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Services by design

Phil Rumens
1 month 2 weeks ago

Service patterns are reusable designs for common problems that help create consistent functions and services. 

I've been talking about service patterns and design with people from around the public sector recently, partly because this could be key to a wholesale reshaping of the public sector.

Service design goes beyond the use of digital, but given almost every public service now makes some use of technology now, service design and digital transformation are intrinsically linked.

I became aware of the need for common service patterns at an event organised by the Department for Communities and Local Government a few years ago. The workshop was part of the now defunct GOV.Verify programme, and brought together licencing and digital teams from councils across the country.

The idea was to see if Verify could be used as part of a common service to apply for a taxi licence, but as the day went on it became apparent that despite similar roles all delivering services to same legislation, they all worked slightly differently across every council.

There was no common service pattern, so there could be no common service.

A lack of common service patterns can prove costly within a single organisation too. We've all read reports of spiralling costs and lengthy delays in pubic sector IT projects, and in part this can be attributed to the desire for bespoke functionality resulting in tweaks or even wholesale redesign of how a platform functions to meet the unique service designs of that organisation.

One of the successes of the roll-out of PlanX as part of Open Digital Planning is that there's a library of re-usable service flows or patterns, and to varying extents the low-code solutions that are widely used across local government also have a re-usable library of common services too.

Without a common pattern for that service they will always need to be tweaked and bespoked for local use though, meaning there's little chance of a large uptake of solutions like Local Gov IMS, originally funded by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities which might provide a common income management platform for councils.

You may have seen me write about work I've been doing through LocalGov Digital with Dr Rebekah Wilson and Sarah Slate at the Local Government Association (LGA) and colleagues in my organisation including Kafilat Akintoye, around the Service Standard and service design in general. The draft report will be published in the next few weeks, and contains proposals around the use of a common standard and a service design community.

The Blueprint for a Modern Digital Government talks about a "one only" rule and a Digital Backbone.

I think service design and common patterns are key to the delivery of this at the very least across local government, and perhaps functions that involve the NHS, the Police, or central government too, so I very much hope they feature in the Government Digital and AI Roadmap, to be published in summer 2025. 

None of this is new, nor are they my ideas, I am merely an advocate for service patterns and design, and after reading this I hope you are too?


Phil Rumens

Let's talk

Phil Rumens
1 month 3 weeks ago

I'm putting aside half an hour of my own time to talk to you

What I'd like to talk about

Primarily anything around technology, data, and the internet, which relates to the design and delivery of public services. That could be anything from a specific development to a global trend.

Secondly, politics, or rather how politics and policies might affect local and regional government.

And finally, Arsenal Football Club, although my interest in this will vary depending on how well we're doing in the WSL and Premier League.

What I don't want to talk about

A product or service you'd like me to buy. I might be interested, just not through this route.

Specific political parties or politicians. I have views, but I won't be expressing them here.

Recruitment. I'm possibly interested in employing you or being employed by you, just not through this route.

Who would I like to talk to?

Anyone worldwide who wants to discuss the topics I'm interested in.

We may never met or talked online, or perhaps I've spoken to you many times face-to-face; it doesn't matter.

Is this a new idea?

No, "coffee cup conversations" or the idea of two strangers chatting has been around for decades, in fact the NHS are running their own randomised version.

What's in it for you?

I have 25+ years of experience in public sector IT and digital, so perhaps I can offer you:

A new perspective on something you're doing, or thinking of doing. 

Validation of your views or approach to that thing. 

Just a chat about something we find we mutually like or dislike.

What's in it for me?

You're not me.

It doesn't matter how much experience I have, you might have a different and possibly better take on some of the things that interest me.

What if no one's interested?

To be honest I'm not that interesting and definitely not very exciting. 

Don't expect a rollercoaster ride of laughs or action for half and hour; it's just you and me very likely talking about technology and the public sector for 30 minutes.

I'm fully prepared for not a single person taking up this offer and in that case I'll have half an hour set aside to research something I'm interested in.

How do I book time with you?

You can book a slot, usually at 4.30pm on a Wednesday here.

Phil Rumens

The same but different; My thoughts on the State of Digital Government Review

Phil Rumens
2 months 1 week ago

 

A new government allows for reflection and change unlike any other time.
It provides the opportunity for constructive criticism of the past, and to embrace the opportunities of the future, unburdened by the legacy of years in power.
It happened in 2011, and it’s happening in 2025.
This week saw the release of the State of Digital Government and the Blueprint for Modern Digital Government, a kind of call and response around the landscape of digital public services and how the Government might improve them.
I had worried that given both reports were completed in what was a reasonably short space of time that they might not be as rigorous or as inclusive as they could be. I needn't have. 
The State of Digital Government is one of the most honest reports into the UK public sector digital I've read in a while. It is critical whilst not being judgemental, and realistic about the opportunities and challenges for true transformation of public services..
In some respects it feels like 2011, in others it doesn’t, and here’s why.
In 2011 a small group of pioneers came together within the Civil Service, led and supported by the likes of now Lord Maude of Horsham and Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho to help create the first incarnation of the Government Digital Service (GDS).
Their ideas and energy helped transform government services, from the creation of the single government website GOV.UK, to the creation of the Service Standard which facilitated in my view one of the most underrated achievements of GDS, far better spend control on digital and IT.
For the next few years the mission continued, with the creation of GOV.Notify, GOV.Pay, in fact there’s a whole blog on the history of GDS here.
In 2011 onwards, efforts were focused almost entirely on central government. 
Whist it's true that services like Register to Vote included local government, in this case it actually created more work for councils through a lack of engagement and understanding.
In fact the creation of LocalGov Digital was in some respects a response to a perceived threat from GDS by being largely excluded, whilst the majority of public services people use on a day-to-day basis are actually delivered by local government or the NHS.
Sure, a digital service to renew a passport is useful, but what people really need to do on a day-to-day basis are things like reporting a missed bin or booking a GP appointment.
In this respect, these two reports are different from 2011. 
The acronym NHS appears in the state of digital government report 63 times, whilst the phrase “local government” is used 29 times. 
I get the sense that the authors understand that fixing the public sector should start with the services people use the most, and perhaps even that the NHS and local government are possibly the most broken, in relation to finance at least.
As a result I am enthusiastic about the next year and beyond in public sector digital.
Sure, there’s potential to miss that not every NHS trust and council are equal, and digital maturity across an organisation and the resources within digital teams will be very different in London boroughs to that in rural counties and districts.
The early signs are good though. 
Minute is a solution for note taking, transcribing and summarising meetings up to Official Sensitive classification, being developed by i.AI (which as of this week is part of GDS) and is already being trialled in local government.
It already seems as good as solutions offered commercially, and the team developing it has the technical expertise, energy, and collaborative approach I would love to see taken on for all the work involved in delivering the Blueprint.
So whilst it’s reminiscent of 2011, this moment feels different.
Not just because of both the scale of the challenge ahead and the technical capabilities now available to the public sector are so much greater, but because of a recognition that true transformation must be right across the public sector and perhaps this should start where services are most important to everyday life, with those those delivered by local government and the NHS.
Image taken from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/state-of-digital-government-review/state-of-digital-government-review and used under the Open Government Licence v3.0,
Phil Rumens