Finishing May and week 57, Martin engaged in cross-organisational exchange about user research practice and helped welcome and say farewell to colleagues.

In week 56 at Digital Service, Martin – with massive help from service designer Maria – finished a proposal for an all-new cross-public sector community of practice on user-centred design. Martin spent more time on Service Standard-related communication and prepared activities around the Creative Bureaucracy Festival in mid-June.

In week 55 at Digital Service, Martin helped to review the organisational objectives and key results – which he finally put on a poster now, too. He prepared Service Standard self-reports and a related blog post for publication and also reached out to user researchers across the public sector for some exchange.

Martin’s week 54 at Digital Service included 2 workshops on applying the Service Standard, an international call on digital wallets and talking about GDS’s history and achievements in the UK.

Marking his first year at Digital Service, Martin reflects on the time and potential impact made so far. He also welcomed the first in-house user researcher, discussed cross-organisational user research ops collaboration and invited to an internal round table on shared web components.

Completing his 52nd week at Digital Service, Martin reflects on the long slog of public service design, why things are hard and how to cope. He works with colleagues to discuss this at several upcoming events. Also, values and principles got quite some space this week.

In week 51 at Digital Service, Martin helped open the doors and co-ran a public-facing local meetup together with colleagues and folks from other units doing vital public sector work.

In week 49 at Digital Service, Martin had the entire week off. However, he did spend time reading and reflecting. And he also put together an archive page with all talks and workshops he gave in the past 12 years.

Week 48 at Digital Service was about collaboration in the most colourful variations for Martin – with cross-discipline exchanges, personal 1:1 conversations, design leadership team reflections, and core org structure reviews.