GovWifi, developed and managed by Government Digital Service (GDS), is a single wifi login which can be simply and cheaply installed by government departments over their existing infrastructure.

Anyone who registers with GovWifi will have access to wifi at any participating public sector location. It’s available to civil servants, consultants and visitors to government departments.

It’s been designed to replace user and guest wifi with a single secure wifi connection.

Users register once. After that, they’ll automatically connect to the GovWifi network. They don’t need to remember a password or sign in to different networks when they move between buildings.

GovWifi is one of a number of initiatives designed to help departments transform their operations. It saves money and allows civil servants, who are users too, to have the tools to do their jobs well.

Simply put: it makes it easier for people to do their work.

GovWifi recently passed its beta assessment, which means we can offer the service to more departments.

Net gains

GovWifi currently works in over 100 locations across the country.

One way we track the increased use of the service is through transactions. A transaction is where a user accesses GovWifi in a particular building on a specific day. For example, if someone connects to GovWifi at one office in the morning and then again at a different location later that day, that’s 2 transactions.

GovWifi is now regularly recording up to 15,000 transactions a day and we’re seeing monthly growth of around 20%. Users visiting more than one building per day currently represent around 15% of the total.

In fact, we’re delighted to announce that GovWifi recently hit its millionth transaction. It’s a fantastic achievement for a service that’s not even a year old, and one that the team is very proud of.

But statistics like this only tell half the story. GovWifi represents a change in the way civil servants work. It gives them the flexibility to work wherever they need to, with the same wifi experience at every location – just turn up and automatically connect.

One of the best use cases we’ve seen so far is for departments which have moved buildings – like those who’ve moved into a government hub. Instead of workers losing their connection, GovWifi provides a seamless transition, with no loss of service.

Strong signals

Eventually, we want GovWifi to be the standard way to connect to wifi across all government and public sector locations. As it runs on existing infrastructure it’s quick and easy to set up and provides a good level of security.

The network identifies itself in a way that can’t be spoofed, adding to the safety measures that provide protection from potential attacks.

GovWifi meets all the requirements from GDS and the National Cyber Security Centre for secure wifi.

Any public sector organisations interested in rolling out GovWifi can follow these instructions to set up GovWifi on their infrastructure. If you have any question about GovWifi, send us an email. 

When I was preparing my talk for this year’s Blog Camp – a capability building event for blog editors across government – I came across a slide from one of the talks from last year’s event. It said: ‘Reasons why you may not want to blog: because blogging sounds silly and you’re a grown-up’.

And yet, we got together again, a year on, to talk about this silly-sounding discipline. We brought together blog editors from across government to share ideas and best practice, to create connections and partnerships, and to consider how we can blog bigger and better.

We did this because blogging is not silly. We did this because blogging is a valuable tool that government departments can leverage to achieve their objectives.

We’re all old ‘in blog years’

My GDS colleague Terence Eden, who opened this year’s event with a short talk about the value of blogging, told us he’s old ‘in blog years’. And I bet that all of you reading this post are old in that sense too. Because things change very quickly in the blogosphere.

When they first appeared, blogs tended to be ‘digital diaries’ – websites where you’d jot down your thoughts without necessarily thinking about where your scribblings would take you.

Today, they’re powerful tools that can change your users’ behaviours. The GOV.UK blogs I oversee from GDS are often gateways that drive our users to the services we build and want citizens to know about. They help us recruit talent into the Civil Service. They help us convince stakeholders that they should work with us. They help us to be transparent and accountable for the work we do.

A blog is not just another place where you recycle your press releases. Far from it – it’s a place where you inform and engage your audience, where you start a conversation and where you encourage specific actions you want your audience to take.

Blogging has undergone – and is still undergoing – an evolution. And to keep up with it, and make the most of what it has to offer, we need to work together as a community. Hence knowledge sharing and capability building events like Blog Camp.

Blog readers are users too

As blog editors, if we want to make the most of the potential that blogging has to offer, we need to recognise that blog readers are users too. So we need to follow the same principles we follow when we build user-friendly services.

One of those principles is: ‘Start with user needs.’ With every blog post we publish, we need to ask ourselves what the user need is.

That’s why as part of my talk at Blog Camp, I challenged my audience to take a look at the last page of their Google Analytics report. That’s where they would find the sad figures showing how few people read the least popular post on their blog.

It’s not an exercise in resilience but a way to learn about what your users don’t need. And it can sometimes tell you more than the thousands of clicks recorded on the most popular posts on your blog.

The bigger picture

At this year’s Blog Camp, we held a number of interactive workshops and show-and-tells.

We discussed the role of social media in engaging our audiences, making data-driven decisions about our content, building blogging into your organisation’s wider communication strategy, and much more.

And we did all this because blogging in government is not an isolated thing or something we do for fun. It’s an important piece of the communication puzzle that – if used right – will help us achieve our wider objectives.  

We’re still learning

Another one of our design principles is: ‘Iterate. Then iterate again.’

Looking at our blogs' Google Analytics reports is part of this process, and so is listening to what our users tell us.

We’re still learning as a community and as we learn, we get better at knowing what our audiences need, what works and what doesn’t, what helps us tell the story of transformation and what’s holding us back.

That’s why hearing what other blog editors across government have learned about their audiences is so valuable.  

Blog Camp is just the beginning

We’re not just iterating our blogs. We’ll also continue to iterate how we share knowledge and build skills in the GOV.UK blogging community.

At this year’s Blog Camp, we held discovery workshops to get the attendees’ ideas for how we can develop and share knowledge more easily in our community.

The workshops were a success, with a number of ideas for how we can get better at blogging, how we can raise standards across the GOV.UK blogging platform, and how we can meet our users’ needs more effectively. I’m confident we’re going to learn a lot from that.

We’re now collating the Blog Camp attendees’ feedback and ideas, and thinking about what’s next. I’m sure I’ll be blogging about the outcomes of this soon.

I’m also hoping that Blog Camp and similar events can equip us with examples and case studies that will contribute to blogging being seen as a valuable tool and something that can continue to transform government communications.

If you manage a GOV.UK blog, you can join the Basecamp group where we share best practice and ideas. Send us an email to request access.

Share your ideas for what makes a successful blog in the comments below. You can also follow Agnieszka on Twitter.

At GDS we’ve been celebrating National Inclusion Week. This year’s theme is ‘Connect for inclusion’, and we’ve been running events and discussing the importance of how we value difference at work and benefit from inclusion.

A fundamental belief at GDS is that an inclusive workplace is one that embraces diversity. And that the characteristics that make us diverse aren’t always visible.

Allowing people to be themselves leaves them feeling empowered, connected to the business and invokes passion to help achieve its aims. People do their best, most creative work when they are free to be themselves. And that means the best things possible get delivered to users.

At GDS – just like in any other workplace – there are things we share and things that make us different from each other. And we all express ourselves in many different ways.

Inclusion is all about embracing those differences. It’s about recognising that:

• inclusion is not just about minorities – it impacts everybody in the workplace because we all have an ethnicity, a gender identity, a sexual orientation and mental health, for example
• inclusion is also about recognising that there is no single factor that guides how someone sees and experiences the world
• inclusion is about respect – respecting the different knowledge, experiences and perspectives that a colleague brings

Navigating different viewpoints

Diversity will mean, in some instances, that there are opposing views to approaches we should take when working together. Inclusive behaviours are about how we collaborate effectively to understand those views and agree on the best course of action to achieve successful outcomes.

For example:

• actively seeking and listening to views or proposals that are different to your own 
• being able to deliver and handle challenge on how we are approaching something

Inclusion builds trust within working relationships and a more connected, accepting and diverse culture.  

What we’re doing to mark National Inclusion Week

To mark this year’s celebration of National Inclusion Week, in addition to our internal workshops and an ‘all staff’ event, we have asked people working at GDS to tell us why an inclusive culture is so important and what it means to them. Here’s what they had to say.

Daniele Occhipinti, Developer, GOV.UK Pay

Inclusion means not to be fooled by superficial differences, but to see what makes all of us extremely similar as human beings. We all strive for happiness, we all experience loss, we all love, we all grow old; those are big things we share. When I think about it in this way, inclusion comes naturally.

Inclusion also means to cherish differences and learn from them. It gives you a warm feeling when your employer values diversity too – it makes me even more proud of my job. I feel diversity in the team reminds us constantly that we can't assume anything about our users and we need to do user research instead.

I try to be myself by being open about my weaknesses, limitations and quirkiness. I want to remind us that it is OK to be yourself, it is OK to be different. I’m a member of the introvert network, which helps empower introvert colleagues. And I volunteer as a coach at codebar when we host the event at GDS. Besides that, I try to help increase diversity in the tech community.

Carrie Hartnell-Grundy, Industry Engagement Manager and Member of the GDS People Board

Inclusion is about getting the best out of people and valuing their input. For me, this isn't just about the obvious – although very important – diversity issues but goes wider than that.

I have always tried to be as inclusive as possible and respect the opinions of everyone in the teams I’ve worked in, regardless of things such as their background or level of experience.

I think inclusion means different things to different people and this is one of the reasons it can be so hard to get it right. But, once you’ve experienced an inclusive environment, you become very clear on what is important for you and how different working in a non-inclusive environment is.

For me, personally, I have had two wonderful experiences at GDS. The first has been the flexibility provided by my employer, which has enabled me to easily return to work after having my daughter. And the understanding that just because you aren't at your desk from 9 to 5, or working 5 days a week doesn't mean you aren't delivering.

