copy the linklink copied!2. The conceptual framework

Political leadership

From the perspective of political leadership this includes having a clearly expressed vision for the role of digital in the future of the country and as an extension, the implications for service design and delivery. The experience of Estonia (Box 2.3) recognised the value of having a commonly understood role for digital amongst a country’s political leadership from an early stage. In Panama, during the 2019 Presidential election, each candidate made it clear that digital, data and technology were a priority (OECD, 2019[9]).

Having such leadership from the top helps to show that the application of digital, data and technology is not optional but sits at the heart of what a country will be trying to do. As a result, it makes it easier to establish an agenda supported by appointed minsters and that will consequently spread throughout government because there is a mandate from the very top (as seen in Norway Box 2.6). In Chile, several important aspects of the digital government agenda have been enshrined in the Digital Transformation of the State Law (MINSEGPRES, 2019[10]).

As discussed earlier in this chapter (Representative and organisational politics) there can be challenges in having too visible a political champion but this needs to be set against the importance of having the political capital and influence to be able to effect the necessary changes in support of rethinking and redesigning services. Without a clear mandate to address the patchwork of different channels and organisational fiefdoms arriving at a consensus may prove difficult. It is not always sufficient for government leaders to provide funding and other incentives to change the status quo.

Organisational leadership

While elected representatives set the political direction and high level vision, responsibility for implementing that intent and delivering on the ambitions of government belongs to the civil service. The OECD’s previous work concerning the governance of digital government in Chile (OECD, 2016[12]) highlighted the importance of clearly identifying leadership from an institution to coordinate the strategy and priorities for transformation. Given the relevance of the digital government agenda to the transformation of government services in a country there are benefits to this leadership coming from the same organisation, or if that is not possible, ensuring close coordination.

Indeed, it is critical that leadership of the service design and delivery agenda is understood as a coordinating role and works closely with leaders across the public sector to embed the importance of designing and delivering high quality services in the day to day work of the civil service as a whole. This is particularly important in securing the overall commitment to transforming cross-cutting services that involve multiple parts of the public sector to decrease the potential for duplicated effort.

Civil servants collectively need to embrace the importance of digital transformation in respect of service delivery and work together to open up data, and contribute to the discussions about shared, reusable resources. Nevertheless, inadequate institutional coordination among relevant agendas, such as those on the digital transformation, public services and regulatory reform, can impede a shift of approach towards a coherent use of existing and emerging opportunities to deliver improved service experiences to users.

External leadership

Finally, there is an important leadership role provided by those who are neither elected by the public, nor employed by government. Government cannot choose its users or market services to only a subset of the population and so non-government experiences come with certain caveats but an external perspective can help identify priorities for the service design and delivery agenda, highlight areas that might otherwise be missed and consider how to encourage greater adoption in society. The strategic discussion about services in a country, and digital government itself, will benefit from the insight of academia, civil society and the private sector, as well as the experiences of other countries, to ensure a rounded view of the issues.

Understanding, and responding to, a whole problem

“Public-facing services allow citizens or their representatives to achieve a desired outcome” (Pope, 2019[15]) and as such the act of designing, and then delivering those services is not a theoretical pursuit but a practical exercise in working with the affected people and adding value to their lives. In order to do that, the first characteristic is to understand the problem in order to respond to what is found rather than setting out to implement what has been imagined.

The starting point for services will be either a newly identified policy intent, or an existing approach to a long-standing problem. In both cases, service design approaches will help to understand the opportunities to deliver value against the policy intent and how the service might practically make sense of the existing landscape. In contrast to sectoral or organisation focused administrative simplification developing that understanding will require looking across the whole of government to understand how different activities are contributing to, or detracting from, the desired policy outcome. Responding to what has been found in order to better meet needs may then require a fundamental redesign of the service, or more minor tweaks to the way in which government is working. Service design involves working out how the existing landscape of government provision fits together, analysing the extent to which needs are being met through them and then identifying how to reconfigure or redesign the approach to improve things.

