This week marked my two-year anniversary at the Digital Service. I\u2019ve just filled the wall with notes for an extensive written reflection, which I will finish shortly. This note isn\u2019t that. But it\u2019s linked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Thursday, Marlene, Sonja and I got invited to\u00a0Justice Digital<\/a>\u2019s UCD meetup. Our UK colleagues had asked us to stop by and share our work in the justice space in Germany. Marlene and Sonja delivered the proper content; I gave context and set the stage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I explained where Germany stands regarding digital capability and user-centred public services compared to its European neighbours (lowered third). I also talked about the complex, fragmented government landscape of Germany. I called it \u2018devolved government on steroids\u2019 to create an image of what 16 states and almost 11,000 municipalities that primarily work independently from each other feel like.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n To make things tangibly confusing, I had to show the\u00a0picture puzzle of the actor landscape for implementing the Online Access Act<\/a>. I then explained the role of our organisation, how Digital Service came about, and how we are working across different areas and topics. I introduced our user-centred design team and reassured everyone we were working in the right way. There was no way of not acknowledging that there was no single domain, no overarching government brand, no open design system, no governance models, and no quality assurance for public services. However, I also explained what we do to circumvent that in the design and user research team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, Marlene and Sonja took over and offered a view into their work on the legal application services. In the fragmented landscape we operate in, collaboration is vital. So, Marlene gave an overview of the breadth of collaboration formats and showed how we work closely with and at pilot courts. The how was at least as interesting as the what. They covered the significance of measuring things across the user journey and talked about how the team builds towards bigger change across the justice service ecosystem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I closed with 5 related reflections to further contextualise the work and to compare our different circumstances in the UK and Germany:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some 45 folks from across Justice Digital teams listened, hit the emoji reactions numerous times, and left many comments and questions.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The collaboration onion was the most popular slide, and we had to return to it in the questions section. We highlighted the importance of pre-agreed time with pilot courts. For our team, we can spend 4 hours each month in any way we need. That can be time with the judges to review the feasibility of a new flow or spend time on-site to test a new version of the service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re\u00a0absolutely\u00a0stealing that\u201d was the comment that showed our input was worth their time.\u00a0It left me contented and proud about the progress our team has made in the past 1.5 years. The best things are still to come, with much bigger justice services work on the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Thursday, I also welcomed new starters Giang and Joshua. They are joining the Digital Check and Access to Justice teams, respectively. With Digital Check venturing into digital tools to support lawmakers and policy writers, Giang\u2019s interface and interaction design expertise will be greatly valuable. Joshua has been the very first user researcher in the last two organisations he joined. Luckily, that\u2019s not the case at Digital Service. Here, he is the third user researcher on justice services alone. The Access to Justice team now has the most substantial UCD setup in our organisation, with 10 designers, user researchers and content designers working across 2 streams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last month, I took the time to create a new welcome deck and structured list of links and pointers, which paid off. My welcome notes are more structured and concise now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They have 12 onboarding sessions in the coming days, so they have much ahead of them. I will run 2 of those next week, so we\u2019ll meet again shortly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The user-centred design team is now 27 people strong. That is some significant growth, and we\u2019ll need the coming months to get to know everyone who joined in the last few weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After I missed the third cross-public sector working session towards a shared design system, I caught up with Charlotte, Christin and Tine this week to understand what I missed. The joint review and feedback process will continue and we will prepare and facilitate the next session in a few weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The folks from the KERN Design System also ran an open lunch session that some colleagues attended. I will join an interactive morning format later in May when we discuss procurement and how to ensure usability and accessibility\u00a0are\u00a0appropriately considered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s talk about procurement! As in-house capabilities in the public sector remain low, there is no way around contracting external teams to build some digital public services. But we better make sure they do it in the right way.\n\nOn 21 May, we\u2019ll talk just about that \nwww.kern-ux.de\/community\/we…\n
Welcoming a new designer and user researcher<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Providing feedback on shared government assets<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
[image or embed]<\/a><\/p>— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com<\/a>) May 4, 2024 at 8:27<\/a><\/blockquote>