{"id":1966,"date":"2023-08-13T21:31:23","date_gmt":"2023-08-13T19:31:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/verwaltungsgestaltung.de\/notizen\/?p=1966"},"modified":"2023-08-13T21:39:26","modified_gmt":"2023-08-13T19:39:26","slug":"week-67-at-the-digital-service-notes-for-7-11-august-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/verwaltungsgestaltung.de\/notizen\/2023\/08\/13\/week-67-at-the-digital-service-notes-for-7-11-august-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Week #67 at the Digital Service: Notes for 7\u201311 August 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Our 3rd self-audit report against the Service Standard<\/a> has been published. Across the 19 standard points, the team describes how it developed the digital identity service component \u2018BundesIdent\u2019 in some detail. The report cross-references and links to various repositories and documents on GitHub. The team finalised, tidied up and published additional material. Especially this isn\u2019t a practice we have seen internationally. So we are pushing what\u2019s expected here \u2013 precisely what we aim for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Various people reached out to me after posting on LinkedIn about the report<\/a>, our approach, and general public service quality in Germany. Working at think tanks, consultancies and with other governments internationally, they showed interest in this work. Notably absent are German civil servants. I will still need to find out why. In the meantime, I will talk to more people about their approaches abroad. Folks working on similar work in Canada, Iraq, and the UK messaged me, which is encouraging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far, the 3 reports can only be accessed via Digital Service\u2019s transparency page, linked from the footer only. The Service Standard section at least got an anchor link for directly pointing to the reports<\/a> now. In the coming weeks, we want to make the reports more easily accessible through new page types.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The published report also helps me get closer to meeting a quarterly objective around driving further adoption of the Service Standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Changing how our work is seen<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I have a new colleague who joined the talent acquisition team and who will support our upcoming recruitment efforts. She has an interest in and additional focus on employer branding, which will become incredibly helpful. While it\u2019s not necessarily a term I particularly like \u2013 because it sounds like superficial marketing and lipstick on the pig \u2013 I strongly care about its associated activities. With her support, we can take a more holistic look at our work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In anticipation of her arrival, I dug up the various things our former user-centred design team at the Government Digital Service supported for reference. That included career events for underrepresented groups<\/a>, participation in tech sector recruitment events, short videos explaining roles and responsibilities<\/a>, ask-me-anything dial-in sessions<\/a> for potential applicants, blog posts explaining our roles<\/a> in good detail, laying out how our recruitment process works<\/a>, or giving advice how to prepare a design portfolio<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In retrospect, I am grateful for the proper documentation of our GDS work. It allows us to build on it now more easily. We started sketching existing touchpoints in our first meeting. Now, I am looking forward to developing new ones shortly. One will be the discipline pages I started working on many months ago. Another one should be a blog post about how diverse the backgrounds of my colleagues are. We have a product manager who is a trained lawyer, a designer who is a trained software engineer, and a software engineer trained as a designer. Being able to speak one other\u2019s language makes collaboration much more effortless. It\u2019s an observation worth writing about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After receiving an invitation to a local TEDx talk, Charlotte and I discussed narratives for the second week. At first, we collected and reviewed TEDx videos from other public sector people, most of them US-based, to establish a baseline. Next, we looked at 4 central angles: design, the organisation, the German public sector context, and her personal story. TEDx talks have a clear structure, are well-rehearsed and reach a broad audience. This talk should help us reach a few new people and tell them about our work and mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Planning autumn activities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Beyond some future engagement, there are at least 6 strands of outward-facing activities I\u2019m helping to plan currently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n