Towards end-to-end local services, not transactions
Tribute and disclaimer: This work is inspired by Richard Pope who, some years ago, had a much more radical interesting idea that inspired me. I found myself re-purposing his concept when considering how to package the work of our team in Hackney to inspire and promote re-use. This thinking is personal.
Many local authorities have been inspired by the work of the Government Digital Service in providing simple, intuitive services. Whether mimicking the simplicity of GOV.UK or using products such as Notify and GOV.UK Pay, GDS has set the standard for local government to meet. In my last job, in Buckinghamshire, our strategic principle was ‘It’s the GDS way until our users say it isn’t’. I may never have a better strategic insight.
But local government isn’t just an inefficient delivery vehicle for central government — whatever people in Whitehall may think. Yes, we provide services stipulated by parliament. But they’re provided by a local council because democratic oversight is important, whether setting local planning and development priorities or how libraries should operate. And different areas have different priorities: potholes were more important in Buckinghamshire, air quality more important in Stoke Newington.
The brilliant Richard Pope, an alumnus of GDS, showed how to design services with accountability. The Government Digital Service didn’t have the responsibility or ability to truly deliver ‘end to end’ digital services. But we do. Local services, delivered digitally shouldn’t only deliver simple, intuitive, empathic experiences for residents. They should show how councillors and officers make decisions about the service; enable scrutiny of how well they understand user needs and what needs to work better for the service to improve. They could explain the privacy impact assessments, the contracts for service delivery and the improvements that aren’t prioritised.
But what’s the user need?
There are lots of residents highly engaged in the delivery of one or more services, whether members of a tenants and residents’ association, an entrepreneur with an innovative idea or a member of a campaign group.
We receive a significant number of Freedom of Information requests, complaints and emails to councillors each year, many of which are requesting more information about the performance of a service, the value of a contract or plans to improve something.
As a user you may want to challenge the assumptions on which the service was built, understand how your insights have informed the roadmap or just whether your experiences are unique.
As a user you may want to understand what data the service collects and why, so that you can be assured of your privacy.
As a elected official or senior officer you might want transparency about the service so you get a complete, up-to-date understanding of whether it’s meeting the needs of your residents.
As local government officer working for another council, you might want to know how the service performs and how it was built so that you can re-use what works well and improve on what doesn’t.
Working in the open
Working in the open in a way that inspires colleagues and supports reuse isn’t just about neatly packaging a case study. The sector is groaning under the weight of transformation stories that either don’t look as good under the hood or just can’t be reused by anyone else. Nor is it about publishing ‘all the things’ on the off chance someone might find a useful line of code on GitHub.
Truly working in the open needs to signpost the user through the knowledge: the business benefit, the use need, the design pattern and the code. We’ve got parts of the jigsaw under development. Pipeline provides an overview of each initiative in our portfolio. The user research library shares our insights. Digital Marketplace shares our commercial engagements. GitHub shares our code and Swagger documents our APIs. Perhaps because each component is available it’s very hard to understand, trust and reuse.
Show, don’t tell
I’ve given this some initial thought, setting out ‘service delivery as a design pattern’. I used housing repairs because the banner and font works well and was quick to re-purpose.
So, what next?
I’d like to understand whether there’s genuine user need. Is there sufficient benefit for users to justify the costs of investment and maintenance? How much of this is attractive and achievable? And how could this support the Mayor’s ambitions to be resident-focused, open and transparent and make Hackney a place for everyone?