But the biggest change from my previous jobs has been around my disability. I have epilepsy and I haven't really expressed it as a disability to myself before but more recently I have had to as it has been more prevalent. My team, line manager and programme have been amazing at supporting me. I have never felt like it has affected their view of me or my ability to do my job and this has made it easier to be open and comfortable when asking for help. I can't thank them enough for this, as it has helped me regain more of my confidence around what can sometimes be quite a scary time.

Fliss Bennée, Senior Policy Advisor

Without diversity within an organisation there is less experience for the organisation to draw on when an issue arises. So the positive impact of diversity in GDS is that we can create communities of minority interest whose members can raise issues that may have been missed.

Our People team can then take that on board and change the way we operate to ensure we're more inclusive. A great example is that we've started to have more social events that aren't centred around pubs or bars, which is more inclusive to some.  

I try to ensure that whenever I’m organising a meeting for work, I cast a wide net, allowing people to respond in different ways. I give enough notice so that those on flexi-time or working as part of job shares can respond, and I try not to force people to respond in front of others. If people can't attend in person or remotely, but are interested, I try to make sure there's a clear way for them to provide statements beforehand and to feed back the results.

As I'm recovering from physical and mental health crises, I am working from home more than I do usually. My new team have often rearranged their meetings so as to include me, and are going out of their way to ensure that I'm invited to social and work events – while at the same time making sure I know that I'm under no pressure to attend if I don't feel up to it!

Alistair Duggin, Head of Accessibility

The Accessibility team at GDS work hard to ensure that accessibility is at the forefront of people’s minds when building digital services. In the UK, 1 in 5 people have a disability. This could be visual, hearing, motor or cognitive, affecting memory and thinking.

We want accessibility to be at the heart of designing and delivering government services to empower more people to access them independently. Accessible design is about building more streamlined, thoughtful and empathetic services that are better for everyone.

Chris Ferguson, Director for National, International and Research

As the introvert champion, I've enjoyed working with Ben Daniels and Tara Stockford to establish introversion as a mainstream diversity issue in GDS in a way that has not happened before.

We've been able to influence the design of away days and have developed an interview practice group. We've also established a small library of books on introversion and personal effectiveness for introverts.

We're now exploring how best to organise small gatherings for our growing community to discuss specific issues raised by our working environment.

What does inclusion mean to you? Let us know by leaving a comment below. You can follow Tia on Twitter. 

The Digital Service Standard came into force in April 2014. It exists to help government build and run effective, user-focused digital services. All public-facing transactional services must meet the Digital Service Standard, and there have been hundreds of assessments against it since it was introduced.

We last updated the Standard in 2015, when we reduced its 26 points to the 18 we have now. Since then, things have moved on.

As the name suggests, the current Digital Service Standard focuses on transactional digital services – the interactive digital parts of the service. It doesn’t look at other elements of the end-to-end service.

But the way government thinks about services is changing. We’re moving from looking at isolated transactions to looking at whole, end-to-end services. Services as users understand them. Such as learning to drive, or starting a business. This is highlighted by a commitment in the Government Transformation Strategy to design and deliver joined-up services.

Government needs a standard that will support and encourage this next phase of work.

What we’ve done so far

We’ve spoken to people inside and outside GDS, including the cross-government service assessors network.

Based on those conversations, we’ve developed some ideas on how to take the standard forward. Now we want to do some wider consultation with people involved in delivering government services.

From transactions to end-to-end services

We’re looking at how a revised standard could help encourage service teams to bring operational colleagues into their decision-making. So there are more opportunities for caseworkers, call centre staff and other operational specialists to use their knowledge and expertise to help shape services.

We want to make it clear that everything the user interacts with is part of the service – the content on GOV.UK as well as the transactional part of the service. And we’re looking at how we can make transforming back-end technology and processes part of the picture.

To do this, we want to make solving the right problem and getting the parameters or scope of your service right an explicit part of the standard.

To reflect this approach, we plan to change the the name of the standard: from the ‘Digital Service Standard’ to the ‘Government Service Standard’.

Responding to new developments

Since the last version of the standard was published, government has introduced registers – authoritative data sets that can help form the infrastructure that underpins government services. Plus common components to help teams build services more efficiently, like GOV.UK Pay and GOV.UK Notify.

We want the new version of the standard to make it clear when it’s appropriate to make use of registers, common platforms, components and patterns.

And we want to put more emphasis on setting up your service so it’s as easy as possible to reconfigure, to meet changing user needs and adapt to new technologies.

Helping service teams to meet the new standard

We’ll prioritise producing guidance and patterns to help service teams meet the new version of the standard. And we’ll make sure guidance is structured so they support good decision-making by service teams at all levels of experience.

Legacy is a big challenge for many government services. Not just legacy technology: there’s a lot of legacy content on GOV.UK, for example.

For service teams dealing with significant legacy problems, it may not make sense to transform everything at once. In some situations, an ‘archaeological’ approach might work better: uncovering and fixing the layers of complexity one at a time.

Get involved

We’re keen to get your feedback. So if you work on government services, please sign up for one of the workshops we’re running in October:

We’re planning to run three workshops on the proposed changes to the Standard:

• 13 October, 12.30pm - 5pm, London
• 17 October, 12.30pm - 5pm, Sheffield
• 23 October, 2pm - 5pm, Newport

Or if you can’t make it, join the email discussion group.

We’ll be sharing our findings after the workshops.

On 11 September, GDS and Crown Commercial Service (CCS) hosted the ‘Open Procurement for a Digital Government’ event.

Hosted at Digital Catapult, the event brought together digital, data and technology specialists from across the public sector and industry.

We talked about how procurement and contracting could be made more effective for a digital government.

I wanted this event, and the work that it’s supporting, to follow the lead and principles of the OneTeamGov movement to:

• work in the open and positively
• take practical action
• experiment and iterate
• be diverse and inclusive
• care deeply about citizens
• work across borders
• embrace technology

So long, silos.

John Manzoni, Chief Executive of the Civil Service, gave the introductory talk. He stated the need for government to transform and innovate.

Transformation is at the heart of the changes we want to enact. We must break down silos and work more collaboratively, with a more focused approach to sharing data.

The discussion continued in a Q&A session.

The audience asked how government procurement data could be opened up. They also asked how to improve opportunities for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to sell to government. Many of these questions formed the themes for the day’s sessions and provided further scope for discussion.

Joining me (far right) on the panel (from left to right) was Niall Quinn, Director Technology Strategic Category, Crown Commercial Service; Jeni Tennison, CEO, Open Data Institute; Emma Jones, Small Business Crown Representative.

Going global

Caroline Nokes, Minister for Government Resilience and Efficiency, gave the keynote. She highlighted the continued need to provide “easy and accessible routes” to selling to the public sector for SMEs.

She also spoke of the importance for government to attract the "right suppliers": ones who work in the right ways, providing the right products, services and skills to deliver successful public sector programmes and projects together.

Caroline Nokes, Minister for Government Resilience and Efficiency

We also celebrated the potential global expansion of the Digital Marketplace as funding was secured from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as part of their work on anti-corruption.

This development should support emerging economies to deliver better public services and reform their digital and technology procurement. It will also create more business opportunities where UK suppliers can export their expertise. I’ll talk more about this in future blog posts.

An unconference

The rest of the day took the form of an unconference. We had 16, 45-minute breakout sessions to tackle issues, questions and topics including capability building, tackling corruption and fraud, supplier engagement and innovation.

The unconference proved engaging and useful:

"The event showcased the need to develop better ‘digital’ ways to interact with suppliers, before, during and after the procurement process. As a result of this day I'd like to see a published set of recommended practices for digital engagement in the procurement process."

Paul Drake, Head of Procurement, Hertfordshire County Council

"Hearing about HS2's approach to procurement at the event definitely gave some food for thought. I had some good conversations with people I don't see too often - and the whole day reminded me of GovCamp! The event confirmed that there remains much enthusiasm for the topic and that everyone seems willing to try new things. I hope that there are more events like this, more regularly, and more tightly scoped to figuring out the answers to specific problems - otherwise we're at risk of discussing the same stuff over and over."

Harry Metcalfe, Founder and Managing Director, dxw

"The event was my first experience of an unconference- and I thought the format was great. With all attendees being able to contribute to the agenda, as a policy maker it was a fantastic window into the experiences of a wide range of suppliers, large and small (whom I don’t come into contact with much at Treasury).

And as well as breaking down ‘the problem’, there were lots of new ideas and put forward at the event about how to make sure the interface between Government and digital businesses is as dynamic as it needs to be. Overall, really informative and interesting."

India Barker, Policy Adviser, Public Spending Group, HM Treasury

International trade

The day ended with a session run by Dylan Thomas, Director of Technology and Smart Cities at the Department for International Trade.

He talked about the huge overseas opportunities for the digital, data and technology suppliers who are successfully delivering to the UK government through the Digital Marketplace.

Dylan’s working to promote these companies, to help them win business in overseas priority markets such as Singapore, Australia and South Korea.

Wider discussions and practical actions

Every year, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Working Party of Digital Government Officials (known as ‘E-Leaders’) gather to discuss opportunities, priorities and strategies on how to improve and boost digital government in member and partner countries.

Last week, Chris Ferguson (GDS Director for the National, International and Research Group), Chad Bond (GDS Deputy Director, Standards Assurance) and I attended the OECD E-Leaders 2017, which focused on the digital transformation of the public sector.