Taking this approach is important because if a service (whether newly developed, or existing) isn’t immediately understood then people can get confused, make mistakes, or decide not to use it. When that happens it increases the effort government has to invest in order to resolve any issues, and the burden on the citizen to deal with the issue they had in the first place.

Services that make sense of the end to end experience

Because government services have often evolved over time with different policy initiatives leading to different interactions a user’s journey can often be somewhat fragmented and hard to trace across different parts of government and different channels. The most effective citizen experiences should not require a detailed knowledge of the inner workings of government or involve the burden of working out how best to meet a need across a myriad of different websites, call centres and service delivery locations. They should instead lead users through a simple to complete process and where possible reuse data to anticipate and proactively address aspects that might otherwise have involved further interactions.

In addition to successfully achieving the impression of seamless government, regardless of the messy reality ‘behind the scenes’, a service design approach prioritises handling the transition between physical, offline and digital elements of a service. Ultimately, a service should be understood:

• from when someone first attempts to solve a problem through to its resolution (from end to end)

• on a continuum between citizen experience and back-office process (external to internal)

• across any and all of the channels involved (omni-channel).

  One of the unintended consequences of a ‘digital by default’ agenda was to create situations where difficulties were introduced for those who had a preference, or a need, to access services in person. Following a ‘digital by design’ approach recognises the value that can be added to face to face channels when services are developed in a channel agnostic way that enables users to access a given service at any point in the end to end process of meeting their need, according to their most convenient channel.

Involving the public in design and delivery

In order to understand the whole problem, teams working on designing and delivering services need to work with the people who need to use the service. Digitally transformed public services need to engage their users as early in the process as possible. This allows the design process to reflect their views, needs and aspirations from the outset. Such an approach is in line with principle 2 of the Recommendation of the Council on Digital Government Strategies (OECD, 2014[1]).

The principles of digital government change the way in which services can be designed and implemented. They create opportunities for citizen-driven activity and civic participation in terms of sharing views, collaborating with peers and expressing dissatisfaction. Service teams that stimulate opportunities for citizens to work with them can embrace innovation and rapidly normalise emerging technology where it can add most value. Having a deep understanding of user needs and an openness to citizen involvement in the process of policy design and service delivery, as seen in Box 2.10, mean teams are well positioned to consider all possible opportunities to apply technology and be agile enough to take advantage when new things arrive.

Partnerships can be developed with community groups and other stakeholders to meet the community and ensure that their experiences shape how government services operate. This approach is exemplified by the experiences of Canada and Portugal in travelling throughout their countries to engage with the community of their users. In Portugal, updating the Simplex model of service delivery (discussed in more detail under Channel Strategy) involved a tour of the regions covering 10 000 kms, speaking to 2 000 people and collecting 1 400 contributions focused on improving the lives of Portuguese citizens (Welby, 2019[17]).

Face to face opportunities not only provide tangible evidence of a responsive government seeking to include the voices of their citizens in the design and application of digital government they can introduce new opportunities to enhance the technical skills and confidence of the public in using online channels, as well as increase their awareness. Supporting citizens to use the internet to access government services has broader benefits in empowering and enabling them to take advantage of other online services.

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Box 2.10. Designing and implementing a citizen centric employment services system in Australia

In January 2018 the Australian government appointed an independent Expert Advisory Panel to advise on the future of employment services in the country. The panel considered it was fundamental for the design of future employment services to centre on users. With this focus, the panel heard from around 1 400 unique users across a range of different methods from face-to-face consultations, a public discussion paper and user-centred design research.

Users were engaged to prototype and test policy options through design research workshops, focus groups and one-on-one interviews. The process involved 550 users of employment services including job seekers and employers. User research was conducted across six metropolitan and regional locations with panel members attending sessions to engage with users first hand.

Those experiences shaped the publication of the department’s discussion paper which was followed by an extensive consultation across Australia in all the capital cities and selected regional centres. The consultation process involved both roundtables and community forums reaching 540 people (Figure 2.2). Alongside the consultation process 451 unique written submissions were received with 328 of those coming from individuals, more than 50% of whom identified as job seekers.

