There was an interesting article by Marcus du Sautoy in the Guardian on Saturday about the future of the book. That’s a perfectly straightforward statement – or might have been had it been written a few years ago. But now ‘article’, ‘in’ and ‘on Saturday’ are all a bit problematic. On the printed page, it [...]
It is important to note that we will only accept printed forms for registration, please do not return these forms electronically as they will not be processed. The electronic versions are for your convenience and will need to be printed before return. From an email received today. Not, as it happens, about a government service.
We need to recognise the need for clarity of service design, for clear leadership of service design and delivery as a function of government, making customer understanding a central part of the job for everybody who has anything to do with any of this – and for all of that to to be done with a sense of openness and a recognition of the value of co-creation. That’s a revolution of culture, leadership and innovation which wasn’t on the agenda ten years ago.
The idea of service minimalism is a very attractive one. Perfection - in service design as in other things – is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. I have written before about government being most successful when it is least intrusive and also [...]
It’s the time of year for electoral registration. For the last couple of years, my council has offered a rather clunky web service, not designed to inspire confidence – indeed barely designed at all – but fully functional nonetheless. This year, I can register by text message – just a case of sending a ten [...]
There is – for good reason – no let up in the drive to add to and deepen the range of government services available online, most recently expressed in the Digital Britain report. But it’s important to remember that that assumes a level of choice and opportunity not open to everyone. As a useful reminder, [...]
This is how news travels in the new world. Except it doesn’t because those whose job is to help it travel seem to do the opposite. A bit on the broken process first, then a few thoughts on the elusive information. Let’s start with the indispensible Public Sector Blogs. Or rather not, since it is [...]
Rick Segal realised he needed a visa in a hurry: I happened to wander onto the Australian site which talks about all the visa requirements and, golly gee, it’s all electronic. Click this, fill in that, fork over 20 bucks, and bob’s yer uncle, get the barbee fired up. Yup. In just under 6 minutes, [...]
It starts so well. Promotion and demystifying of an online service tuned to the target audience: check Silver surfers: check Actor from a sitcom appealing to the target market: check Government services online: check Faster and easier than having to queue up at an office: check Online guidance which takes you through the form line [...]
From Robin Goad of Hitwise: Partly as a result of the economic downturn, and partly because online services have improved, UK Internet traffic to Government websites increased by 13.3% between February 2008 and February 2009. I would expect this trend to continue during 2009, but in the meantime here is a list of the top [...]