The ‘E-Leaders’ thematic group I lead is drafting a playbook for procurement reform. It will help public sector organisations to approach digital, data and technology procurement as commissioners. It will be open source to allow updates.

Chad and I presented the high-level findings from our group’s discussions so far with our counterparts in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Chile. This was very well received and followed by lively questions, answers and recommendations.

What’s next?

We are now looking over our findings from the events in the UK, New Zealand and Canada to further develop the procurement reform playbook.

I want to make sure that we do this openly in ways which benefit buyers and suppliers. I’ll be creating a working group with representatives from across the governments and industries of the contributing nations, to critique and inform our decisions as we work towards a first draft. We’ll aim to publish public consultations in our respective nations in the coming quarter.

If you would like to be involved in the working group, get in touch by filling in this form or comment below.

We believe that having an inclusive and diverse team makes GDS better and more effective. We’ve posted before about why an inclusive culture is so important.

Inclusion is about allowing people to be themselves at work, and embracing everyone’s differences. It’s not just about minorities, gender or sexual orientation – it’s about accepting and respecting everyone for who they are. And that includes mental health.

Everyone has mental health, just as we all have physical health. And most of us experience poor mental health sometimes. It might just be a bad day or feeling stressed, but it can also mean a longer-term mental health problem.

We have a responsibility to make sure GDS is a healthy place to work, where everyone feels able to talk about their mental health and ask for support if they need it.  

The GDS Mental Health Network

Back in September 2016, David Heath held two sessions on mental health as part of the GDS unconference. They were really popular and generated lots of discussion about how mental health issues can affect us at work and what we could do together to make GDS a more supportive and healthy place. We formed the GDS Mental Health Network as a result.

What we’re working on

The network is focused on improving support for anyone at GDS who is affected by poor mental health (whether directly or indirectly), and protecting and promoting good mental health for everyone.

To do this, we’ve been working on a number of different initiatives, including:

• training GDS staff to become mental health first aiders
• ensuring line managers are trained to effectively support their line reports’ mental health and wellbeing
• hosting talks on a variety of mental health issues
• setting up a Slack channel where members of the network can talk about mental health, share their experiences and ask for support
• promoting the support that is already available for GDS staff – like the Cabinet Office’s confidential listening service, and counselling and resources available through the employee assistance programme
• promoting positive mental health messages within GDS – more on this below

We’re lucky to have Nic Harrison, Director of Service Design and Assurance, as the GDS Mental Health Champion. He’s supporting us to achieve these goals because he wants to make sure that GDS is a place where people can be themselves, are able to speak honestly about how they’re feeling and are supported by their colleagues and line managers.  

Rupert McNeil, Chief People Officer for the Civil Service, came to GDS to speak with us about mental health and wellbeing within the Civil Service.

Mental health messages

We were keen to spread the word about the network and our aims within GDS. We also wanted to find a way to promote positive wellbeing, provide comfort to people who might be having a bad moment at work, and encourage people to talk about mental health.

The network came up with a list of mental health messages – some of which took inspiration from the GDS ‘It’s ok’ poster and Alyson Fielding’s practical action stickers. We voted for the messages that spoke to us the most, and shared them on the laptops and walls of GDS.

It’s ok to talk about mental health

We all find it hard to talk about our mental health at times. Whether it’s because we’re worried we’ll be judged, or it’s difficult to put into words, talking can be tough.

We think it’s extra important to remember you’re always allowed to talk about what you’re feeling – even at work.

It’s ok to not be ok

Everyone has good days and bad days, and if you’re having a bad day there’s nothing wrong or weak or lazy about that. It’s just a bad day. You’re allowed to not be ok.

It’s ok to ask for help

If you’re struggling, often the hardest thing to do is to speak to someone about it. But talking about it with a friend, colleague or your line manager can be the first step towards getting support.

You deserve support, and it’s never weak or wrong to ask for it.

Be excellent to each other

You never know what else is going on with the people you work with. Our colleagues are human beings who may be suffering, or having a bad time.

Being supportive, empathetic and respectful of each other can make a huge difference to how able we are to manage our mental health at work.

Breathe…

Taking regular breaks is really important for wellbeing. If you’re having a difficult moment, taking a step away from your current environment can help you to find some calm and perspective. And you might find things like breathing exercises, meditation or mindfulness can help your mental health and build resilience.

Done is better than perfect

You might find you set yourself unreasonably high expectations and end up feeling anxious or like a failure if you can’t do everything perfectly – even if you’ve still achieved something really great. Remembering that you don’t have to be perfect to do a good job can make a big difference to your mental health at work.

Download the designs

You can download the sticker designs and the poster designs to print your own.

Help and information

If you’re affected by any of the issues raised in this post, please know that you are not alone – it’s ok to ask for help.

You can call the Samaritans any time of day or night on 116 123 or email them.

You can also find information and resources online:

• Mind’s guide to being mentally healthy at work
• Rethink Mental Illness’ advice and information

We want to make it easier for users to find what they need on GOV.UK. To achieve this, we are:

• grouping all GOV.UK content into subject-based categories (creating a taxonomy)
• improving the content that sits within the taxonomy – because content that’s poorly titled, duplicative or in the wrong format is hard to find, no matter how good the taxonomy

We started by dividing the site into broad subject areas, such as education, transport and ‘coming to the UK’ (visas and immigration). These ‘themes’ will not necessarily be top-level categories in the new navigation; they’re simply a means of breaking the site into more manageable chunks for us to tackle.

We’ve already transformed education content, and in April we started on the transport theme.

All aboard

We at GDS obviously can’t do this alone. We need to work closely with the departments and agencies that own GOV.UK content.

For the transport theme, that means partnering with the Department for Transport (DfT) and its agencies.

DfT was keen to get involved, and confident that its agencies would be able to contribute people and time to the project. We soon agreed our approach with Sioned James, Head of Content and Digital at DfT, and Gavin Dispain, Digital Editorial and Publishing Manager. A memorandum of understanding was signed and work began.

Our route

We’ve broken the transport content transformation project into stages:

1. Create an inventory of all the content in the theme.
2. Audit the content (excluding some formats – news, for example – that we wouldn’t want to change retrospectively).
3. Improve the content (where necessary).
4. Tag the content to the new taxonomy and republish.

We also created the taxonomy to classify the content, which involves 4 steps:

1. Generate a list of terms to describe the content.
2. Group those terms into a rough taxonomy.
3. Do user research to understand how users of transport information think about it (what tasks they need to complete, what words they use to describe their work, and so on), then feed that learning into the creation of the taxonomy.
4. Iterate and validate that taxonomy by testing it with users.

The journey begins

We began by running a ‘discovery’. Gavin came to work with us at GDS so that we could:

• validate the inventory of transport content
• agree the content types in scope for audit (mainly guidance)
• review the questions we were asking in audits
• audit some of the content to see how quickly it could be done

We audited a ‘sub-theme’ of transport – rail content. We discovered we could audit more quickly than expected and finished in under a week, giving us time to also complete an audit of aviation content.

Next, we ran a ‘user identification workshop’, which doubled as a kick-off meeting for DfT’s agencies. We had both content designers and subject matter experts at the meeting.

After presenting an overview of the project, we ran an exercise to generate a list of user groups from across the transport domain. We needed this for planning user research.

We were now ready for DfT and its agencies to start auditing their content. We ran a series of one-day training sessions to introduce content designers to the process.

Once auditing began, we in GDS reviewed progress and ‘spot-checked’ audits to ensure consistency of approach across the agencies. We ran internal ‘content clinics’ to discuss tricky content issues that we would need to advise agencies on.

Get me a taxonomy

In parallel with the auditing, we started work on creating a taxonomy for transport content.

We didn’t want to review all the many thousands of transport-related content items to come up with terms to describe it. That would have taken far too much time (and would have driven us mad).

Instead, some of our developers figured out how to create a 950-item list of transport content that contained a high variety of subject matter. In other words, we minimised the duplication of similar content items. This allowed us to generate a reasonably comprehensive list of terms to describe all transport content without reading all of it.

The result was 650 unique terms, like ‘driving licences’, ‘bus regulation’ and ‘maritime training’.

Next, we grouped the terms. We printed each one on a card, laid them on a big table and arranged them into groups of similar terms. The results were transferred into a spreadsheet to create our – very rough, very flat – draft taxonomy, which we’ll start testing with real users over the coming 3 months.

We’ve also been conducting interviews with some of the user groups identified in the session at DfT: driving instructors, MOT testers and a pilot, among others. We want to understand their information needs, the language they use and the tasks they need to complete.

How far we’ve travelled

Our goal for April to June was to audit 2 transport sub-themes. Thanks to the tremendous efforts of content designers in DfT and the agencies, we came close to completing all 10 – and did complete them before the end of July, with 7,396 items audited.

Our other goal was to have a draft taxonomy for testing with users, and to start research to understand their needs. Destination reached: the taxonomy has been refined after testing with users and stakeholders, and DfT and its agencies will start tagging content very soon.

The onward journey

Now the audits are done, the hard work has really begun: making the improvements to content identified during the audit phase. DfT and its agencies are phasing  this work so the things that matter most for making the content findable – titles, summaries and correct content types – are fixed first.

Our next trip

DfT and its agencies have done great work on this transformation theme. And, working with UK Visas and Immigration, we’ve also made great progress on the ‘coming to the UK’ theme.

