Introducing the Service Standard to service owners and designers in the city-state of Hamburg in more detail, Martin travelled there on Tuesday. He also opened service design roles and had conversations with colleagues at the European Commission and the OECD.
Category: Weeknote
Week #185 at the Digital Service: Notes for 10–14 November
In week 185, Martin went to the city of Wiesbaden, the state capital of Hesse, to co-run the annual Public Service Lab Day. He gave a talk about the Service Standard to local and state government colleagues. Additionally, he conducted 2 workshops on the cross-government identity and design system.
Week #184 at the Digital Service: Notes for 3–7 November
Martin had a busy week #184: publishing a blog post on the design system strategy, co-running a Service Standard application workshop with local government, inspecting the sludge audit tool, and giving a talk on technology shifts to public bank executives.
Week #183 at the Digital Service: Notes for 27–31 October
Recovering from the annual round of COVID, Martin saw 2 blog posts getting ready for publication. He took a moment to reflect on the state of blogging and how to address some issues. Martin also looked at formalising internal accessibility procedures and staffing new projects.
Week #182 at the Digital Service: Notes for 20–24 October
While in Paris, Martin took the opportunity to exchange ideas on assessing service quality and measuring user experience at the OECD headquarters. Earlier in the week, Martin co-ran a local meetup on ‘visualising data’ and participated in an accessibility bug-busting session.
Week #181 at the Digital Service: Notes for 13–17 October
Rushing down to the Bauhaus City of Dessau, Martin joined the 12th meeting of the Digital Council of his home state. Digital Service also celebrated its 5th birthday on the same day with a smallish gathering and speeches.
Week #180 at the Digital Service: Notes for 6–10 October
With the ministry’s modernisation agenda in place, Martin unpicked it to understand how it overlaps with his teams’ current work and where synergies can and should be found.
Week #179 at the Digital Service: Notes for 29 September–3 October
As the Service Standard regulation came into effect this week, Martin co-led a workshop at the Smart Country Convention to introduce more people to it and understand their potential challenges with it. Martin also welcomed a team member.
Week #178 at the Digital Service: Notes for 22–26 September 2025
After waiting for months, Martin was delighted to learn that the minister had signed the Service Standard-related regulation. Within the coming days, it would come into partial effect, giving the ongoing communication and support efforts a vital impetus. Martin participated in a company offsite and co-hosted a workshop there. He also talked to French counterparts during the week.
Week #177 at the Digital Service: Notes for 15–19 September 2025
Travelling to Edinburgh, Martin attended the annual ‘Service Design in Government’ conference. There, he co-ran a workshop on the barriers to end-to-end service design. He also did an interview with a UN think tank and an Irish design podcaster during the week.