{"id":6633,"date":"2026-07-26T23:13:52","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T21:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/verwaltungsgestaltung.de\/notizen\/?p=6633"},"modified":"2026-07-26T23:17:29","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T21:17:29","slug":"week-221-at-the-digital-service-notes-for-20-24-july","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/verwaltungsgestaltung.de\/notizen\/2026\/07\/26\/week-221-at-the-digital-service-notes-for-20-24-july\/","title":{"rendered":"Week #221 at the Digital Service: Notes for 20\u201324 July"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Returning from a 9-day break while others start their vacation, I had some time to think and make this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Working against Conway\u2019s Law from the ground up<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Government services are broken, not by intent, but by structure. People often deal with more than 1 part of government at a time, but we often fail to join things up. By turning citizens and residents into sudden project managers of our disjointed services, we offer a bad experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGood services are only as strong as their weakest link\u201c, Lou Downe writes in their new book<\/a>. That is what we see as harsh reality in Germany: 70 to 90% of users are lost once they reach digital identity components BundID and AusweisApp. All the good efforts by designers, user researchers, and other service team members don\u2019t make a dent when 1 or 2 shared components break the journey for the majority of users. The core digital identity components are developed and governed elsewhere. The teams working on individual services integrate them, but they cannot do more than share feedback, which hasn\u2019t improved much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

User researchers and like-minded colleagues from 7 public organisations felt the pain so strongly that they got together to write up their research findings as part of a NExT network working group<\/a>. The paper they presented earlier this month doesn\u2019t contain much groundbreaking insight, but granular evidence and straightforward recommendations. The up to 90% churn rate number is well known across the German public sector, at least at working levels. The IT Planning Council published them last year, too. If it keeps ministers accountable for digital transformation sleepless at night, we don\u2019t know. But now, senior leaders have some concrete ideas on what to act on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That 7 public organisations got together to compare their qualitative and quantitative research with overlapping findings is a terrific indicator of the significant capability growth we have seen over the past few years. Just years ago, none of that would have been possible. It shows the bottom-up willingness to overcome organisational silos that hold back service improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This week, 3 media publications picked it up, reported on the paper and summarised its content. It also received some reflections in posts on LinkedIn, some from contributors, some from digital identity experts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The way we govern the parts of the whole service directly impacts service quality. We embed our siloed structures in the fragmented outputs of our work. That\u2019s why I\u2019ve been rocking up to cross-government meetings with senior stakeholders with sheets saying \u2018Conway\u2019s law\u2019 a few times now. Pinning them on the wall is usually a good conversation starter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My former boss Lou references Conway\u2019s Law<\/a> extensively in their new bestseller \u2018Bad Services\u2019, too. They dedicate a whole chapter to \u2018Cause 5: structures\u2019. During last week\u2019s hiking vacation, I found time to pick it up and kept nodding through the pages. The book offers sound advice on dealing with horizontal and vertical silos \u2013 plus much more. It\u2019s ordered in bulk for Digital Service\u2019s book club.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s powerful to see a shared responsibility in collaborating to fix what is broken and needs to be joined up. Much in the spirit of what Lou writes in their last chapter: \u201cJust because you don\u2019t provide the whole service doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re not jointly responsible for helping your user to reach their goal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seeing the Service Standard team grow bigger than ever<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Service Standard team got so big! In a sharing session this week, I realised it\u2019s a team of 10 \u2013 if I include myself. In addition, a freelance content designer helps out 1 day per week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It took a while \u2013 but our #ServiceStandard team at @digitalservice.bund.de has grown much!We are 10 people now:\u2022 2 content designers\u2022 2 software engineers\u2022 1 service designer\u2022 3 transformation managers\u2022 1 comms lead\u2022 1 supporting me \ud83d\udc4b\ud83c\udffbIt\u2019s bigger than the previous team I led at \ud83c\uddec\ud83c\udde7GDS in 2020<\/p>— Martin Jordan (@martinjordan.com)<\/a> 2026-07-22T12:21:09.536Z<\/a><\/blockquote>