We’ve learned a great deal about doing large-scale content improvement and creating taxonomies. Between October and December we’re going to use this learning to turn content transformation into a product: a standardised set of tools, guidance, training and other resources that we can hand over to government departments and agencies to allow them to manage the process themselves. Watch this space!

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Kevin Cunnington, Director General, GDS

Five years ago, with agencies and other departments, GDS took 2,000 government sites and turned them into a single publishing platform. We consolidated and simplified content, and turned it into tools where appropriate. It saved time, it saved money and it brought government together.

Kevin Cunnington

This work has been cutting-edge and award-winning. Since its launch, GOV.UK has redefined how a modern government should serve its people. Crucially it prepared us for the work we’re doing today. It is a strong foundation on which we continue to build, develop and look to the future.

GOV.UK provides us a unique insight into what our citizens want to know about. We continue to measure where we are successful and where we could improve the user experience. We’re planning for the future. We are in the early stages of experimenting with machine learning to gain new insights.

So to all those who have brought us to this point, thank you. The work of a digital government never stops, so here’s to the next five years.

Caroline Nokes, Minister for Government Resilience and Efficiency

Caroline Nokes

Five years on from its launch, GOV.UK has succeeded in becoming the single online point of access for government services and guidance. The commitment to continuous improvement means that GOV.UK isn’t just a website, it is a world leader in digital government. I am excited to see how the platform adapts to the changing technological landscape.

Those who have worked and continue to work on GOV.UK have my thanks, the thanks of the country and my congratulations. I have every confidence that five years from now, the UK government will remain the most digitally advanced in the world.

Trisha Doyle, Head of Content Design, GDS

Trisha Doyle

GOV.UK is the reason I wanted to work in government and I feel proud that I'm part of something that's made a difference. I'm delighted to lead the cross-government content community who work incredibly hard on GOV.UK to make things better for users.

I'm excited about our next big challenge: helping the community play a central role in building end-to-end services.

Content Design Team, Digital Transformation Agency, Australian Government

Congratulations on 5 brave years of digital trailblazing. Your work is an ongoing source of inspiration and reference that is always our first go-to.

Thank you for never being too busy to answer our questions or do an early cross-hemisphere hang-out – even before you’ve had your morning coffees. We are deeply grateful for your generosity in sharing your experience.

Neil Williams, Head of GOV.UK, GDS

Neil Williams

I’ve celebrated all 5 of GOV.UK’s birthdays and while so much has changed in that time, one thing stays the same: the commitment, passion and talent of the people who come to work here to keep making government simpler, clearer and faster for users every day. They make my job easy.

It’s a delight and a privilege to work with them, on this vitally important product, and I’m immensely proud of everything we’ve achieved and learned together in the past 5 years. And the work we’re doing now is just as groundbreaking and exciting as it was back then, so watch this space!

Marian Foley, Content Designer, GDS

I moved to GOV.UK at the end of August. I've wanted to work here since I became a content designer because it's always seemed like a centre of excellence.

It's such a supportive and collaborative environment to work in – everyone's encouraged to be the best version of themselves, which lets us do the best job we can for users.

Nick Johnstone-Waddell, Public and Professional Information Lead, PHE Screening

Professional content related to the NHS screening programmes moved onto GOV.UK in June 2015. This was a huge change for tens of thousands of professionals delivering screening services, who were understandably wary, especially as GOV.UK didn’t look like any website they were used to!

After some initial scepticism, though, the transition has been a great success and GOV.UK has had a truly transformative effect on how we work in Public Health England (PHE) to produce and maintain high quality content.

In particular, the focus on user needs has helped us to streamline and rewrite our content, better supporting busy professionals in frontline NHS services. And our PHE Screening blog has massively improved how we communicate, made us more open and transparent, and led to a new culture of sharing and engaging with our stakeholders.

Simon Cole QPM, Chief Constable, Leicestershire Police

As the world becomes more and more digital, GOV.UK has lead the way. As a citizen I have found it to be user-friendly; as a police officer, it has led the way for the digital public contact programme for policing.

Clare Moriarty, Permanent Secretary, Defra

Clare Moriarty. Photo credit: Civil Service World

The Defra Group is made up of more than 30 organisations. With the launch of GOV.UK 5 years ago, we were able to pull their individual websites together into one single government domain.

It’s meant that our users now have a simpler, more joined-up service, and it continues to be a driving force in our transformation today. Happy birthday GOV.UK!

Corporate Communications Team, Sellafield Ltd

Working with GDS to transition to GOV.UK hasn’t just given us a website that is performing better than our previous stand-alone site, but also an awareness of user needs and plain English that is filtering through to all of our communication and engagement activities.

I can honestly say that our experience as a completely new organisation to GOV.UK was excellent. We were initially sceptical of the whole transition programme but within a week of working with the team, there was definitely a lightbulb moment for us, and – as they say – ‘the rest is history’.

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The GDS Accessibility team is here to make it easier for departments to build digital services that are accessible for everyone.

We want to ensure that there are no barriers that might prevent anyone from accessing a digital service. This means people who are hard of hearing or have visual, cognitive or motor impairments. But beyond that, it means all users – not just those with permanent disabilities.

You might, for example, be trying to listen to a piece of content in a noisy office. Or trying to read something on a screen which has the sun shining directly onto it. You might have a temporary impairment, such as an ear infection or a broken arm. Or you may, as you grow older, develop a permanent impairment.

Making services accessible means making them better for all of us. Watch this video to find out more about what we mean when we talk about accessibility:

The challenges service teams face

Last year we carried out research into how government service teams were approaching accessibility and the challenges they faced.

One of the things we found was that while there were lots of detailed specifications available around accessibility, it was difficult to know how to put them into action when designing and building government services.

This meant that service teams might struggle to understand what they need to do to make their service accessible. This could lead to accessibility being treated as a bolt-on rather than an intrinsic part of service design. And this, in turn, could lead to increased costs if accessibility issues were discovered late in the process, and heightened risks of excluding people from accessing services.

While making sure your service is accessible is part of the Digital Service Standard, we found that the specific requirements weren’t as clear or straightforward as they could be. This meant that teams lacked a clear mandate for dedicating resource and time to delivering against the requirements.

Government has a legal obligation to make its digital services accessible to everyone under the Equality Act 2010. The UK is also signed up to incoming European Union directive on public sector website accessibility. This is due to become law in the next 12 months and will, among other things, require government to report on whether or not their digital services are accessible.

This means it’s vital that we make accessibility as clear and easy as possible for service teams. So we’re updating the accessibility guidance in the Service Manual. We’re making it simpler, clearer and easier to understand.

The guidance

We’ve published a series of guides, including an introduction to making your service accessible and a guide to testing for accessibility. These include guidance on how to deal with accessibility in the discovery, alpha, beta and live stages of a project, and how to understand the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0).

The guidance is based on findings from our discovery user research. We spoke to teams across 8 departments and agencies – including GDS. The people we spoke to included developers, user researchers, product owners and service assessors.

We’ve also included insight from subject matter experts in the cross-government accessibility community and results from new pieces of research we’ve carried out.

For the first time, the new guidance clearly articulates accessibility requirements for digital government services.

The guidance states that digital services should:

• meet level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines as a minimum
• work on the most commonly used assistive technologies, including screen magnifiers, screen readers and speech recognition tools
• include people with disabilities in user research

It’s important to note that these requirements are not new. But this is the first time that they have been clearly stated in one place in guidance.

This makes it clear for service teams to understand what they need to do to make an accessible service and for service assessors to know what to look for.

Supporting the guidance

The guides we’ve published are just the beginning. We’ll be publishing more soon, including guidance written specifically for different job roles. This will help people understand the specific role that they can play, making accessibility the whole team’s responsibility.

And we know that guidance on its own is not enough. People need to feel confident and comfortable dealing with accessibility issues. They need to be able to ask questions and seek advice.

This is why we’ll continue to grow the cross-government accessibility community, which currently has more than 620 members. We’re talking to other heads of communities to make sure accessibility is embedded in every aspect of service design. We’re also working with the GDS Academy to embed accessibility into the training that they offer service teams.

All government departments have now nominated an accessibility lead to champion best practice building digital services, and this group will meet regularly to discuss accessibility issues.

Making things accessible is the job of all of us. And only by working together and supporting each other can we ensure that government services are accessible by default.

You can find guidance on how to make your service accessible in the Service Manual:

Making your service accessible: an introduction

You can also find out more about the four principles of digital accessibility in this video:

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There are 4 vacancies on the Open Standards Board. We want expert volunteers from outside government to take part in this important work. Interested? Read on to find out more...

The Open Standards Board takes part in online discussions, and meets up to twice a year to make the final decisions on which open standards should be adopted in government. These standards tell government development teams how to connect software together or how to structure data. The Open Standards Board was set up by the Public Expenditure Committee (Efficiency Reform).

Watch the video below to find out more about open standards.

Open standards are a key part of the Government Transformation Strategy as they support shared platforms and reusable business capabilities.

Being part of the Open Standards Board is a rewarding role as you’ll help solve a diverse range of problems. For example, we have recently mandated standards for open contracting, international aid, job advertising and location data. We have more standard ‘challenges’ in the pipeline and that’s why we need your expertise.

Criteria for entry

To become a Board member you must:

• have a senior job role (technical architect or above)
• have a strong technical understanding of modern internet standards
• volunteer for at least 2.5 days a year to attend Board meetings and examine standards before they are adopted
• be available for other meetings that may require your expertise

You can view a list of current Board members.