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Figure 2.2. Attendees at consultation round-tables

Source: Department of Jobs and Small Business (2018[18]), Employment Services 2020: Consultation report

Ultimately, the proposed new employment services model was endorsed and pilots began in March 2019. The service involves a new digital platform that will provide personalised support to all job seekers, with many intended to self-service online. Additional support is available to more disadvantaged job seekers with incentives available to those providing support to them in person.

The new model is being piloted in two regions before being rolled out nationally in 2022. During that period consultation and user-design efforts will continue.

Source: OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (2018[19]), Design and implementation of a citizen centric employment services system; Department of Jobs and Small Business (2018[18]), Employment Services 2020: Consultation report, Commonwealth of Australia (2018[20]), I want to work: Employment Services 2020 Report

Combining policy, delivery and operations to work across organisational boundaries

Successfully transforming service delivery necessitates changes to approaches to both policy making and implementation processes. The status quo has been for policy teams to develop an approach which is then handed over to a commissioning team that instructs an external supplier to deliver against a specification and who, in turn, hand the delivered service over to a fourth team to operate.

When policy decisions are taken in isolation from delivery realities, and operational teams have no ongoing relationship with either, then siloes form. Such a disconnected approach causes problems for both the people accessing the service and government itself. Badly designed services benefit neither political objectives, or meet the needs of the public.

The digital government approach recognises the importance of bringing policy, delivery and operations together throughout the implementation lifecycle to ensure a common vision and coordinated development process. As such, it should be an ambition for those designing and delivering services to unite what might otherwise be siloed as a single team, focused on solving a particular problem together, shown in Figure 2.3.

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Figure 2.3. Two paradigms of delivering policy and services

Transformed services rely on diverse, multi-disciplinary teams of designers, developers, subject matter experts, policy officials, lawyers, operational staff, user researchers and content professionals that bring together different perspectives and commit to working across organisational boundaries. Taking a cross-discipline approach and involving those from across government helps to better understand the needs of all users. This idea includes the needs of civil servants within government with the responsibility for administering a service and sits behind the creation of the One Team Government movement (Box 2.11).

Developing cross-government service communities help to create a clear mission that unites all those involved with solving a particular problem for citizens or businesses. In doing so, they help to address several of the other behaviours discussed earlier in the chapter. In the United Kingdom, this approach has seen the creation of 4 different communities involving 236 members from 15 organisations with results ranging from simplifying content and user journeys for members of the public through to the redesign of internal procurement processes (Government Digital Service, 2019[21]).

Taking an agile approach

Both the Recommendation of the Council on Digital Government Strategies (OECD, 2014[1]) and the Recommendation of the Council on Open Government (OECD, 2017[2]) place a high premium on ensuring that as governments develop policies and services the public should be involved. Nevertheless, there are different ways and extents to which the ideal of user-driven approaches might be approached during the policy making, service delivery and ongoing operational lifecycle.

The public might be engaged by governments through consultation during the policy design process, in seeking the experience of those affected during pilots during the initial implementation phase and gathering feedback once something is operational. However, as shown in Figure 2.4, these are usually independent of one another, do not feed from one into the next and are generally reactive rather than reflecting and mutual ongoing discussion. A result of this is that policy consultation is siloed from the insights derived from both testing a service before it launches and operational feedback once it is live. As a result, the public end up being secondary to the views and activities of public service teams who are not empowered to understand or deliver against outcomes that transform the wellbeing of citizens.

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Figure 2.4. A traditional approach to the interaction between government and the public during policy making, service delivery and ongoing operations

This situation contributes to the siloed delivery approaches discussed in the previous section (Figure 2.3) and as a symptom of Waterfall approaches to delivery. The traditional Waterfall approach is built around a sequencing of activities or phases that must be completed before moving on to the next. This approach attempts to manage uncertainty by creating a plan up front. In this way requirements are identified as a distinct phase before any work is undertaken. There is then no interaction with the solution or any opportunity to provide feedback until the final product is delivered. You only have one chance to get each part of the project right, because you do not return to earlier stages. Should any change want to be made there are high costs associated with what may need to be the revisiting of fundamental decisions.

