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Developing better digital public services through user involvement
January 14, 2010
Following a critical review of Directgov - the Government’s central online portal - the official consumer champion Consumer Focus promised a campaign to ensure that users of digital public services get a better experience in future.
What’s needed to achieve this, Consumer Focus believes, is a stronger user perspective on digital service delivery from the very start.
Consumer Focus have now commissioned the team at Social by Social to explore how this might be achieved with a workshop next month, and online exchanges, leading to a guide drawing on a wide range of ideas from innovators in the field.
I’ll be working with Amy Sample Ward, and with Lauren Ivory who organised the recent myPublicServices unconference for Patient Opinion.
Over the next few weeks we’ll be pulling together past research in this field, talking to people inside and outside government, both central and local, who are concerned with digital public services, and planning a workshop for late February.
This will be an open process, so we’ll be using this site and other ways to invite contributions, report progress and hopefully catalyse some creative thinking and collaborations.
If you want to get involved, please join the Digital Public Services group here on socialbysocial.net. To keep in touch, follow @socialbysocial and the twitter tag #digips
We’ll shortly explain more about the approach we’ve agreed with Consumer Focus, and the nature and timing of the workshop.
Meanwhile do of course drop a comment here. If you tweet about this, please include #digips
This is by way of a holding post, so that we have something to point to when we start talking to people … so please excuse lack of detail. The idea is we follow the principles of user involvement, and evolve with anyone interested.
In that spirit, content is currently the responsibility of the project team, and should not be taken to reflect Consumer Focus policy or opinions.
The report: Does Directgov Deliver?. Commentable version here.
Digital public services group at socialbysocial.net
Digital public services on Twitter