How to apply

Complete this form to apply. Applications close on 25 November 2017.

Selection process

A panel will select successful candidates by taking into account their experience of building standards-based services and systems. The appointments panel will be chaired by the National Technology Adviser – Liam Maxwell.

Commitment to diversity

The Civil Service is committed to providing services that embrace diversity and promote equality of opportunity. We want our Board to reflect our society and its values.

More information

For more details about Board membership you can:

• read the appointment's description
• look at the Board terms of reference
• see the current Board members
• read the minutes of previous Board meetings
• complete this form to apply

If you have any questions please email the Open Standards team.

The GDS Academy, DWP and HMRC recently ran an internship programme with 3 universities.

Students from University of Leeds, University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University attended an 8-week course designed to develop digital skills and showcase the Civil Service as a career option.

We joined up with other government departments to deliver this programme in order to build Digital, Data and Technology capability across the Civil Service. This is one of the main priorities of the Government Transformation Strategy published earlier this year.

The programme

The internship  programme, developed by the GDS Academy, included training and a 4-week placement on a digital service in a government department. It also included a 2-week team project in which interns developed an online tool prototype for a specific public service.

The internship programme developed from a pilot trialled in 2016. It allowed us to build a comprehensive scheme that can be extended to several universities and government departments.

Government as a career option

"Working in government completely surpassed my expectations. Everyone seemed passionate about what they do, dynamic and fun", said Isabelle from University of Manchester.

Ola, a student at University of Leeds, added:

I had no idea what it was like to work in the Civil Service and this felt like a great way to enrich my understanding. I worked directly with two outstanding user researchers at the DWP digital hub. I was under the impression government would have a traditional way of working in a slow-paced environment. My preconceptions were thrown out the window.

Immersion into digital government

"I worked at the DWP digital hub in Leeds and was involved in the service designed to make the transition to Universal Credit as smooth as possible for jobcentres" explains Seb, a student at University of Leeds. "I study History and Spanish but applied for the internship to learn more about technology and digital. It’s been a great experience. The best lesson has been the importance of simplicity when designing government services."

"In the space of 8 weeks I’ve attended the Academy’s Digital & Agile Foundation Course, worked with HMRC and GDS on digital projects in a collaborative Civil Service environment", said Martin, a student at University of Leeds.

"I had the unique opportunity to gain an insight into the development of digital projects in the Civil Service. The new skills and knowledge I’ve acquired and put in practice on a live HMRC project will be useful for a future career in digital. The GDS Academy internship has been a fantastic journey."

Showcasing their success

To show the government's support for the interns and give them the opportunity to showcase what they have achieved in a short period of time, the GDS Academy set up two presentation sessions in Leeds and Stockport, where the students presented their project to a university and government audience.

Kevin Cunnington, Director General of GDS and Head of the Digital, Data and Technology Profession, attended the presentation in Leeds. He said:

This is a great example of how we are collaborating to build the digitally skilled Civil Service of tomorrow and deliver the Civil Service vision. Our capability programme is going full steam ahead and what we do today will make a significant difference tomorrow.

The interns from University of Leeds presented their 8-week project to guests, including GDS’s Kevin Cunnington, at the GDS Academy.

Building a brilliant Civil Service for Digital, Data and Technology

Paula Newman, Senior Project Manager at HMRC Digital recalled:

Having the interns work on real-life projects gave them responsibility and ownership. They rose to the challenge and gave us a refreshing insight into how HMRC could benefit from their talents in our increasingly digital world. They were brilliant.

Sally Hudson, Product Owner, Prepare for Universal Credit service at DWP:

We all benefited from the internship programme. Our interns worked on current digital services, learning new techniques, such as prototyping, user research and data analysis. They made an immediate difference with the outputs of their work.

Judith Kendall, Demand Manager at the GDS Academy:

There’s an awful lot of work going on behind the scenes to run this programme. However, the students have amazed us. It makes all the hard work worthwhile, a truly valuable investment into building our brilliant, digitally-skilled Civil Service.

What the universities said

Sarah Goldstone, Work Placement Project Officer, University of Leeds:

The flexibility, trust and sharing of expertise allowed parties to explore ideas and evolve the project to bring mutual benefit. We supported each other, learnt about respective procedures and shared a desire to create a positive student experience.

Graham Jackson, Employability Executive, University of Manchester:

Our first cohort of our students worked on a real, live project at HRMC. It was a privilege to see how much they gained during their placement. The enthusiasm from each student really shone through and their feedback has been really positive about the scheme, working in digital government and the Civil Service.

Iona Foden-Norris, Talent Match Manager, Manchester Metropolitan University:

When I spoke to our student, she talked about how much value she had gained from the programme. It really sounds like this internship will help her to get a sandwich year placement as she now has lots of examples to draw upon that will give her an edge on other applicants.

The GDS Academy is planning to extend the project to further departments across the country, and hoping that more universities can get involved as well. Please email us if you’d be interested in taking part.

To find out more or book a course, visit our new website. You can also follow us on Twitter.

We’ve been developing a new design system for government services.

GOV.UK Design System will contain all the styles, components and design patterns that teams in government need to create user-centred digital services.

Some of these things can already be found in the Service Manual, GOV.UK Elements and elsewhere, but we want to bring everything together in one place and make it easy for people to find, use and contribute to.

We want GOV.UK Design System to be a resource that can be used across government. To provide styles, components and patterns that are accessible, high quality and consistent. By doing this, we can make it easier and quicker for teams to design and build services, and enable them to spend more time tackling bigger design challenges.

GOV.UK Design System recently passed its alpha assessment, so we’re now building the platform and planning how to run the service for real.

Here’s what we’ve done so far and what we plan to do next.

Strong foundations

The Design System is the culmination of a lot of work we’ve done to improve and consolidate the patterns and components that are already available.

Last year we built an alpha version of GOV.UK Frontend, which will be a single resource that service teams in government can use to implement frontend code.

We continued to publish new patterns in the Service Manual – such as task list and check before you start.

And we held a cross-government show and tell where departments shared their work on design systems, looked at the different approaches and highlighted common challenges.

It became clear from the show and tell that although different departments were working on their own systems, we were all reaching maturity at the same time and were ready to start working together.

We all saw the benefits of working towards a single, federated design system, where people get to develop their own patterns and contribute them back to the main collection.

This is what we are working towards with GOV.UK Design System.

Testing and prototyping

During the alpha phase of the project we developed a prototype to help us do user research and test our ideas.

We spoke to users from different communities of practice, including designers, developers and user researchers. We spoke to people from a range of government departments, agencies and external suppliers.

Their feedback, in usability research, interviews, workshops and surveys, helped us iterate the prototype, improving its navigation, structure, content and features.

During alpha, we went from 5 categories down to 3, identified the information users need in order to use patterns and components, simplified the navigation and added aliases to our search, so that people can search using terms they are familiar with. We also thought about how we’d support people using the service.

Alias means users can search using the terms they’re familiar with.

Building in beta

Now we’re in beta, the first step is to create an initial version of the Design System and populate it with all the existing styles, components and patterns. We’ll use this to test and iterate the platform.

We’re also further developing GOV.UK Frontend and looking at linking between it and the Design System, integrating frontend components into the Design System.

We’re looking for service teams to work with as part of our private (invite-only) beta. We want to understand what’s working well and what we can improve. If you’d like to be involved in private beta research, please get in touch.

We’ll also be piloting different models for supporting and assuring contributions to the Design System from around government.

Ultimately, we want GOV.UK Design System to be something that is owned by the people who use it.

Preparing for launch

Once we’re happy that the GOV.UK Design System is good enough we’ll roll it out as a public beta for everyone to try out.

In the meantime, you should continue to use the design patterns, components and styles found in the Service Manual and GOV.UK Elements.

If you’d like to know more, or would like to talk to us about getting involved in private beta research, please get in touch.

One of the talks that took place at GDS during this year’s Black History Month.

We’re the co-founders and co-chairs of the GDS Black Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) staff network. In this blog post, we want to share why we started GDSBAME last year, and where we are a year on.

Until the launch of the network, there was no specific channel for the BAME community at GDS, or opportunity to promote awareness. With relatively few BAME role models at the senior levels of the organisation, it can be difficult for people to imagine themselves progressing within GDS.

That’s why it’s really important to make everyone feel included by giving underrepresented groups like BAME employees a voice. It’s also important they have a forum to network and exchange ideas, solutions and experiences. This was the motivation for founding GDSBAME.

How GDSBAME began

The idea of setting up a network and platform for BAME colleagues came by chance through a conversation between the four of us at lunch.

As a collective who actively identify with our Asian and Afro-Caribbean heritage, we saw an opportunity to raise the profile of cultural diversity.

So, in true GDS style, we ran a workshop from the perspective of potential BAME network members.

We invited colleagues from across GDS to hear their opinions and to learn what they would like to get out of such a network. The session helped us set our goals. It also shaped the network’s objectives as being a space for BAME colleagues to have a voice.

Here are the three main things that came out of our workshop:

1. more visibility for BAME role models and inspirational speakers
2. more learning and development opportunities for the BAME community
3. a desire to raise cultural awareness within GDS

An art gallery was set up in the office to celebrate Black History Month.

What we’ve achieved this year

GDS is one of Top 100 Employers for Race

We’re proud to announce that this year, GDS has been named as one of the Top 100 Employers for Race by Business in the Community. With the work that the network is planning, we hope to continue to build on this achievement.