In contrast, the Working Party of Senior Digital Government Officials (E-Leaders) Thematic Group on Service Delivery advocates for governments to adopt an Agile methodology (Box 2.7). The core values of Agile were first set out in the context of software engineering in the Agile Manifesto below.

These ideas are increasingly a staple of digital government. Agile involves embracing uncertainty and expecting to continuously learn and improve approaches based on what is learnt in order to prioritise adding value to users as quickly as possible. All the elements found in a Waterfall process are instead carried out concurrently: the activity associated with gathering requirements, planning, designing, building and testing. By starting small with Discovery and Alpha phases teams can research, prototype, test and learn about the needs of their users before committing to building a real service allowing them to fail quickly and correct course in response to what they find. The development of that real service only goes live when enough feedback has been gathered to demonstrate that needs are met and the service works.

Fundamental to this change in approach is the importance of ongoing research and a cyclical model of delivery, Figure 2.5. The separation between the public and government in Figure 2.4 is replaced with government engaging the public on an ongoing basis to explore user-driven approaches and carry out research.

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Figure 2.5. An Agile approach to the interaction between government and the public during policy making, service delivery and ongoing operations

As a result, instead of being initiated in government, policy responds to an understanding of citizen needs based on research conducted with them, reflecting views expressed across a wide sample of the population and informed by insights available from societal data. Having knowledge of the problem in this way allows for the development of policy to be guided and led by the needs of the public rather than the implementation of assumed or paternalistic solutions devised by public servants at their desks. With policy development taking place in close proximity to those carrying out the delivery of the service, research findings can be incorporated into the design and delivery of the service itself. Experimental, hypothesis led interventions involving the public further confirm whether or not a given approach will be effective. At launch, when the policy and any associated services are impacting on real lives, the agile, research-led approach emphasises the continued understanding of the user’s experience to establish impact and respond to any insights in understanding whether the policy is having its desired outcomes.

Style guide and language

The shift from analogue, via e-government, to digital government has often resulted in a separation of responsibility for serving information to the public and delivering transactions completed by the public. However, to develop services in line with the behaviours discussed earlier in this chapter it is important to recognise the important role that content and language play in the understanding the public might have and therefore the consequent effectiveness of any services that they are consuming.

One way of supporting this is to develop style guides that create consistency and set standards in terms of written communication, whether that is found in letters received through the post, forms completed as part of a transaction, emails triggered by completing a step in process workflow or the web content arrived at from searching the internet. A selection of these are presented in Box 2.12.

Service manuals

It is not only in the area of content that the shift to digital government introduces a completely different paradigm in terms of the design and delivery of services as discussed in the previous chapter. Blurring the distinctions between historically separated siloes while also introducing skills around user research and agile delivery mean that several countries have developed resources that act as reference materials to embed and establish a particular design culture.

In addition, the development of strategic approaches to the delivery of common technology (discussed later in this section) has also seen countries develop centralised references for architectural decisions and the documentation of associated APIs and integrations. A selection of these are discussed in Box 2.13.

Business cases and budget thresholds

The Recommendation of the Council on Digital Government Strategies (OECD, 2014[1]) identifies business cases as a critical element in securing the sustainability of digital government approaches through ensuring funding is available. Part of this exercise is to ensure a clear value proposition for all projects that can identify economic, social and political benefits as well as a process that involves all actors throughout government to ensure buy in and recognition of those benefits.

In the context of designing and delivering services such business case processes have important echoes of the need to carry out the research to understand a set of users, their needs and the potential ways in which government might respond. The business case and approval process needs to find ways to encourage experimentation by making funding available for research and prototype activities through a process that is lighter weight and less cumbersome than what might be expected for a full project implementation. Moreover, with an agile approach anticipating a continuous iteration of a service it is important for business case and funding processes to anticipate the need for delivery approaches that are continuously learning and as a result may pivot away from the original proposal having better understood the problem on an ongoing basis.

