Last updated: 13 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 - 10.15am Welcome to Services Week by Megan Lee Devlin, Chief Executive, Central Digital and Data Office To 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. This will be updated shortly to include a link to the session --- 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 will be updated shortly to include a link to the session --- 11am - 12pm 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 --- 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 (to be confirmed) 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. This will be updated shortly to include a link to the session |
| Tuesday 21 March | 10.15 - 11am New teachers campaign 2023: How UCD and data guided an email campaign to help trainee teachers find their perfect role.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 - 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 --- 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 (to be confirmed) 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. This will be updated shortly to include a link to the session |
| Wednesday 22 March | 10 - 10.45am 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. This will be updated shortly to include a link to the session 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. --- 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. |
| Thursday 23 March | 9:30 to 11am How do you measure your team's successes?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.--- 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. This will be updated shortly to include a link to the session --- 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. This will be updated shortly to include a link to the session --- 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. --- 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 barriers community was formed in 2020 for cross government teams 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. This will be updated shortly to include a link to the session |
| Friday 24 March | 9 - 9:20am Service Standards (lightning talk)The Service Standard is a set of criteria to help government create and run good services. There are 14 in total, and in the NHS Service Standard there are an additional 3 specific to the NHS and health and social care. 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. This will be updated shortly to include a link to the session --- 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. --- 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. This will be updated shortly to include a link to the session |
We look forward to seeing you there and hope you enjoy it!
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