The highlights

One of our highlights over the past year has been representing GDSBAME at this year’s UKGovcamp unconference, where we ran a session on why diversity matters. This gave us the opportunity to influence both organisational and cross-governmental change.

We’ve also done a range of other things to influence and change culture throughout GDS.

We’ve ensured that all recruitment panels at GDS have BAME representation.

We’ve piloted BAME-specific unconscious bias and assertiveness training to colleagues, and we’re now looking at the next iteration of the training.

Black History Month was also celebrated in GDS for the first time in October. It was a successful month, with a series of activities and events.

Black History Month celebrations.

We’ve also been raising awareness of religious events, such as Eid, Ramadan and Diwali, through show and tells, documentaries and ‘lunch and learns’.

We’ve hosted inspirational speakers as part of our speaker series this year. We’ve invited leaders from across the public and private sectors to speak to us about their careers.

We’ve collaborated with other networks and groups across GDS, including the charity group, the mental health network and the women’s network, to deliver events.

Our work continues

There’s still a lot to do, and organisational change does not happen overnight. But, with the right support and strategy in place, change is possible.

For example, there are relatively few BAME role models at the senior levels of the organisation. Representation makes a big difference, and our strategic aims will really only be achieved when people start to see visible change and support at senior level. Our strategy will help us drive change in GDS, and ensure we give the right support to leaders and managers who are implementing it.  

Here’s what we’ve got planned for the year ahead.

Plans for an advisory board

GDSBAME will host an advisory board with diversity experts from various high-profile organisations that are paving the way in creating inclusive environments in their workplaces and in their careers.

School and college projects

We’ll be creating a pipeline of talent coming into GDS and ensuring a clear progression pathway for those who are brought on. We’ll be supporting them while they’re here with the right training and development opportunities. This will also double up as a development tool for our existing colleagues.

GDSBAME sponsorship scheme

A sponsorship scheme, which will be similar to a mentorship programme, will ensure our current employees are receiving the right support and talent awareness within the organisation.

Join us

The network plays a vital role in helping to attract and retain diverse talent. Without a diverse workforce, we would not be representative of the users we build our services for.

That is why we are calling all colleagues, whatever their background, to lend their support, and encourage the change we all wish to see. If you’d like to join us, there are a number of opportunities at GDS, and everyone is welcome to apply.

You can follow GDS on Twitter, and don't forget to subscribe to our blog.

Government buyers and suppliers have told us that they sometimes find government contracts long, complicated and hard to use. So we’re working with Crown Commercial Service (CCS), the Government Legal Department (GLD) and law firm DLA Piper to simplify the contracts that are commonly used to buy goods and services across the public sector.

The new contract still offers all the commercial and legal protection that government needs, but will be much shorter, and easier to use and understand.

Making sure focus is in the right place

We’re putting user-centred design at the heart of government contracts, testing and iterating at every stage.

We want buyers and suppliers to be able to focus on what really matters – sustainable relationships and the quality of the products and services delivered. The new, radically shorter and simpler set of contract terms is the biggest improvement in government contracting for decades.

The aim – of leading a step-change in procurement to ensure that user-centred, design-led, data-driven approaches are commonplace in contracting by 2020 – is part of the vision for the Government Transformation Strategy.

Helping small and medium-sized enterprises

We want to make it easier and cheaper to sell to government. We particularly want to encourage more small and medium-sized enterprises to supply to the public sector. We know they’ve traditionally struggled with the complexity of government contracts. Giving businesses a better, more coherent experience is part of the vision for the Government Transformation Strategy.

As the contract is gradually rolled out for new frameworks, buyers and suppliers will be able to focus their time and effort on the specifics of the particular good or service they are buying or selling.

One team, many disciplines

Warren Smith and Jason Waterman blogged about our plans for the model contracts alpha earlier this year. Inspired by what we heard at One Team Government at the end of June, we kicked off this work at the beginning of July, bringing together policy and commercial experts from the CCS Policy team and digital experts from GDS’s Digital Marketplace team. We’ve seen the value of involving a GLD lawyer in our discussions and so he has now joined our multidisciplinary team.

It’s important to us that all members of the team are involved in user research, note-taking in individual sessions and joining in the group analysis. Hearing people talk about their challenges and motivations first-hand is very powerful and creates a greater sense of empathy with users. The users of contracts are a very diverse group of people!

Very few of our team members had ever worked together so we had to think about the best way to develop an open and honest working environment. As we’re working across 3 cities (London, Norwich and Liverpool), we have had to consider the best way to hold our regular meetings and conversations and keep work moving at pace.

The tools we’ve found effective

We use Google Meet as our online meeting room. In the beginning, we quickly realised that people dialling in were having a sub-par experience, relative to the team members who were together in one office. We agreed that when any member of the team needs to dial in, everybody dials in individually so we all have a consistent experience. Good headphones are important!

We held our first retrospective in person to develop a common understanding of the purpose and outputs. In these meetings, sometimes called ‘retros’, the whole team has the chance to talk about what’s going well and what isn’t. Following our first session, all our retros have been held remotely using a Trello board to capture everyone’s contributions and actions.

Developing a team culture benefits from meeting up in person when possible. For this reason, we made sure to arrange regular meetings in London, Liverpool and Norwich.

Helping buyers and suppliers use the new contract

Phase 1 of the renewal of the Facilities Management Services framework is due to open for supplier applications in December 2017. We’re working closely with the CCS Facilities Management Services team to support them as they prepare the new contracts and supporting documents for their procurement. Together we’ll be engaging early with suppliers to understand how they’ll use the new simplified contracts.

We’ll talk about this work more as it progresses.

How you can get involved

Right now, our focus for research and testing is the people within CCS who create and look after contracts. Later in our alpha, we’ll be returning to the growing community of ‘good contract champions’ as we prototype and test different approaches to meeting contract users’ needs.

If you’ve not already done so, please sign up to become a champion yourself.

Through the GDS Academy, we are helping the government to achieve its ambition to have one of the most digitally skilled populations of civil servants in the world. In recent years, our work has come to serve as an inspiration to overseas governments too.

The GDS Academy has grown rapidly since it was first established at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in 2014. It has helped to improve the skills of 6,500 civil servants to date. We’re proud to share our expertise and experience, and the things we’ve learnt along the way. Recently, we’ve been collaborating with representatives from the Canadian and Australian governments.

Canada calling

In May 2017, a Canadian delegation visited the London branch of the GDS Academy. We hosted Minister Scott Brison, President of the Treasury Board of Canada, Yaprak Baltacıoğlu, Secretary of the Treasury Board, Alex Benay, CIO of the Government of Canada and Ashley Wright, Policy Advisor to the Minister. During their visit, they attended part of our 3-day ‘Hands-on agile for leaders’ course.

This visit was part of the Canadian government’s work to create a culture of putting the user first and to establish new performance standards.

Following the visit, Scott Brison commented: "If we’re going to raise our game as a government, it means that – as ministers – we need to raise our game as well in terms of understanding digital services." He added: "A government's credibility with citizens rests on its ability to deliver services. In today's world, this means digital services."

Australian exchange

A representative of the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) team attended the ‘Hands-on agile for leaders’ course in the Leeds branch of the Academy this November. And, we’ll be continuing to work with the APSC to address their capability challenges in the coming months.

During both the Canadian and Australian visits, we discussed the details of the courses we offer and the importance of meeting demand.  We also addressed the best ways to embed learning in the workplace, not only for leaders but for the Civil Service as a whole.

It’s rewarding to be able to work collaboratively with other countries – helping to draw inspiration from each other and further improve the learning and development offer in digital. We’ve learned that we will often encounter similar challenges on our journey, but by working closely with our international colleagues we can help to not only solve them for the UK, but internationally too.

What’s next 

I will be moving across to Australia in spring 2018, where I will continue to share my skills and experience with the Australian government. I’m very much looking forward to building an even closer working relationship.

The GDS Academy is continuing to review its offer to ensure that it has the best possible training available for leaders within the public sector. As we expand nationwide, we’re also progressing our discovery phase to ensure that our future curriculum meets the needs of the Civil Service as a whole.

We would love to hear more from other governments as they build their own learning and development programmes. Feel free to contact us if you would like to share your experience and discuss the challenges and opportunities that your government is facing.

Follow all our latest news via Twitter and our website, where you can also book our courses.

In the GOV.UK content improvements team, workshops are vital. Workshops with our department colleagues give us a joint view of our challenges and a shared sense of ownership – but planning and running them is a real skill.

To help with your next workshop, we’ve put together our top 10 tips from 6 months of intensive workshopping.

1. Start building your relationship in advance

Chemistry and trust are central to a successful workshop. So how do you start building that working relationship before you even enter the room?

It all begins with the agenda. If you can co-create the agenda with your opposite number in a department, then do it. Talking about the purpose of the day, the shape of activities and even timings starts to build a shorthand for working together.

If you’re doing the workshop in a department’s offices, going up a day before can be really beneficial. We did this with the Student Loans Company – it was great to meet the team in advance, and it helped us understand their environment and how they work.

2. Make sure you hear from everyone

A great workshop contains a mix of activities that give both introverted and extroverted personality types the space to think and share.

