This week passed in no time again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We published the first design-related blog post<\/a> on the Digital Service\u2019s blog. Together with Carina, Christin, Daphne, Paul and Sophia from the design team, I share what design is, why it needs to be inclusive and accessible, and how it\u2019s the most purposeful work we have done. <\/p>\n\n\n\n People from various parts of the German public sector, especially local governments, shared the post. Others from the civic tech and design community asked for more detailed and specific posts, which are indeed in the making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Monday, I learned more about NExT<\/a>, the German government and public sector\u2019s network and platform for various communities of practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Its managing director Vincent, who is also the face of the organisation, is leaving the organisation by the end of the month. In an extended session, he further detailed what NExT does, how it operates, and where it could develop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n NExT hosts various formats, including community meetups, bar camps, and workshops<\/a>. There are existing communities of practice around mobile apps, machine learning and artificial intelligence, or internal-facing consulting. All of those are well-documented with individual sections on their website. Each community of practice has a summary page describing its value proposition and audience. All list past and future events, many have published summaries of previous community meetups, and a few have published white papers and other documents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the past 6+ years, I have not seen any similarly well-document public sector communities of practice work anywhere. Some folks have tried, including OneTeamGov<\/a> and Gebruiker Central<\/a>, but not with the same degree of structure and consistency. Unfortunately, as elsewhere, and despite the critical work, the funding status of NExT\u2019s work as a registered association isn\u2019t fully sorted and safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the Digital Service is an engaged member of the NExT network, I should get involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I caught up with Joshua, who is leading our Tech4Germany programme<\/a>. Tech4Germany is the Digital Service\u2019s longest-running programme of work. Once a year, it brings multidisciplinary fellow teams into Federal ministries for 3 months to work on a practical challenge. We discussed how the design fellows can be supported well and what kind of supporting material they can and should get.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the Digital Service consists of a) the fellowship programmes and b) the software-developing digital service teams, the distinction is not apparent to government ministries and agencies working with us. However, despite the different levels of work experience with long-standing software teams and the 3-month fellow teams, which are a bit more junior, the encounters that public servants have should be somewhat consistent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To learn more about the German public sector, its structures and ground rules, I attended a public administration 101 talk on Friday. A senior lecturer from the Foreign office explained the established chain of command and communication, the roles and responsibilities of Federal ministries (policy-making) and their subordinated agency (policy-implementation), and the theory of colours. The latter is particularly quirky. It has nothing to do with Goethe\u2019s classic works of the same title<\/a>. Instead, it\u2019s about colour-coding in public office and which coloured pen a public officer is allowed to use depending on their rank and status. To her surprise, I asked how colour-blind people are considered in this decade-old practice. She had not heard that question before, apparently.<\/p>\n\n\n\nUnderstanding communities of practice<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Learning about public sector interactions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n