In 2011 GDS established control of all IT spending in the UK government, and with it established a set of ‘digital service standards’ to ensure that all services that were developed across government and added to GOV.UK (the UK Government’s central website for services) met the needs of users and were consistent.

When I established the discipline of service design in government, it became clear that our existing standards didn’t set a high enough expectation for service design – they were purely digital, didn’t require service teams to review the policy that underpinned their services, and nor did they test whether a service met the needs of users.

In 2018 I set about changing the ‘digital service standard’ to the ‘Government Service standard’ – working with the government’s policy and operational delivery professions to establish one central standard for all government services, regardless of channel.

Credits
Stephen Gill & the service standard team for writing 100s of pages of new guidance to support service teams across government.