We use various exercises to give everyone a voice:

• individual exercises, like pre-session homework, post-it note brainstorms or worksheets
• pair exercises
• task-based exercises for small groups
• exercises for the whole group, like round-the-table sharing (where each person says something in turn until everyone has run out of things to say)
• voting on ideas with sticky dots

It can help to tell people what to expect from the session in advance. This gives anyone who likes to prepare time to do so, so they feel confident on the day.

With HMRC, we did a post-it note exercise to review the GOV.UK tax codes journey. Everyone had the chance to stick their thoughts to printouts of the pages and then share with the group.

3. Get more done in smaller group sessions

It can be difficult to manage a group of 10+ stakeholders: it can take longer to hear from everyone, the discussion can get stuck on one topic and productivity can dip.  

With the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), we’ve been using smaller working groups this quarter. Representatives from different areas of DWP (the service, comms and content design) get together with a couple of us from GDS to focus on a specific challenge.

Where possible, we meet in person for a good chunk of time, but when that isn’t possible, we have regular calls.

We’ve used the small working group approach to update the content on Universal Credit, from mapping user scenarios to reviewing a first draft.

4. Master the environment

There’s nothing like a windowless room with the slow drone of aircon to make everyone feel lethargic. Try to find out what your room is like in advance so you can use the space to its fullest extent and lessen any issues.

Build energy by scheduling plenty of breaks and organising activities in different corners of the room. Doing a sketch of how your activities will work around the room in advance can help with the flow. Get out of your seat and encourage others to do the same.

It’s also a good idea to get into the room early to set things up (whether that means putting things on the walls, or testing your presentation deck, conference call tech or live links).

5. Improvise around the agenda…

Don’t be afraid of going off agenda if something interesting comes up. Give yourself a set amount of time to explore the idea, so you can keep on schedule, and be flexible enough to shorten activities later in the day.

If you find an activity isn’t working, be bold. Cut it short or explore a different way of approaching the problem. Sometimes off-script conversations produce the most useful insights.

6. … but park things to resolve later

Set up the idea of the ‘parking lot’ at the start of the session. For example, introduce it by saying: “This is where we’re going to capture any really important points that we can’t answer now, but we want to answer after the session.”

If one of your activities is causing a debate that can’t be solved in the session, the parking lot is your friend. It lets you acknowledge that a point is important but stops it disrupting the flow of the session.

7. Get feedback while it’s fresh

It’s a good idea to add a mini-retro (5-10 minutes max) to the end of your workshop. Just 3 simple questions to ask around the table:

• How have you found today’s workshop?
• What worked well?
• What could we improve for next time?

Asking participants for their thoughts is continuing to build that shared relationship – acknowledging that nothing is perfect and there are always ways to learn and improve.

8. Agree actions in the room

Agreeing actions in the room is a great way to make sure things happen after the workshop. After all, what’s the point of the session if there’s nothing concrete to move forward with?

Have a blank sheet for actions stuck on the wall and capture them as you go. At the end of the session, review the actions and add to them as a team: decide who’s doing what, by when, and which actions are the group’s highest priorities.

9. Follow up promptly

It’s easy for things to disappear into a black hole after a meeting, so book out the day after your workshop to write up your notes and activities. Create an ‘actions log’ with dates and names assigned to keep track of progress.

Send the materials to everyone who was at the workshop within 3 days of the session, while they can clearly remember what happened and their motivation is still high.

10. Have fun

Workshops can seem really daunting if you’ve not had much experience of them. Workshop skills, like improvising around an agenda or reading how people are feeling, come with practice.

But don’t be afraid of giving it a go. See the workshop as a chance to meet new people, create interesting ideas together, and ultimately make a real difference to people.

If you have any tips on how to run effective workshops, share them in the comments below. Follow GDS on Twitter.

I’m a content designer on the Service Performance team (formerly Government Service Data/Performance Platform). We’re building a new product designed to give people standardised high-level metrics about all government services in one place. This will help government take a more data-driven approach to service transformation.

I joined the team 8 months ago, and although I’ve now settled into the role, at first it was difficult to work out what I needed to do to make an impact. The product was in alpha, so there were a lot of basic things still to sort out to do with the build. These were things that didn’t necessarily involve ‘content’ as I understood it. I’d come from a traditional editorial background, where content was published regularly according to a predictable rhythm. I wasn’t prepared for the less structured environment of product development.

A few weeks after I started, I attended a retro for content designers working in similar teams at GDS. During the retro, it became clear that many of my colleagues had experienced some of the same issues adjusting to the role. So I decided to share some tips to help make the process easier for others:

Talk to your product manager

Your product manager is the best person to go to for an overview of what the team is trying to achieve and what needs to be done to get there. Talk to them about the team’s goals and roadmap, and have a chat together about what you can do to start contributing.

Take time out to understand user needs

It can be tempting to start working on the content immediately – you think you’ve spotted lots of ways in which it could be improved, and you want to hit the ground running and win the respect of your team.

However, this isn’t always the right thing to do. By not taking time to familiarise yourself with the team’s user research, you risk not fully understanding the context behind what you’re building – and therefore producing content that doesn’t meet user needs. So, set aside some time to go through the research notes before you get started on content.

It’s also a good idea to get to know your user researcher and to sign up for future user research sessions, so you can observe users face-to-face.

Broaden your understanding of ‘content’ – it’s not just about the words that appear in the product

When I first joined my team, I found that they’d been struggling to formulate a coherent value proposition for Service Performance. This was a challenging task, for several reasons. It was sometimes difficult to get access to the main user group, for example. Also, government wasn’t necessarily used to taking a data-driven approach to service transformation, so the concept didn’t always resonate. I could see the team needed some help formulating the various ideas they’d had into a coherent whole.

To help with this, I worked with my product manager to begin the process of getting a shared idea of the product’s purpose and benefits. We started off with an elevator pitch based on contributions from all team members. I then worked this up into a factsheet to be used for communicating progress with the product. This document has in turn been used for the basis of data collection emails and product presentations. The idea was to create scalable, reusable tools to support clear communication about the product.

This is very much a work in progress, and is a team effort. As a team, we’re constantly refining and honing the way we talk about the product as we learn more from our users. Helping the team to articulate this is a big part of my role.

Be strategic

As a content designer, you’ve got a crucial bit of distance from the build which allows you space to think about the team’s long-term goals. Don’t be afraid to speak up and share your insights on these with your product manager and the rest of the team. It can be very motivating to get involved in this side of the work and to feel like you’ve made a difference to your team’s long-term success.

Learn to prototype

Prototyping is probably the most useful skill you can develop as a content designer. It’s one of the core competencies of the role, and makes a big difference in your ability to communicate your ideas and have them adopted.

More broadly, it’s also important to have some understanding of other forms of design, such as interaction and service design. These are key disciplines for digital teams working in government, and you’ll be working closely with other designers who work with them – so it’s a good idea to take some time to understand what they do and to incorporate some of the principles into your own practice.

There are lots of opportunities to learn prototyping and other design skills at GDS; signing up to the service designers mailing list is a good place to start.

If you have any tips for content designers on working effectively as part of a product or service team, share them in the comments below. You can also join the GOV.UK design community.

To a user, a service is simple. It’s something that helps them to do something – like learn to drive or start a business. But for government, creating and delivering these services can be much more complex.

This is because there are often lots of people across lots of different parts of government involved in delivering these services. They might be working hard on their part of the service but they might not have a picture of the full service or know how to work with others involved in it.

To help tackle this issue, GDS is working with organisations across government to pilot a new way of working. We are forming networks of people with different skills and from different departments, who will work together to improve end-to-end services that cross departmental boundaries. We’re calling these networks ‘Service Communities’.

We already have communities of practice across government, that bring together people working in design or user research, for example. The new Service Communities will bring together people from across these professional boundaries. People in the communities will be united by the service they work on.

We’ve started to test this concept with the ‘Starting a Business’ community, which brings together people working to help users start a business. They’re people in different roles and from different organisations – such as HMRC, Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

Here’s why we’re doing this work and what we’ve done so far.

The strength of communities

Last year we carried out research into how government services get made. This research showed us that there wasn’t a single, coherent way that government services are made. Instead, there is variation from department to department. And there are silos between different areas and professions – for example, between policy and delivery.

It’s clear that we need to address this issue, particularly as the Government Transformation Strategy sets out a commitment to ‘build services that run seamlessly across government’.

GDS is currently running a number of projects that support the development of end-to-end services. For example, we’re updating the Service Standard to take into account whole services. We’re starting to show full service journeys on GOV.UK. And we’re working to help departments publish data about end-to-end services.

Our Service Communities work will build on and support all of this by bringing together everyone involved in delivering a particular service to act as one team.

The people in these communities will share things that will help them build coherent end-to-end services. These could be things like user research, data and back-end technology. They could update each other on live projects and support each other around common issues and blockers.

What have we done so far?

We’re trialling this approach with the ‘Starting a Business’ community. We chose this area because the user journey for starting a business is relatively straightforward and is not owned by any particular department. It also meant we could build on work that HMRC had been doing on business startups, as well as a cross-departmental network that had been assembled by the Transformation Peer Group.

The community features people in a range of different roles, including policy, strategy, design and administration. It has representatives from HMRC, DWP, BEIS, the Department for Education, Companies House, the Department for International Trade, the Pensions Regulator and the British Business Bank. As the community matures, we intend to involve other organisations, including those outside government. We’re already talking to the Food Standards Agency and the Health and Safety Executive.

We’ve held a number of workshops with this group. We’ve mapped out the service journey for starting a business and we’ve looked at the community’s capabilities and any gaps.

