Last updated: 22 March
Please note we will be regularly updating this post, so please check back to get the latest information nearer the time.
Services Week is back and returning for the fifth time, taking place next week 20 to 24 March 2023. It’s an annual cross-organisational event series focused on improving public services. The theme for this year is Designing for Uncertain Times.
Services Week 2023 aims to:
- show excellent work of the past year from central government, local authorities, the NHS, executive agencies and arm’s length bodies
- connect with people across organisations, join up policy and operations, to develop and deliver great public services across channels
- help people from the public sector increase service literacy and develop skills and knowledge to improve public services and the underlying systems
The line up:
| Monday 20 March | 10.00 - 10.40am A welcome from Megan Lee Devlin, Central Digital and Data Office, CEO followed immediately by an update on how we're working to transform government servicesTo kick off Services Week 2023 Megan will be sharing a short welcome, outlining what we can expect from the week ahead and giving a brief outline of the Central Digital and Data Office’s work on the Top 75 services - as part of government's Transforming for a Digital Future roadmap.As part of the cross government digital strategy - Transforming for a digital future - government has committed to moving at least 50 of its top 75 identified services to a ‘great’ standard, against a consistent measure of service performance, by 2025. Find out how CDDO is supporting organisations across government to make services more useful and usable for users, which in turn leads to more efficient and effective services for government as a whole. ---10am - 12pm Introduction to service design training The training will be run online 2 hours a day, 10am to midday, Monday 20 March to Thursday 23 March. The training contains some theory and lots of interactive exercises and activities. You'll meet people from different roles and organisations in the public sector. This training is an introduction and not for service designers. --- It's been 5 years since the Advice Trends dashboards were created. This session will look back on why these dashboards were originally created and provide examples of use including a case study from Ting TIng Zhao and Robert Sewell(GDS) We will then invite feedback on how we can make further improvements to the data and how it is shared within government. --- 11am - 1pm Are you interested in learning about designing policy in government? Join us for an interactive workshop where we will explore some of the challenges we faced when trying to embed user-centred design into policymaking at a time of political uncertainty. No prior knowledge needed. Maximum of 16 participants --- 12-12:45pm Government digital services rely on data to support their effective delivery to citizens. The Government Data Marketplace aims to provide the technology infrastructure and supporting process and procedures to ensure users of essential services are presented with the right information at the right time in the most efficient manner. In this way the Marketplace is a service to improve services. In this presentation you will hear more about the vision for the marketplace as well as a presentation of the results from the alpha phase of the project. -- 1 - 1:20pm Recruiting suitable participants to research our work is so important for building good services. We know it’s been challenging especially for NHS services on the back of the COVID-19 pandemic, so we’ll be sharing how we approach participant recruitment and research ops during this ‘new’ way of working. No prior knowledge needed. --- 2 - 3pm This is one part of three sessions to explore how we move towards consistent design components for data visualisation and submitting people's work to the design system backlog GitHub page for data. In this first session we've a talk from Hannah Thomas from the Government Analysis Function within the Office for National Statistics (ONS) about best practice and digital accessibility advice for data visualisations. This talk will cover the guidance and support that the Analysis Function Central Team offers for communicating data, statistics and analysis. After the talk, we will also cover in this session this community's organisers plans for two workshops planned during services week to collate work that people have done around data visualisation with the intention of submitting some of the work to the GOV.UK GitHub backlog page for data. No prior knowledge needed. |
| Tuesday 21 March | 9 - 9:20am User Needs (lightning talk)How to understand your users and their needs, and why it makes sense to design your services according to what they need. Not what ‘the business’ wants! No prior knowledge needed--- 10am - 12pm Description: A targeted email campaign to students in initial teacher training to help them land their first teaching job. Using Mailchimp, a GOV campaign site, a live service, research and data. No prior knowledge needed. --- 11 - 11:45am A session to share and discuss the work done by the Planet-centred design team at Defra on a set of principles to guide practical collaboration amongst multidisciplinary digital teams towards the goal of lower-environmentally impacting services. Practical advice you can put into practice today included! No prior knowledge needed. --- 11am - 12pm Come along ready to participate in the fastest lean canvas exercise you’ll ever do! Together we will tackle the problem in one hour of “How might we design the ultimate dream office?” Lean UX is a really simple, powerful approach which helps you to work cleanly and logically through any kind of project – including website delivery work and event planning. It can help you to engage everyone in design, from SMT and policy and subject matter experts to routine agile delivery team members. It can be a tool you use quickly, or something that guides you through a longer journey. We absolutely love it and want to share it as widely as possible! We will cover the following:
No prior knowledge needed. Limited to 50 tickets. --- 11am - 1pm The International Design in Government community runs monthly calls on various topics. Anyone in any central or local government, health services, and Parliament can join the community. Speakers TBC. No prior knowledge needed. This will be updated shortly to include a link to the session --- 11:30am to 12:15pm Join Cheryl Doran, Assistant Director & Chief Information Officer at Birmingham City Council who has led a recent restructure. This session will talk you through how to transform your IT organisation’s focus from assets and hardware to enabling transformation and innovation across your organisation. --- 1 - 1:50pm How you can use design histories to consistently document changes to your service over time. This helps to provide a narrative of changes especially if you rely on contractors who may join and leave the service, or have a change in staff. --- 2 - 3pm The Modernising Lasting Powers of Attorney team has been set up from the start to be properly cross-functional; our ‘traditional’ digital team also contains policy colleagues, and we have treated consultation, legislation and service development as shared deliverables. We want to talk about why this is such a valuable way to work and what we’ve learned from it, with a particular focus on how to maintain trust in the team where the policy area has had different Ministers owning it, and we’ve even had a change of Public Guardian. Open to anyone interested in policy and digital working closer together --- 2 - 3pm This is part two of three sessions to explore how we move towards consistent design components for data visualisation and submitting people's work to the design system backlog GitHub page for data. In this session we will be asking participants who have worked on data visualisation design components to submit their work and ideas to a collaborative MURAL board to help us see what work has been happening across government in this space. We will then ask participants to affinity map the work so that we can see how similarities lie between work so that we can start to think about which components might be worth taking forward to the next workshop where by we will be organising work with the intention of submitting work to the GOV.UK GitHub backlog page for data. No prior knowledge needed. --- 3- 3.30pm A great service uses funding efficiently and works well for users. Working with departments across government, CDDO has been exploring how services can be run more efficiently, and make it easier for the public to interact with the government to meet their needs. The session will discuss some of these key opportunity areas. No prior knowledge required. |
| Wednesday 22 March | 9 - 9.45am Senior female leaders in tech: a fireside Q+A with Megan Lee Devlin and Bonnie Wang The Central Digital and Data Office’s CEO, Megan and Director for Digital Transformation, Bonnie, share their thoughts on how to empower your career as a women woking in digital, data and technology, sharing their personal stories and top tips for success.--- 10am - 12pm The training will be run online 2 hours a day, 10am to midday, Monday 20 March to Thursday 23 March. The training contains some theory and lots of interactive exercises and activities. You'll meet people from different roles and organisations in the public sector. This training is an introduction and not for service designers. This session is now full. --- 10 - 10:50am The line between ‘artificial intelligence’ and ‘automated decision-making’ is somewhat unclear, especially for those on the receiving end. This session discusses the relationship between transparency and trust when government decisions are automated. The session is based on the findings from a dissertation carried out by the presenter. The format will be a 30 minute presentation followed by a general discussion. No prior knowledge needed. --- 11am to midday 12-months on from our session on how to position service design in a large organisation. 2 case studies from Future Farming and Trade and Borders on how the new principal service design role is working in practice. No prior knowledge needed. --- 1 - 1:20pm It feels like, one way or another, you’re always going to be dealing with uncertainty. Planning your research sessions needs to take sources of uncertainty into account. So, if you know what you need to know and you know what types of data will help you to learn, then it should be easy to pick your methods, shouldn’t it? This session looks at some of the key factors you need to take into account to improve the reliability of your methods. It also offers tips on techniques you should always have on standby. No prior knowledge needed. --- 1 - 1:45pm In this session you will learn more about the approach, ways of working and challenges surrounding the development and delivery of an app that enables 3000+ field workers to be assigned and self-assign jobs with the relevant information. We will hear from the Agile Product Coach, who will provide more context about working in a multidisciplinary team. Taking a concept from the discovery phase to ultimately establishing the app as BAU. No prior knowledge needed. --- 2 - 2:50pm How we in the Department for Education (DfE) are implementing guidance and processes for better standards assurance and will demo a service we’re building for booking and managing assessments. Our MVP is starting with discovery peer reviews. --- 3- 3.30pm Service performance measurement can easily be forgotten about or carried out retrospectively making it less useful and less impactful. CDDO has been working on what metrics are essential for understanding service performance and what information can be used to supplement and add an extra dimension. Measurement as early as possible helps services identify areas for improvement as early as possible and enable continuous improvement. In this session we’ll cover:
No prior knowledge required. --- 3.30 - 4pm A workshop exploring how we currently share user research knowledge and insight across government. Remote workshop, no prior knowledge needed, participants will need to access a Mural board --- 4-4:30pm Almost every government department, company and charity is on a journey to become a service organisation. Most weren’t built to deliver seamless end-to-end services and face headwinds in organisational culture, governance and budget. Teacher Services was formed in the Department for Education in 2018 and is now one of DfE’s biggest digital delivery portfolios. We’ll talk through what we've learnt on our journey, how we’ve brought policy and digital delivery together, created and maintained a service line approach, and continue to bring colleagues on the journey towards being a service organisation. Open to all |
| Thursday 23 March | 9 - 9:20am Content design: principles and practice (lightning talk) This talk is for you if you are:
As a content designer, you will need to make the case for user-centred design every day. To do this you will need a solid grasp of content design principles. But you also need to be a strong advocate for user-centred design (UCD) in your organisation. We hope this talk will help you to do both. At CQC, we are transforming our digital services. This talk will share some of what we've learnt so far. We’ll be talking about:
We'll also share:
No prior knowledge needed. --- 9:30 to 11am Performance frameworks are an important resource to understand and show the value your team, service or product is adding to the organisation and its users. Come along to our session to learn about the foundations of building a good performance framework and how we applied performance frameworks to measure the value of two organisational teams. We will talk through a couple of case studies, lessons learnt along the way before getting you to build your own performance framework. No prior knowledge needed. --- 10am - 12pm The training will be run online 2 hours a day, 10am to midday, Monday 20 March to Thursday 23 March. The training contains some theory and lots of interactive exercises and activities. You'll meet people from different roles and organisations in the public sector. This training is an introduction and not for service designers. This session is now full. --- 10 - 11am Digital is not “free” from an environmental point of view. Every megabite we send, download and consume has a carbon cost. The good news – what we do as individuals, how we design our services for users, and the decisions we make on how we build and operate those services all have an impact we can influence or control. This talk will be about what you can do as service designers. No prior knowledge needed. --- Dealing with money is stressful for many people, but what is it like for people with dyscalculia who struggle with numbers? Laura Parker (HMRC), Jane McFadyen (DWP) and Rachel Malic (HMRC) will talk about what it’s like living with dyscalculia and using everyday services. They will:
--- Have you ever come across these questions? ‘What does the co refer to in co-design?’ ‘How do we design for co-design?’ If your answer is yes, come along to our session to find out the answers. This session is a set of short talks from co-design convenors across design and policy in the Future Farming and Countryside Programme at Defra. No prior knowledge needed. --- 1 - 1:20pm The Government Design Principles are central to our work in government. They guide everything we do, and how we do it. There are only 10, but they are hugely important. Speakers Tim Paul and Jane Martin (GDS) will talk you through them and share pointers about where you can find out more. No prior knowledge needed. --- 1-2pm Applying design thinking to the employee experience can have positive outcomes for employees, operational staff and the organisation as a whole. However, designing user-centred employee services and processes can be complex, involving multiple stakeholders, user groups and systems. In this session, colleagues from DCMS will share their experience in applying user-centred design principles to optimise and improve the employee experience. This will be followed by an interactive discussion with attendees about their own experiences to share suggestions and helpful tips for approaching this challenge across government. No prior knowledge required. --- 2 - 3pm Universal Barriers are a way of building services that are fully inclusive for all users, of all characteristics and in all situations, beyond the best understood areas of web accessibility and assisted digital support for users with low digital capability. A community was formed in 2020 for people across government to meet and discuss how barriers can be interpreted and how they were being used within different departments. The purpose of this meetup is to regroup and welcome any new members into the community that are interested in inclusive design. We will be reiterating what the barriers are and how they can be used and hear from members of the community who will share how barriers have been embedded into their organisation and how they have helped them design against problems differently. Please join us and share this with anyone else that may be working in the inclusive design space. Open to anyone interested in inclusive design. --- 2 - 3pm (to be confirmed) This is part three of three sessions to explore how we move towards consistent design components for data visualisation and submitting people's work to the design system backlog GitHub page for data. In this session we will be asking participants to organise and prioritise what design components for data visualisation we should submit to the GOV.UK design system GitHub backlog page for data. No prior knowledge needed. This will be updated shortly to include a link to the session --- In this session we will present our work over the past year which aimed to explore and highlight how laptops given to prisoners could be used to provide new services and products aimed at giving prisoners more agency to support their rehabilitation No prior knowledge needed. --- An informal event where anyone can raise a topic for discussion on the theme of ‘Interaction Design in uncertain times’. You can participate as much or little as you like. We’ll create breakout rooms for discussion if there are a lot of us. For interaction designers and anyone interested in interaction design. --- 1 - 1.40pm Last year HMG published a new Digital Strategy - Transforming for a digital future - which sets out a roadmap for government. Furthermore the recent CDDO workforce commission illustrates some of the emerging trends. In this conversation, CDDO will introduce both the strategy and the findings from the recent study, and explain how Government is taking action to build sustained digital and data capability. |
