The document discusses the Government Digital Service (GDS) and Government Digital Strategy in the UK. It summarizes that GDS was created to deliver the digital strategy and improve government websites and digital services. The digital strategy aims to save £1.7-1.8 billion annually by making digital the default for services used over 100,000 times a year. GDS provides guides and resources for user-centered design and delivery of digital services according to its service design manual and digital by default standard.

1. #IWDev 15
The GDS’s
Gavin Muncaster
gavin.muncaster@gmail.com
#IWDev 15The GDS’s….
(my heavily caveated view!)

2. #IWDev 15The GDS’s….
Why talk about the Government….
• Complete change of mind-set over last
few years
• Doing some really cool things – Agile
Development, Continuous Delivery, User
centred design to name a few
• Load of resources that might be of
interest or useful
• Don’t get to code enough any more so if I don’t talk about
this may never say anything!

3. #IWDev 15The GDS’s….
What are the GDS’s?
Part 1: The Government Digital Service
• Team put in place to deliver the
Government Digital Strategy (part 2)
• Part of the Cabinet Office
• In-house team – moved away from
‘Big IT’
• Lots of recruitment at
http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/jobs/

4. • http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk
#IWDev 15The GDS’s….
The Government Digital Service
• Multi-disciplinary team,
covers everything from
requirements, build and
all resultant business
change
• Website is their blog –
built on Wordpress and a
customised $79 theme

5. #IWDev 15The GDS’s….
• GOV.UK – reducing the
number and cost of
government websites
Main projects
(Remember the £105m
website?!)
• Delivering the Digital
Strategy and ‘Digital by
Default’ which is part 2 –
the Government Digital
Strategy

6. #IWDev 15The GDS’s…. #IWDev 15The GDS’s….
The second GDS
Part 2: The Government Digital Strategy
• Created in 2012 in
response to commitment
to deliver services
digitally
• Covers the whole of
central government
• Each major department
responded with their own
digital strategy

7. #IWDev 15The GDS’s….
Government Digital Strategy
• Predict savings of £1.7 to
£1.8 billion annually
• Cross government
approach to ‘Assisted
digital’ supports the
strategy
• 14 explicit actions that
come as a result

8. #IWDev 15The GDS’s….
How does it fit together
Government Digital Strategy
Service Design
Manual
Performance
Platform
Guides &
Resources
Digital by Default
Service Standard
Guides &
Resources
Standards to
be met

9. #IWDev 15The GDS’s….
What does it mean though?
• Any transaction that takes place more than
100,000 times annually have to be redesigned
from the ground up - with digital as the default
channel. E.g. car tax online, universal credit,
personalised registrations, prison visit booking
• Has to be a plan to get digital uptake to 80%,
‘assisted digital’ giving ways to increase uptake
• Focus on proper metrics to measure use and
those metrics to be publicly available on the
“performance platform” -
https://www.gov.uk/performance

10. #IWDev 15The GDS’s….
So why is it interesting?
• Digital By Default Service Standard
• 26 criteria that have to be met before a service
can go live – comes into effect April 2014
• Technically minded but realistic at same time –
use agile, make it open source, multivariate
testing
• All criteria supported by related guides
• Everything is freely available
• We’re not paying 100’s of millions of taxes to the
big I.T. companies!

11. #IWDev 15The GDS’s….
The Service Design Manual
(my favourite bit)
• Simple Mantra – Build services so good that
people prefer to use them.
• User Centred Design – put users at the heart
of the process not at the end
• The old way• The new way

12. #IWDev 15The GDS’s….
The Design Principles
1. Start with needs (users not your own!)
2. Do less
3. Design with data
4. Do the hard work to make it simple
5. Iterate. Then iterate again.
6. Build for inclusion
7. Understand context
8. Build digital services, not websites
9. Be consistent, not uniform
10. Make things open: it makes things better
https://www.gov.uk/designprinciples

13. #IWDev 15The GDS’s….
Design Principle - Do Less
“Government should only do what only government can do. If someone
else is doing it — link to it. If we can provide resources (like APIs) that will
help other people build things — do that. We should concentrate on the
irreducible core. We’ll make better services and save more money by
focusing resources where they’ll do the most good.”
• Content
rationalisation
– in this
example ‘Bee
Keeping’

14. #IWDev 15The GDS’s….
Design Principle - Iterate, then Iterate again
“The best way to build effective services is to start small and iterate
wildly. Release Minimum Viable Products early, test them with real
users, move from Alpha to Beta to Launch adding features and
refinements based on feedback from real users.
Iteration reduces risk. It makes big failures unlikely and turns small
failures into lessons. This avoids the 200 page spec document
which can turn into a bottleneck. This, again, is the core advantage
of digital: we’re not building bridges — things can be undone.”
• When GOV.UK was released to beta there was
a iteration to go live 3pm the next day –
released as planned with host of fixes

15. #IWDev 15The GDS’s….
Guides and Resources
• Everything is open and everything is accompanied
with a guide
• Guides targeted to all user groups (Service
managers, designers, developers, performance
analysts)
• Covers 90+ topics from Continuous delivery and
running retrospectives to standalone mobile apps
to hosting.
• Short and concise – good links. Common sense
when you it but subjects across the board
• All guides have direct links to github for download

16. #IWDev 15The GDS’s….
Guide - Service Design Phases
• One of the guides
• Summarises the 5 steps
used on the development
of all online services
• Each stage cross link to
associated guides
• Nice to see they
acknowledge
developments are finite
with the ‘Retirement
Phase’

17. #IWDev 15The GDS’s….
Guide - Progressive Enhancement
• Part of the ‘Making Software’
set of guides
• Relates to ‘beta’ and
‘live’ phases
• Basic straight forward
advice
• In a good way almost
states the obvious but
reminds you it’s good to
keep things simple

18. #IWDev 15The GDS’s….
Guide - Measurement
• Part of the ‘Measurement’
set of guides covering this
and KPI’s
• Relates across all phases
• Short guide trying to
ensure all services are
measured in the same way
• Makes it clear that the
measurement information
will be made public

19. #IWDev 15The GDS’s….
To finish…….
• Lots of cool things (easier to see if the
tethering worked and you got to see it)
• Nothing really rocket science – just good
common sense
• After years of the horror stories about
Government ICT projects (NHS £12bn project
scrapped, £105 on a single website) it feels a
real refreshing approach to doing things
• Very ‘real world’ – rings so many bells with
things we discuss at IWDevs

20. #IWDev 15The GDS’s….
Acknowledgements & Links
• Goes without saying most of this cribbed straight
from GOV.UK so can’t take any credit for the good
stuff
• Links:
• http://www.gov.uk
• http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk
• http://www.gov.uk/service-manual
• http://www.gov.uk/service-manual/digital-by-default
• http://publications.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/digital/
• Thanks for listening!