The group has also been looking at how to make sure the communities are sustainable. For example, looking at how regularly they meet, how they’re structured and who owns them.

What have we learned so far?

Just as there are challenges in building government services, there are challenges in building government Service Communities.

In terms of building the community, one of the challenges we’ve faced is finding a common communication channel that can be used by all departments, as many channels are currently used by some departments but blocked by others.

We’ve also found that because the service community is quite large, it can be difficult for everyone to meet regularly. To address this, we’re beginning to create smaller groups within the community, focused around areas of the service, such as user research. They could meet more regularly and feed back to the larger community.

In terms of how the community operates, we’ve found that it can be difficult to align work across different departments. For example, for some departments clearing a new policy change could take months while another might be weeks.

And because delivery is always happening, we can never have a blank slate, take stock of everything and design the 'perfect solution'. We have to accept that things are always being delivered as we go along.

Despite these challenges, we’ve found that there’s a real appetite for cross-government collaboration and that the community has worked well together on projects such as mapping out the end-to-end user journey for the service.

What’s next?

The ‘Starting a Business’ community meets regularly. We’re continuing to iterate the end-to-end service map so that this can be the starting point for any work on the service this year. We’re also starting to look at data sharing in the service and how user researchers across the service can work together.

We’re also continuing to develop the Service Communities concept. We know that there are similar communities and networks already in existence across government and we’d like to link up with them so that we can all work together.

If you’d like to be involved in this work, or if you’re currently working on a service network or community, please get in touch. You can contact us on the #servicecommunities cross-government Slack channel or by sending us an email.

I worked with Citizens Advice and its data for 7 months. In this post, I explain how this continued collaboration improves government services, content, policy and user experience.

Citizens Advice is the UK’s largest independent advice provider. Between 2016 and 2017, it helped 2.7 million people.

Advice is given face-to-face, over the phone, by email and web chat. The Citizens Advice website received 43 million visits last year.

As part of this project, I worked with Pete Watson, Principal Data Manager, and Sue Edwards, Partnership Intelligence Manager at Citizens Advice. We worked together to create a better way for people to visualise and interact with data, and to understand how users’ real-world issues are interconnected and often cluster.

We did this through the creation of dashboards.

Dashboards are a great resource to have, especially when we’re building whole, end-to-end services.

Citizens Advice data

Citizens Advice collects some amazing data: the advice people seek and information about those people.

Three layers of data are collected at local Citizens Advice:

• the main issue type (for example: ‘Debt’)
• the subject (for example: ‘Debt Relief Order’)
• the type of advice given (for example: ‘Dealing with debt repayments’)

Sharing data uncovers the offline journey, hidden from service builders in central government and often taken by the more vulnerable service users. As my colleague Ben Carpenter says:

The cluster data available in the dashboard gives a view of how users’ issues and government’s policies and services often overlap and interconnect. This information can help us work together based on the needs of users, away from the more singular view we often have in government as service providers.

The first few months

In the first couple of months, I worked with Pete Watson. I looked at the types of data Citizens Advice collected, who used it and who could potentially use it. Armed with my findings, Pete started to mock up the first ‘Advice trends’ prototype dashboard.

Sue Edwards, Nick MacAndrews and Emily Nash from the Partnership Intelligence team and I visited several government departments to test the dashboard.

Sue and I visited HMRC in Newcastle first. Stephen Proctor, a content designer based there, helped us to identify three areas for improvement:

• navigation: it was hard to find the data and move between sheets. It was also difficult to sort and filter the data. There is now a search page that makes it easier
• language: the use of internal jargon caused problems
• labelling: there was a need for clearer instructions and descriptions of data

We tested the dashboard with data scientists, analysts, and service design and content teams. We also worked with Home Office Digital, Scottish Government and other policy professionals during a knowledge series event.

We asked 2 questions during testing:

1. What are you trying to find out about the people using your service?
2. What improvements can we make to the dashboard?

We received 271 pieces of feedback about which data should be included on the dashboard. There were 300 suggestions to improve the design and interaction. This feedback translated into 150 improvements to the dashboard!

Some of the most prevalent themes were:

• access to anonymised case studies to help understand the content of users’ issues and build empathy
• cluster data – it’s rare that people have one issue. This data helps to identify relating issues to identify crossover between services
• user demographics

The dashboards

Here are the three dashboards we worked on:

1. ‘Advice trends’ dashboard

This is interactive, open to everyone and updated monthly. It reports the non-consumer service issues (immigration, benefits and tax, debt, housing) that people ask Citizens Advice about, and their demographics.

2. Case studies dashboard

This dashboard is open to government staff only. It includes powerful, anonymised case studies that bring to life the breadth and intensity of users’ full journeys, beyond government websites and call centres, into the third-party face-to-face channels.

3. ‘Consumer advice trends’ dashboard

This dashboard, open to everyone, shows data from Citizens Advice’s specialist consumer and energy advice services.

Building lasting relationships

To support the use of the dashboards, we created an online community. This enables Citizens Advice to share new data releases, emerging data trends and research reports, and for people in government to discuss and share ideas. We already have 110 members!

People working in government can request access to the case study dashboard and the community by emailing the Partnership Intelligence team at Citizens Advice.

I loved working with Citizens Advice and I’m proud of what we achieved in such a short time.

Pete Watson said it was a very rewarding collaboration that allowed them to try out new ways of visualising and presenting data.

The work is still ongoing. In the next few weeks, Sue and I will review the feedback from the email group and survey users of the dashboard.

If you would like to know more about this project or how you could use Citizens Advice data, please leave a comment below or email the Partnership Intelligence team.

As Head of User-Centered Design and Service Standards at the Government Digital Service (GDS) and across government, it’s my role to support government to design and build user-centred services.

At GDS we’re working hard to give people across government the tools and resources they need to do this. We’re doing the hard work to make service design simple for all of government.

Here are 6 of the things we’ll be working on this year that will help departments to design better services across government:

1. Building GOV.UK Design System

GOV.UK Design System will contain all the styles, components and design patterns that teams in government need to create user-centred digital services.

Some of these things can already be found in the Service Manual, GOV.UK Elements and elsewhere, but we want to bring everything together in one place and make it easy for people to find, use and contribute to.

GOV.UK Design System is currently in private beta, and we’re working with teams across government to test and develop it before we roll it out more widely. In the meantime, you should continue to use the design patterns, components and styles found in the Service Manual and GOV.UK Elements.

2. Updating the Service Standard

Since it was first launched, the Digital Service Standard has helped government build user-focused digital touchpoints. Now we want to update the standard so that it supports end-to-end services across government. Services as users understand them. Such as learning to drive, or starting a business.

We’ve carried out a consultation with teams across government. Thanks to their feedback, we think we’ve got a much better idea of the main challenges the new service standard needs to address.

Once we’ve refined it, we’ll be looking into how to phase the standard in so that teams have plenty of opportunity to prepare before it’s implemented.

3. Helping government collaborate on end-to-end services

The Government Transformation Strategy set an aspiration for services to be designed from end to end. GDS is working to support government to do this.

Last year we carried out research into how government services get made. We found that the silos between different areas of government delivering the same service to a user are one of the biggest barriers to delivering great services. So this year we’re expanding a programme of cross-government service communities that will bring together everyone involved in delivering a particular service.

The people in these communities will share things that will help them build coherent end-to-end services. These could be things like user research, data and back-end technology. They could update each other on live projects and support each other around common issues and blockers.

We’re starting with ‘Start a business’ but looking to expand to other areas in the next few months.

4. Enabling GOV.UK to support end-to-end services

We’re building service journeys into GOV.UK. This means taking all the content and transactions on GOV.UK and putting them into a coherent service journey that a user understands. This will be displayed on a single page that will show the user all the steps in the process, what they need to do, and in what order.

We’ve already piloted this approach with the new ‘Learn to drive a car: step by step’ service page and we’re now rolling this approach out to other activities and building more end-to-end services.

We hope that this work will make it easier for users to do the things they need to do. And we hope it will make things simpler and clearer for people in government too.

The work we’re doing on GOV.UK is helping to show what end-to-end user-focused services look like, and what and who is involved in delivering them. We want it to help embed end-to-end services on GOV.UK and across government.

5. Developing the user-centred design communities

There are now 800 people in the Cross-government Design Community. The community exists to support designers working across departments and to promote the practice of design in government.

People in the community can talk and share things through the mailing list and Slack channel and we also hold regular meetups – last year we held design meetups in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Sheffield. We also held accessibility meetups in Newcastle and London (you can read about the most recent meetup in this post) and put on cross-government content conferences, including ConCon 6.

As well as growing the size of the community, we’re also working to help it support different types of design across government. For example, we’ve been building a Government Service Design Community and have already held 2 events. We’ve also been building the International Design in Government Community, which now has more than 250 people from 37 countries.

Last year we held a design community meetup at the Design Museum to mark London Design Festival, and opened the event up to the public – the first time we’ve done this. We want to build on this event and help build and promote design in government.

6. Putting on (even) more training and events

As well as running events, the Cross-government Design Community also runs training for people across government. We delivered a huge amount of training in 2017.

More than 600 people have taken part in design and user research training. The community also ran new events on service design, design crits and design patterns.

This year we’re planning to run even more training and events, including an International Design in Government conference. We’ve also set up a page that lists all the events and training that we offer, so that you can see what’s coming up.

See the Design notes and User research blogs for more information about design and user research.