In the United Kingdom, a very early decision by the Government Digital Service was to make it possible for departments and agencies to carry out discovery and alpha activity without the need for a HM Treasury business case (HM Treasury and Government Finance Function, 2014[25]). In France, the team at beta.gouv.fr have developed a similar ‘pre-incubation’ phase where funding is available for teams to scope a problem and demonstrate the potential for a response without requiring a business case (beta.gouv.fr, n.d.[26]). The advantage of this approach to meeting well understood needs rather than spending time and energy on responding to assumed, but mistaken, needs can be seen in the way in which the United Kingdom developed GOV.UK Notify, as discussed in Box 2.14.

Complementing business case processes are the ways in which countries invoke greater scrutiny of data, digital and technology spending when it reaches a particular budgetary threshold. That threshold can range from 10 000 EUR in Portugal to as high as 1 300 000 EUR in Denmark. These ‘spend control’ processes have become a feature where countries are developing the maturity of the broader public sector and seeking to shift particular approaches to procurement and formed part of previous recommendations made to Chile focusing on governing digital government (OECD, 2016[12]).

With the necessary mandate, such tools can enforce particular ways of working in terms of delivery methodologies or the re-use of common components whilst also providing a broad perspective on activity across government to help avoid duplication and increase the potential for collaboration on cross-government services that involve multiple actors. One important element in being able to create a far-sighted view on contractual break points and expiry dates as well as ongoing planning is to develop a pipeline of intended procurement. Denmark, Norway, Portugal and the United Kingdom are using this policy lever to improve the coherence and sustainability of investment, enforce the use of policy guidelines and standards and ensure any investment activity avoids any gaps or overlaps in delivery.

Procurement and commissioning

Whilst it is important to shape the way in which business cases are developed and spending approved it is also critically important to ensure that procurement and commissioning activities support the overall ambitions of service design and delivery across all relevant channels. The Recommendation of the Council on Digital Government Strategies (OECD, 2014[1]) emphasises the importance of procurement as an enabling contributor to broader ambitions around digital transformation. The ICT Commissioning Thematic Groups of the Working Party of Senior Digital Government Officials (E-Leaders) has been developing its thinking around approaches that can support agile commissioning and the delivery of transformed outcomes through The ICT Commissioning Playbook (E-Leaders Thematic Group on ICT Commissioning and OECD, 2019[29]). It contains the 11 plays in Figure 2.6.

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Figure 2.6. Thematic Group on ICT Commissioning – draft principles

Source: E-Leaders Thematic Group on ICT Commissioning, (2019[29]) The ICT Commissioning Playbook

Procurement and commissioning that follow these principles can simplify the delivery of services while also affording opportunities to increase and develop the skills within the public sector too (see later section on public sector talent and skills) to ask the right questions of their suppliers. By changing the nature of how government engages suppliers this approach can shift the focus to outcomes and how all actors involved with designing and delivering services are challenged to respond to the needs of users. Furthermore, rethinking procurement activity can disrupt incumbent suppliers where inflexible contracts might stifle government’s ability to respond to citizens.

The United Kingdom has adopted an approach, discussed in Box 2.15, that looks not only at how its Digital Marketplace has thought about the design of the frameworks shaping how goods are procured and commissioned but also at how expectations are set for suppliers through the Technology Code of Practice.

Standards and assurance processes

The power of a business case methodology in shaping the upfront behaviour of teams to ensure that they receive funding is clear and steps can be taken to influence the way in which procurement and commissioning is carried out. However, once that money is distributed the visibility of financial reporting will not necessarily provide confidence that the outcomes associated with the money will be in line with an overarching service design and delivery strategy.

One common response to this around the world has been for countries to establish a set of criteria against which the delivery and quality of services might be assessed. National standards for the design and delivery of standards exist in Australia1, Canada2, Germany3, Mexico4, New Zealand5, Singapore6, and the United Kingdom7 whilst they have also been developed at different tiers and jurisdictions of government around the world.