| Friday 24 March | 9 - 9:20am Service Standards (lightning talk)Service standards with a twist... like you've never heard them before!The service standards are a set of criteria to help government create and run good services. We'll be sharing with you what those standards are, how we should work to meet those standards, and why it matters that we do. No prior knowledge needed.--- 10 - 11am Content design in uncertain times – a Lean Coffee event An informal event where anyone can raise a topic for discussion on the theme of ‘Content design in uncertain times’. You can participate as much or little as you like. We’ll create breakout rooms for discussion if there are a lot of us. For content designers and anyone interested in content design. --- In this talk, you’ll gain an understanding on ways you could update and reshape your Communities of Practice and x-ucd collaboration sessions, to ensure they are meeting the needs of designers and researchers in your organisations. At the Ministry of Justice, I led a piece of work to understand the barriers people faced, and how we might address them. For those interested in communities of practice. --- 12 - 12:45pm Government digital services rely on data to support their effective delivery to citizens. The Government Data Marketplace aims to provide the technology infrastructure and supporting process and procedures to ensure users of essential services are presented with the right information at the right time in the most efficient manner. In this way the Marketplace is a service to improve services. In this presentation you will hear more about the vision for the marketplace as well as a presentation of the results from the alpha phase of the project. --- 12 - 12.50pm What holds you back from digital delivery? Funding? Procurement? Policy? Understanding of agile? Come along to this CDDO led session to have your voice heard and hear the latest thinking from our work exploring systemic challenges to successful digital delivery. We're keen to hear what you think needs solving, and whether our proposed solutions are the way to do it. Our project is tasked with Mission 6 of the Digital and Data strategy to establish 'A system that unlocks digital transformation'. Some experience of digital delivery required. --- 12:30 -1pm CDDO has been exploring opportunities within services, but we don’t know how effective service improvements are at capturing these opportunities. In this session, we’ll discuss a new project CDDO has launched to find out what makes service improvements effective, thanks to the Evaluation Accelerator Fund. We want to find out about the great work across government to improve services - this project will be an opportunity to tell us about improvements you’ve made in services and what you’ve learned. This session will be a chance to find out more about getting involved. No knowledge needed. --- 1 to 1:45pm Laura and Surita will be talking about the service design work they are currently doing with the Children's Employment Service team as part of Birmingham City Council's Customer Service Programme. They will talk about things they learned through the discovery process in mapping out the current user journeys and creating future state user journeys in collaboration with the service area and subject matter experts. --- 2- 2.25pm In this session we will be sharing the work we have done in CDDO to develop the newly published Functional Standard for the Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) function, working with experts and digital leaders from across government. The standard is aimed at senior leaders and provides a high-level framework for all aspects of digital transformation and delivery, including a focus on services. Find out how the new Digital Functional Standard can help your organisation set up for success. No prior knowledge required. --- 2 - 4pm For the last four years, we have been running an annual GDS open to the public show and tell session to share what GDS is doing to help government deliver end-to-end, user-focused services. The show and tell is open to all. |
We look forward to seeing you there and hope you enjoy it!
9 comments
Comment by Rachel M posted on
Hi there I'm giving a talk on Thursday at 10:30 called 'How to design services for people with dyscalculia'. It's on the Google doc, is it possible to add to this page too? Thank you!
Comment by emilytroake posted on
Thanks Rachel - we've just updated this to include your session - looking forward to it!
Comment by Alan posted on
Hello, do you have any more information on the '10am - 12pm
Introduction to service design training' im keen to sign up!
Comment by Sheena posted on
Hello, I was hoping to join the Introduction to service design training, but it seemed to book up very quickly. Is there any possibility of being added to a wait list, in case you get no shows on the day? I'd be happy to attend even at short notice 🙂 Many thanks.
Comment by lisajeffrey posted on
Hi, Sheena. Yes, training does book up and is now full for the week. Apologies.
Comment by Dan Tippell posted on
Likewise as Sheena has said, interested in the Service Design training. If there is a waiting list please let me know, also is there anyway of sharing the content from the sessions otherwise?
Comment by lisajeffrey posted on
Hi, Dan. Apologies, the training is full. We share service design content on https://services.blog.gov.uk/ but not course content as it is interactive and mostly about learning by doing. Thanks
Comment by Owain Kimber posted on
Hi
I'm also interested in the Introduction to Service Design training. If there is a waiting list please let me know.
Might it not be a good idea to run this again or open it out to wider numbers?
Comment by lisajeffrey posted on
Hi, Owain. Thanks for your interest. Apologies the course is full. And yes, we are exploring ways to run the training more. Thanks