So … digital is just about transforming services? No, not in our view, nor in the view of our open policy making colleagues. Yesterday we co-hosted an event with the Open Policy Making (OPM) team in the Cabinet Office that included how digital is being used by policy makers across government.
We heard from policy makers about how they are designing policy with digital outcomes in mind, and how they are using digital tools and techniques throughout the policy making process.
Digital tools are increasingly being used to engage with citizens and stakeholders, to seek their views on emerging policy, to inform debate and to better understand the impact of policy decisions. We saw how digital tools are being used to support this engagement and how better outcomes are being delivered.
The Department of Health – Digital and Policy: a journey from niche to embedded
The event wasn’t simply about the use of digital tools though. The use of data and service design thinking in the policy making process were also important themes. Designing policy and the resulting services with users at the heart was emphasised by many speakers.
The messages neatly match our view of starting with needs (user needs not government needs) that are set out in our Design Principles and are also reflected in a recent report, Designing the Digital Economy, by the Design Commission.
We’d like to hear from you if you have got examples of great service design in the public sector so that we can share this with others that are looking to learn.
To find out more about what happened on the day, read OPM’s blog and look at the Storify that they created which includes pictures, tweets and presentations from the day.