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 [...]
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, [...]
I walk in, slightly tentatively. It’s not altogether clear quite where I should be. I stand in what looks like the right area. Nobody takes any notice of me. There are one or two members of staff talking to other customers. There is a woman whose job seems to consist of walking around importantly with [...]
The latest Oxford Internet Survey was published a couple of weeks ago. It’s been going every two years since 2003, so starting to build up an interesting picture over time. There’s a splendid summary by somebody called Paul Reynolds writing from New Zealand which is rather more user-friendly than the one in the report itself. [...]
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 [...]
Tower 09 was over a fortnight ago. My notes are, as always, close to illegible. The attribution of thoughts to speakers may bear no resemblance to what they think they said. The failure to attribute thoughts to speakers does not mean either that they didn’t have any or that they weren’t interesting. I was only [...]
Qimo is an operating system with a difference: it’s aimed at three year olds. Application software for toddlers has been around for a long time, of course, but the existence of an entire operating system (even if it’s Ubuntu a little bit under the skin) gives food for thought. The much hyped digital natives are, [...]
It is all too easy to forget, from the lofty heights of public strategy, that public services are about people. It is all too easy to forget that although we are all users of public services, that there are some among us for whom public services are not something at the margin but are the [...]
The question of whether users of public services are appropriately or usefully called ‘customers’ never seems entirely to go away, though in my view, it’s a question which no longer illuminates much of value. To the extent I had thought about it all though, I had always assumed that it was a post-Thatcherite debate, perhaps [...]
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 [...]