Alongside the conceptual importance of establishing good in terms of outcomes as experienced by the public, governments can also take a view on the cross-government technical architecture to establish standards that can help to promote a consistent method for delivering within the public sector. Although not directly impacting on the user’s experience of the services that are designed and delivered, the standards and attitudes around technology shape the ease with which innovation can be carried out and ensure that some of the most important enabling ideas, such as interoperability, are prioritised at an architectural level.

Some of these standards can be mandated centrally but the most effective approaches result from cross-government consensus about the opportunities and benefits of finding consistent approaches that allow for easier procurement and ensure guidance and best practices can be consolidated. These areas, as shown in Box 2.16 can cover quite diverse topics.

All these standards provide a common language for helping multiple delivery partners, whether public servants or suppliers, to work towards a shared ambition and according to agreed expectations of what good looks like. Nevertheless, it is important for the purposes of scrutiny, quality control and perhaps the ongoing release of funds, to establish appropriate assurance mechanisms that validate these standards are in place. One model is to create particular funding or delivery gateways associated with an increase in the quantity of users for whom the service is available (for example before a beta or before the live launch). An alternative is encourage ongoing relationships between the team responsible for controlling spend and the service delivery team so that assurance happens during the development of a service

Digital literacy

Several of the service standards discussed earlier in this chapter acknowledge the importance of ensuring that design processes understand the context of users and lower barriers to usage. Adopting design led models for content and interaction patterns as well as structuring services in ways that make them usable by voice assistants and other AI powered tools mean that services become accessible, even for those who may not have the necessary literacy themselves.

One significant intervention in attempting to close the digital divide in terms of the inequality between those who may have access to the Internet or knowledge of its benefits, compared to those who do not, can be found through the way in which physical service locations have been used to offer training to the general public. In Panama, the InfoPlazas network operated by the National Secretariat of Science, Technology and Innovation (Secretaría Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación) and funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) (Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, 2015[37]) offers training and builds knowledge for citizens to be able to take full advantage of online services (OECD, 2019[9]).

Therefore, while the use of technology and data can allow for proactive services that anticipate the needs of citizens to reduce friction, and service design practices can ensure services work are designed for all, complementary strategic efforts to increase digital literacy should not be forgotten.

Connectivity

One of the advantages of telephone based service provision over all channels is that it is usually possible to make a phone call (if not on mobile then on a landline) throughout a country. Physical locations necessarily suffer from geographic constraints whilst digital services can be put out of reach by limitations over coverage or affordability. Therefore, in thinking through the strategy for designing and delivering services, especially where there is an ambition for seamless experiences between telephone, physical and digital channels, it is critical to be aligned with those working on the question of connectivity in society both in terms of physical infrastructure but also in providing access to those who can’t afford it themselves.

In Mexico (see Box 2.5), access to the internet has been recognised as a fundamental right, established in the Mexican constitution. Through Mexico Conectado internet access is being brought to 250,000 public spaces including hospitals, libraries, schools and government offices. In Panama, universal access to ICTs is also enshrined in law and led to the creation of the National Internet Network (Red Nacional Internet) covering 86% of the country and offering free access to the internet (OECD, 2019[9]).

Accessibility

A final aspect of digital inclusion concerns making sure that any service can be used by as many people as possible – including those with impaired vision, learning and motor difficulties and other disabilities. Some of these needs have been built into the physical environment for many years while telephone based services, particularly for those with hearing impairments, have also been developed. In Chile, a significant focus within ChileAtiende has been on the design of its settings to ensure that in person exchanges are as inclusive as possible. Online, some of those considerations can be overlooked and yet accessible websites and apps are better for all users – they often offer faster and easier to use or understand functionality.

An important aspect of service design is doing the research to ensure empathy with users and understanding their needs. This should extend to whether or not the service can be accessed. In the United Kingdom, the Government Digital Service has responded to this by developing an ‘empathy lab’ which can be used by others across government to use different digital assistive devices in order to understand the struggles a user might face (Government Digital Service, 2018[38]).

