Podcast appearances and mentions of laura stevens

How to Market the Happy Mix Pack with Laura Stevens | Lara Hall-Bryce Social Series #7 is a Must-Watch episode! ✨Where happiness takes center stage in this exhilarating episode, featuring the visionary Laura Stevens, creator of the Happy Mix Pack. As a dedicated mom of five and a successful entrepreneur, Laura brings a unique perspective on why infusing happiness into our lives and our Isagenix businesses is more crucial than ever. ✨ Balancing Happiness & Success: Meet Laura Stevens, a supermom and innovator, who masterfully intertwines the essence of happiness with the rigors of running a thriving Isagenix business. Her story is a beacon of inspiration, demonstrating how joy can be a powerful catalyst in both personal and professional realms. ✨ The Happy Mix Pack: A Beacon of Happiness: Laura unveils her transformative product, the Happy Mix Pack, designed not just to delight but to instill a sense of joy and well-being. In today's fast-paced world, where stress and challenges abound, Laura's Happy Mix Pack emerges as a refreshing pack to support uplifting our spirits and enriching our lives. ✨ The Power of Happiness in Business: Dive deep with Laura as she shares the inspiration behind the Happy Mix Pack. Discover how focusing on happiness can revolutionize product development and customer engagement, setting a new standard in the entrepreneurial world. ✨ Crafting Joyful Success: This episode is more than just a success story; it's a roadmap to harnessing happiness as a business strategy. Laura shares insightful tips on creating this bundle of powerhouse Isagenix products and how to market them effectively, providing a blueprint for our Isagenix business success and customer satisfaction. Join us in this heartwarming and insightful conversation with Laura Stevens, and explore how the pursuit of happiness is reshaping the Isagenix business landscape. It's a journey through the power of positivity and the potential it holds for transforming both our personal lives and entrepreneurial endeavors.

In this week's episodes about questions, Pastor Colleen is joined by Laura Stevens, a RN, BSN who has a passion for nursing research and providing contextual care to birthing people. Her questions will inspire you to speak up at your next medical appointment and also to reflect on the inserections of gender, gender identity, and race in medicine. All Places Together (APT) is a non-geographic community, based in Virginia. APT seeks to gather individuals who are searching for God in the wilderness of life, individuals who deeply want to connect to something beyond themselves, and individuals who believe the love of Jesus is embodied in all of God's diverse creation. Thank you to our Mission Partners: Virginia Synod (www.vasynod.org) and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (www.elca.org). To give to All Places Together, visit our website: http://www.allplacestogether.org/ Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the button "Give to All Places Together". This will take you to the APT giving page. Enter your contribution amount to the basket and follow the instructions to check out!

Hey biz owners - you know it's that time of year again.... tax season (groan!) And we all know that running a business is a lot of work...and naturally, you want to keep as much of what you make as possible, get your taxes filed without any penalties or late fees, and PRAY that you don't get audited. Laura Stevens from Valley Accounting & Tax is here to help! She and her business partner opened up their biz two years ago in Barry's Bay and have business and corporate clients across Ontario, Montreal and even Calgary, offering virtual appointments and safe and secure tax filing. Laura's nuggets of financial wisdom will help you make make better financial decisions as she provides some ✨important✨ tax tips and deadline dates so you can feel confident and financially empowered. You'll want to tune in because.... ❌ Laura shares why she DOESN'T recommend incorporating if you're a small business

The theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli celebrates the life of an ancient Greek philosopher, in Anaximander And The Nature Of Science (translated by Marion Lignana Rosenberg). He tells Adam Rutherford that this little known figure spearheaded the first great scientific revolution and understood that progress is made by the endless search for knowledge. Anaximander challenged conventions by proposing that the Earth floats in space, animals evolve and storms are natural, not supernatural. The travel writer Kapka Kassabova has gone searching for ancient knowledge about the natural world in her latest book, Elixir: In the Valley at the End of Time. The Mesta River, in her native Bulgaria, is one of the oldest inhabited rivers in Europe, and a mecca for wild plant gatherers, healers and mystics. In Dvořák's lyric opera the eponymous hero Rusalka is a water spirit who sacrifices her voice and leaves her home for the love of a Prince. In a new contemporary staging at the Royal Opera House (21 February–7 March 2023) the co-directors Ann Yee and Natalie Abrahami foreground the uneasy relationship between nature and humanity, and the latter's destruction of what it fails to heed. Producer: Katy Hickman Image credit: Asmik Grigorian in Natalie Abrahami and Ann Yee's Rusalka, The Royal Opera ©2023 Laura Stevens

Ovation Sound is a recording studio in Winston-Salem that will soon be moving from North Point to 801 North Liberty Street downtown.  In this conversation with Bill and Laura Stevens, we learn more about their business and plans for their new location.  The Triad Podcast Network is presented by The Ginther Group Real Estate, Ashley McKenzie-Sharpe with The Sharpe Mortgage Team and Three Magnolias Financial Advisors See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Erin Simmons and Laura Stevens are on the podcast today talking about MY Place. MY (Mankato Youth) Place is a safe, after school and non-school day facility that offers programming for Mankato Kindergarten through 8th graders. Programming is offered to families at no charge, MY Place depends on community donors for its funding. MY Place was opened in 2018 as The Boys and Girls Club, learn more about the work they are doing for youth in our community on today's episode.

On the show this week, I am talking to Laura Stevens, Vice President of Global Strategy, Analytics and Employee Experience at DSM.Throughout this episode, Laura and I discuss:How Laura is using her prior experience as a people analytics consultant, to influence her strategy for the people analytics function at DSMThe synergies and opportunities that can be leveraged between employee experience and people analytics by designing services with the human in mindHow people analytics teams can help to support HR business partners and managers, to become more data-drivenLaura's tips on how to prioritise the areas that people analytics teams should work on, in order to ensure that they can scale successfullySupport for this podcast comes from 365Talents. You can learn more by visiting https://365talents.com. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sheila Watt-Cloutier, is a world renowned human rights and climate change activist, who has made it her life's work to protect her Inuit culture and the Arctic regions where Inuit live, in Greenland, Canada and Alaska. Sheila was born in Kuujjuaq in Arctic Canada where she lived traditionally, travelling only by dog team for the first ten years of her life. She was elected as President of the Inuit Circumpolar Council in 1995 and launched the first legal petition linking climate change to human rights - work that led to her being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Nancy Campbell is captivated by the stark, rugged beauty of ice and its solid but impermanent nature. Her book The Library of Snow and Ice is about her time spent living in Upernavik, a small town in north-western Greenland and the traces left by explorers of the Arctic and Antarctic. Her recent book Fifty Words for Snow looks at the origins and mythologies of snow around the globe. She shares with Emma her fascination for snow, ice and its place in our world. British women were banned from visiting Antarctica until 1983 when Janet Thomson was finally granted passage by the British Antarctic Survey. But now scores of women are making major contributions to polar science, especially those working on the stability of ice shelves and sheets. So how did women break through the ice ceiling to create opportunities and become leaders in their fields? Emma speaks to Morgan Seag who has just submitted her PhD in gendered institutional change in 20th century Antarctic science to the University of Cambridge and Jo Johnson who has visited Antarctica seven times with the British Antarctic Survey. We also hear from Dr Alison Banwell, a British glaciologist and research scientist who is currently based at the University of Colorado Boulder and her team conducting research on the ice right now; Rebecca Dell and Laura Stevens. Heading to the cold of the Arctic and the Antarctic wrapped up in the right gear is one thing but there are some women that actually choose to immerse themselves in freezing water, even in winter here in the UK. Hayley Dorian is one of them, she has set up a swimming group called Wild Sea Women who meet to embrace the waves in North East England and South-West Scotland . But are there benefits of cold water swimming? Emma finds out from Hayley and Dr Heather Massey who works in the Extreme Environments Lab at the University of Portsmouth.

