Marlene took this snap when I welcomed our 5 new starters on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We had 3 user researchers and 2 content designers join us this week. It\u2019s the largest cohort since spring 2024, when we welcomed 4 people in a single month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They will work across a range of service areas \u2013 from skilled immigration to justice services, and from agentic agency to the centre of legal drafting. It\u2019s exciting that we can grow our user research and content design sub-disciplines so much this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially for content design, there is constant demand in the organisation. And we found it difficult to hire people. That is why the role has been open for about 6 months. As the work is there, we will continue working with a senior freelance designer. It\u2019s similar with user research. We continue with a freelancer to cover the amount of work in the area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I will welcome the entire cohort of over a dozen new colleagues in 2 of their 10 introduction sessions. Next week, I will co-run the discipline introduction; the following week, the one on accessibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Among other things, I completed several tasks related to the Service Standard this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We met with 2 units from the digital ministry, including the current policy officer for the Service Standard and colleagues working on service-quality-related tools. It was helpful to sync and compare overlapping efforts. We will resume that in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a smaller group, we ran a retrospective on last week\u2019s successful 2-day service design introduction training. As the feedback was terrific, there is little immediate action. Still, the pacing and framing at the beginning are areas for improvement. The opening was new and needs refinement. The message needs to be clearer: We need to design services consciously and purposefully, and the Service Standard legitimises this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The training might run once per quarter from now on. We aim for late November for the next edition and will update the new training page<\/a> shortly. Sabrina, Linda and I also started discussing running the \u2018Service mapping for practitioners\u2019 that I co-developed with Clara Greo in 2019. We ran it 4 times before the pandemic, but not since. I reviewed its agenda and slides this week and am interested in giving it another run. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Reviews were another big topic this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Wednesday morning, I ran our now 7th product review session. We started with the format in late May. It lasts about 50 minutes and focuses on one specific offering we are about to launch. We looked at the advanced court claim service to recover money<\/a>, which now includes a structured claim statement with evidence users can attach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At first, the feedback from some other teams has been a bit mixed. We didn\u2019t communicate the purpose and structure well enough. Teams didn\u2019t know exactly what to expect, what to prepare, or what it was good for. We got that mostly right now. The feedback from all recent sessions has been positive. It\u2019s a conversational format, and it doesn\u2019t require preparation from teams. We mostly ask questions as we look at the offering together. The team can decide to take notes. There are no follow-ups from our side. The format aligns with our delivery principle 11<\/a>, which states that \u2018Each team is responsible for quality, security, risks, operating models, and accessibility\u2019. Teams are responsible, yet we are accountable, and therefore check in with them on the development itself on a semi-regular basis. The format is complementary to the various other formats we have with programme areas at a more strategic and operational level.<\/p>\n\n\n\nRunning product and service reviews<\/h2>\n\n\n\n