Although the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) oversees international efforts to develop standards including the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as part of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)8 they are not always mandated by law or enforced. Amongst the European Union countries the 2016 Web Accessibility Directive has increased the expectation over the importance of ensuring online public services and apps are accessible (Box 2.17).

Hosting and infrastructure

Providing easy access to secure and scalable cloud infrastructure that reduces the demand for expensive web operations skills and simplifies the provisioning effort involved with moving from prototype into beta and on into live services is an approach that has been adopted by the United States of America9 and the United Kingdom10. This is particularly valuable for those teams working with the ‘long tail’ of services that might otherwise lack the resources to develop their infrastructure.

Low code and Design systems

Low code approaches allow small teams to build end to end services that can replace expensive and legacy systems. These visual interfaces make use of common components and do not require specialist software engineering skills. They have been particularly beneficial in local government contexts, such as Adur and Worthing Councils in the United Kingdom who have saved 200 000 GBP per year in software licence costs and a tripling of productivity among some teams (OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation, 2019[42]). Nevertheless, low code solutions need to be looked at with a critical eye, mindful that they may deliver a solution with the risk of vendor lock in and at the expense of code quality, performance or accessibility.

A complementary approach is to develop design systems of reusable User Interface components, design patterns, accessibly written code and guidance to support implementation that ensure service teams can build in a consistent fashion. Providing reliable user experiences like this can help to build trust in a government brand whilst also continuously benefitting from the input of those teams that are researching and learning about its effectiveness in their use of its elements without being tied to the specifics of a given technology or contractual provider. Some examples of government design systems are those of Argentina11, Australia12, Brazil13, Canada14, Singapore15, the United States of America16, and the United Kingdom17.

At their best, low code solutions should build on and incorporate the elements of these common design systems as well as platforms such as those discussed in the next section. Rather than a new team needing to address all the technical overheads involved in building a service from scratch, or carrying out user research on each element, this approach allows all teams, but particularly smaller ones with limited resources to piece together a full service, focusing their efforts on the overall service journey.

Digital Identity, Notifications, and Payments

A third area of common components and tools is that which is most commonly associated with Government as a Platform thinking, the specific platforms for digital identity, sending notifications and taking payments as well as others.

In the case of Digital Identity the OECD’s report (OECD, 2019[43]) identified and compared the models being explored in Austria, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Italy, Korea, Norway, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Uruguay. Providing identity as a service to citizens and businesses that allows them to be verified in accessing digital services can be transformational in terms of obviating the need for physical documents and face to face interactions.

A second area is that of electronic notifications. In Norway residents have access to a digital mailbox while the example of GOV.UK Notify in the United Kingdom has been discussed in Box 2.14. Interestingly in the case of GOV.UK Notify the open source codebase has made it possible for Canada and Australia to reuse it in implementing their own common platforms for notifications.

Finally, payments is another area where countries are developing their own platforms with pagoPA in Italy18 and GOV.UK Pay in the United Kingdom19.

In India20, the Aadhaar identity service has evolved into IndiaStack, providing a set of APIs for government and business to offer access to a universal biometric digital identity, paperless personal records, a single interface for cashless transactions, and a consent layer allowing data to move freely and securely.

Skills and training

The starting point for any analysis of the public sector talent and capability must be with the existing staff and team members who have been working in and around the design and delivery of services. This includes those who have worked in policy roles, delivery roles and operationally as the ambition is to create multi-disciplinary teams that understand the breadth of the user’s experience. Carrying out such an audit will help to identify those with an eagerness to branch out into digital government and service design roles and help support those for whom different roles might be better.

Where new training is needed, or a change of role more suitable there is a danger that such a move confirms the fears people have that the digital agenda is a threat to jobs and exacerbate tensions with unions who equate digital government with an inevitable loss of jobs. It is true that every time an analogue process is removed or a data-driven proactive exchange of information is introduced that happens at the expense of a previous manual task. Nevertheless, this provides an opportunity to explore retraining opportunities for those who are affected and work with unions to offset risks by including them as part of embedding a new digital and service design led culture in government.