In this episode of The (Re)generative Education Podcast I chat with Laura Stevens, senior lecturer in biomimicry and coordinator of the design with nature course at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. She is also one of the expert ambassadors for biomimicry Netherlands and is a force of nature for bringing the living world closer to the higher educational classroom. In this episode, Laura argues for leveraging the 3.8 billion years of R&D that life has already done for us as a rich place for learning to co-create and co-design more regenerative human systems.   In this discussion the following systemic barriers and opportunities emerged:  Using nature as the richest curriculum that we have and the awe-inspiring potential of the natural world that can incite inquisitiveness when it is invited into our learning spaces.  Facilitating the reconnection between people and more-than-human nature as a key component of Higher Education. The importance of learning to look through system level's and using those for design(ing interventions).  The power of cultivating cooperative relationships in the beginning of a course as a basis for tackling challenges.  The power of creating powerful momentum for learning by creating high power starting events.  The importance of making education fun and playful.  External Links:  The Biomimicry Institute — Nature-Inspired Innovation Biomimicry (biomimicrynl.org) Laura Stevens | LinkedIn Biomimicry Education, A Conversation with Laura Stevens - The Hague University Laura Stevens Biomimicry Expert (@buildingpassion) / Twitter Laura Lee Stevens @BmyEdu (@biomimicry_education) • Instagram photos and videos Innovation Inspired by Nature — AskNature 

We're back with the roundtable and even MORE honest insights from parents on a variety of conversations they are having with their kids. Kathy is joined by former guests Molly Barker, Barb Royal, Laura Stevens and Colin Stevens to discuss topics including: racial identity, the power of word choice and providing kids with emotional stability.  Get a pen and paper ready to take some notes because you'll want to refer back to this episode. 

Wow, can you believe it? We've been in your podcast feeds for one year! To celebrate, we've invited a few of our favorite guests for a roundtable discussion on a variety of big issues parents and their children are dealing with. How do we talk to our kids about how to process their feelings in a way that builds confidence? What can we do to help our kids build their own narrative and prepare them to make their own decisions? PLUS! We play a game of "Who Said That?" featuring amazing insight from past episodes with Laura, Colin, Molly, and Barb. 

Studs Patrons Patrick Baker, Todd Greenstein, and Laura Stevens talk all things Studs. We look back on seasons past and think about how Studs might evolve.

These researchers say every cup of coffee you drink reduces the heart of heart failure by 5%. HealthCall's Lee Kelso explains the coffee must have one key ingredient - Caffeine.

