapping the as-is and drafting a potential to-be application process for service owners, we developed further artefacts to test ideas. With the help of Tito, we built a rapid prototype of a new landing page for the new identity and design system. We also made further mockups of redesigned unified service flows. We brought these to State Secretaries and other senior leaders to inform them about the work.
On Friday, early afternoon, we ran a remote cross-government session to help more public servants unify their service journey. For the session, we had more than 60 signups. Eventually, 49 people showed up, making it one of our busiest calls. With the many questions they had, we fit almost the entire 2 hours we had scheduled.
After our topical community introductions and 10 minutes of speed meeting in small groups of 3, we had 4 sharp inputs:
- My colleague Lena talked about the 4 pillars of the identity and design system and our current work to operationalise it
- Monika from the Federal Press Office gave a recap of the development of the word mark
- Robin from the State Chancellery of Schleswig-Holstein demonstrated the KERN design system
- Joachim from the State Chancellery of Hamburg shared the highs and lows of bringing the identity and design system to an existing service platform
The format was a great success, and I’m happy about the significant interest and engagement around the project.
As this worked so well, Lena and I briefly discussed how we could reuse the content and format for some extended clinic session sometime in the new year.
Also on Friday, we had a short, separate exchange with a consulting branding expert, a university professor, who helped with the brand architecture for several years. I met him at 2 workshops over the past few years. It was great to get some further ground on the history of the 4 elements. Hopefully, we will have the chance to continue the exchange soon.
Discussing service patterns within the international community
On Friday morning, we ran our 37th International Design in Government community call. It was only the second call this year after things got busy. But the more I am delighted we made it happen.
Although it was a cosy round, we had an engaged exchange on service patterns with people from at least 4 countries. Our 3 UK presenters each shared their specific work on the topic.
I had to realise how impossible the timeslot was for everyone not in Europe or Africa. For our next call, which we plan for January, we will have to move it to the afternoon again to allow more people from the Americas, Asia, and Oceania to join us.
Among the topics on my list are policy design tools, trains, service standards (once more), and design and AI.
Talking about service quality standards
I feel like I’m talking about little else than service quality standards.
On Monday morning, I visited the team governing identity common components, including authentication, identification, and the upcoming EU-wide wallet. Unfortunately, not everyone on the team had heard of the Service Standard yet, even though it is now a binding regulation, and a neighbouring team in the ministry is leading its policy.
For the short presentation, I created a new, dense overview graphic to illustrate how many senior bodies have ratified the standards.
We had further conversations around the Service Standard and its new guidance, as well as blog posts, during our monthly cross-government user research exchange on Wednesday. Again, some 17 people from 10 different organisations joined this round.
With so many user researchers in the room, Sonja and I collected some commitments for jointly putting a user research report on common components together. Through our end-to-end tests, we know they have serious flaws and can be better. So, we will join forces and want to co-create a report under the NExT banner. A motivation for this voluntary work are the low numbers in digital take-up I learned in the past days: 8% for applying for housing allowance and 11% for notifying of a change of address. We must do better. We can do better.
What’s next
On Tuesday afternoon, we will have our winter user-centred design discipline half-day end-of-year recap onsite. I hope that 25+ of the 41 people in our discipline will be able to join. Some people have caring obligations, are engaged in learning activities, or are on sick leave.
Before that, on Tuesday morning, I will return to the Federal Ministry for Digital and Government Modernisation for an exchange on 2026 objectives for the Service Standard. I am looking forward to that.
On Wednesday, I will go to Paris once more. After my spontaneous visit to the OECD in late October, I got invited to participate in a 1-day workshop on life events. Currently, I am arranging further conversations with international colleagues for Friday. More than 10 EU countries will be present. I hope I can maximise my time there by having multiple in-depth exchanges.
For the afternoon of the OECD workshop, I am asked to give a 10-minute talk on the approaches taken in Germany. I need to finish and submit that by early next week.