Several OECD countries, including Italy and the United Kingdom have developed particular curriculums and training programmes that speak to the need to equip their staff with the necessary skills to support the digital and service design agenda. In the United Kingdom, the ambition of the Digital Academy is to create a critical mass of staff working at every grade throughout the public sector having confidence when it comes to digital, data and technology awareness.

Recruitment

Taking a service design approach to the delivery of services may require the reshaping of roles required to meet the needs of citizens. Whilst it may be possible to retrain long-standing members of staff there will be a capability gap that needs to be addressed through recruitment. However, with new roles comes the challenge of identifying the appropriate pay and conditions to be competitive with the market whilst operating within the constraints of the existing public sector pay arrangements.

Those constraints may make it impossible to bring digital government skills in-house immediately. Therefore, when faced with a lag in terms of retraining the existing workforce and challenges in terms of recruiting new staff, it will be necessary to work with the supplier ecosystem to explore ways of bringing in particular specialisms. This may necessitate the creation of special procurement frameworks or working with Human Resource colleagues to find flexibility in securing the necessary leadership, talent and capabilities on which to start developing the service design agenda. It is important to ensure that any service design and digital government agenda that has aspirations for transforming the way citizen and state interact makes the necessary commitment to accessing the skills required for it to be achieved.

Job families, professions and their communities of practice

A further important step is to recognise the longer-term realignment of job families and recruitment parameters. Working with Human Resource colleagues and those responsible for the structure of jobs and roles across the public service provides the opportunity to think about and define the job families needed to support digital, data and technology professionals. While many governments will have ICT functions and a track record in technology and e-government disciplines these may not be fit for purpose in terms of their roles such as Web Operations Engineers, User Research, Product Management and Service Design as well as others. Moreover, it will be necessary to identify the expected career path for these roles and be conscious of the steps that might be needed in order to retain or replace staff.

Having understood the skills of the workforce, identified the disciplines required and started to evolve recruitment practices and design the necessary career paths the next element in developing a cross-government environment that can support service design and delivery is to designate the necessary leadership of those professions and begin to develop cross-government communities. The United Kingdom’s experience in developing a profession and communities of practice is in Box 2.21.

Consultancy and coaching

One of the challenges with questions of talent and capability in the service design and delivery agenda is how you scale these skills and abilities throughout the entirety of government at the pace that’s needed to embed this paradigm shift. Whilst suppliers working according to the standards and assurance processes discussed earlier can be part of the solution the value of consultancy and coaching should not be neglected.

In Chile, the GobLab provides an excellent model for how such consultancy might look. While ostensibly providing a service to partners across the public sector, the interactions between GobLab and their clients has a coaching element. Therefore, as a centre of excellence is developed and different professions become more established throughout the public sector there is a valuable opportunity to be exploited in providing ‘consultancy’ services out to colleagues across government whilst at the same time investing in the skills of the organisation with whom the work is being carried out.

Skills transfer

The final area in which public sector talent and capability can be an enabler for teams working to meet the needs of their users is through the relationships that are developed with suppliers. Historically teams might have identified a set of requirements, run a procurement exercise and outsourced the delivery of the solution to an off-site team that was managed as part of a contract rather than there being any co-delivery. According to the philosophies of service design discussed in terms of co-working, collaboration and iterative development a different model of working with suppliers is necessary.

As such, procurement exercises that focus on outcomes rather than specifications for a delivered solution can provide an opportunity to specify knowledge transfer skills. In the initial exchanges with the supplier the responsibility might be for 100% of the delivery but, over time, if the expectation is part of the contracted outcome that should decrease as the public sector staff pick up more of the responsibility until there comes a point where the supplier is fulfilling a coaching role. At that point the necessary knowledge and capability has been internalised by the public sector organisation and the relationship with the supplier may no longer be needed.