Category: Digital Service Standards
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Reimagining the Government Service Standards for a Modern Era
As someone deeply immersed in Government Service Standards and Digital Delivery within the Public Sector for almost 15 years, I’ve witnessed first-hand their transformative power. These standards have been instrumental in guiding us towards user-centred design and digital excellence, shaping how we approach public service. Yet, the world has shifted dramatically. New technologies, complex societal…
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Accelerating Public Sector Product Design:
How AI Can Bridge the Agility Gap The COVID-19 pandemic, while a period of immense challenge and tragedy for many, inadvertently highlighted our ability to achieve something previously thought impossible within the public sector; the rapid design and deployment of products and services. Consider the rapid development of testing programmes, vaccine rollout systems, or new…
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Assessing Innovation
(co-written with Matt Knight) Some background, for context Just over a month ago I got approached to ask if I could provide some advice on assessments to support phase two of the GovTech Catalyst (GTC) scheme. For those who aren’t aware of the GovTech Catalyst Scheme, there’s a blog here that explains how the scheme…
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How to be a Product Advocate
Why you need a Product Person in your team. Since joining Kainos a few weeks ago, I’ve had a number of conversations internally and with clients about the relationship between Delivery and Product; and why I as a Product Person moved over to Delivery. My answer to that question was that, having spent over 10…
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Digital Transformation is still new
We’re punishing those who are less experienced, and we need to stop. In the last few weeks I’ve had multiple conversations with clients (both existing and new) who are preparing for or have recently not passed their Digital Service standard assessments who are really struggling to understand what is needed from them in order to…
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Agile Delivery in a Waterfall procurement world
One of the things that has really become apparent when moving ‘supplier side’ is how much the procurement processes used by the public sector to tender work doesn’t facilitate agile delivery. The process of bidding for work, certainly as an SME is an industry in itself. This month alone we’ve seen multiple Invitations to Tender’s…
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Notes from some Digital Service Standard Assessors on the Beta Assessment
The Beta Assessment is probably the one I get the most questions about; Primarily, “when do we actually go for our Beta Assessment and what does it involve?” Firstly what is an Assessment? Why do we assess products and services? If you’ve never been to a Digital Service Standard Assessment it can be daunting; so…
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So, what is a Service Owner?
Before I discuss what (in my view) a Service Owner is, a brief history lesson into the role might be useful. The role of the ‘Service Manager‘ was seen as critically important to the success of a product, and they were defined as a G6 (Manager) who had responsibility for the end to end service…
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The people getting left behind
Why ‘in the era of remote working we need to stop thinking about ‘digital services’ as a separate thing, and just think about ‘services’. Last night when chatting to @RachelleMoose about whether digital is a privilege, which she’s blogged about here, it made me remember a conversation from a few weeks ago with @JanetHughes about…