Vanessa Schneider:  Hello and welcome to the Government Digital Service podcast. My name is Vanessa Schneider and I am Senior Channels and Community Manager at GDS. Today, we are looking back as fondly as we can on 2020. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this was a momentous year and we have many reasons to be proud of what our organisation and our colleagues have achieved.    What better way to reflect on the year than to ask a couple of my colleagues to put their knowledge to the test? We're going to see who has been paying attention to GDS happenings in 2020. Please welcome my guests Louise Harris and Kit Clark.   Louise Harris:  Hey, Vanessa, good to be here.   Vanessa Schneider:  Great to have you on, Lou. Do you mind telling us what you do at GDS and to spice things up a little bit for the end of the year, maybe a fun fact about yourself?   Louise Harris:  Sure. Well, of course, we know each other very well, Vanessa, because I have the pleasure of working with you in the Creative Team. But for everybody else, I'm Lou and I head up the Channels and Creative Team at GDS. I'm a relatively new starter - I'm one of our lockdown joiners because I joined in May 2020. In terms of a fun fact, it may surprise some of you given my accent to know that I'm a fluent Welsh speaker.   Vanessa Schneider:  You sou-I-do you sound very Welsh? You know what? We've got to put it to the test. Can you tell me what the team is called that you work for in Welsh?    Louise Harris:  Ok, this is something I think I can do. So I'll give you my intro again in Welsh. Louise Harris dw’ i, a rwy’n gweithio yn y Tim Creadigol a Sianeli yng Ngwasanaeth Digidol y Llywodraeth.   Vanessa Schneider:  Ok, anybody who knows Welsh, you've got to contact us and tell us if she got it right or not. Kit, would you mind introducing yourself?    Kit Clark:  Sure. My name's Kit, I'm an Engagement Manager within the Strategic Engagement Function. An interesting fact I suppose about myself, is that my uncle composed the Eastenders theme tune. So that's something I always, always bring out in introductions.   Vanessa Schneider:  I was warned that your interesting fact would be amazing. And I think it does live up to that disclaimer. I think that is a very, very fun fact indeed.   Louise Harris:  I was not warned that your fun fact was going to be as good Kit, I'm so impressed by that. What a claim to fame.   Vanessa Schneider:  I think I might just start with the quiz. Of course, if you're at home, you can play along if you like. Just make sure to keep score as you go, as I'll be sharing the answer after each question.   So let's start with the first question of the quiz.    Here it is: what was the most popular GDS podcast episode in 2020? So what topic do you think was in the most popular episode? I'll take that as an answer.    [horn noise]    Louise Harris:  I'm presuming that we're excluding this episode from the list of most popular ones, so it's the most popular one before this one, right?    Vanessa Schneider:  Yes. I'm afraid we don't have any foresight, so it'll have to be one from January to November.    Louise Harris:  OK, well I think we've had some really great guests and different people from across government this year. The big one has got to be the GOV.UK response to Coronavirus and setting up the Coronavirus landing page - I think that was such a big achievement, both in terms of the work that was done to get that product up and out, but also for you folks over here on the podcast, because I believe that was the first remote recorded podcast that we did.   Vanessa Schneider:  Hmm. Any thoughts, Kit? Any competing offers?   Kit Clark:  Not too sure. I know that accessibility's been quite a theme this year, and I believe that was in January. But I also know there was a couple of celebration ones - there was one looking at two years of Local Digital Declaration. So I think I might I go, I think COVID's a great shot but I'm going to go different and go accessibility.    Vanessa Schneider:  Alright. So there are some pretty solid guesses with both of you. Well done. I can reveal that the third most popular episode was in fact our accessibility episode. Good hunch there Kit. Second most popular was about the GOV.UK Design System. But indeed in first place, most popular episode this year was on the GOV.UK response to COVID-19.    Louise Harris:  Wahoo!   Vanessa Schneider:  Points go to Lou on that.    Vanessa Schneider:  Alright. So GDS has run a lot of stories this year. My second question is about the blog and which post attracted the most attention?   [horn noise]    Louise Harris:  This is a really tricky one because I think we've had so many good stories go out this year about the work that GDS has been doing across government. And of course, so much of what we do is used by our colleagues in the public sector. So there's often a lot of interest in what we have to say, which is great.   I mean, a big moment for me this year was our Global Accessibility Awareness Day celebrations where we were joined by thousands of people who came together to talk about digital accessibility and the work that we needed to do. So I feel like maybe the wrap up blog that we did about that, which had all of the links to the training webinars, I feel like that might be pretty popular. And even if it wasn't the most popular, it was definitely my favourite.    Vanessa Schneider:  Yeah, I, I can reveal to you that the third most popular post this year introduced GOV.UK Accounts.    Louise Harris:  How could we forget? That was such a big story.    Vanessa Schneider:  Well, you might want to hold onto that thought. It could just help you later in the quiz. Our second most popular post described the launch of our online Introduction to Content Design course. Content Design, hugely popular. I think we might have done a podcast episode about that. Finally, I can reveal our most popular post in 2020 explained how GOV.UK Notify reliably sends text messages to users.    Let's go on to our next question. As a bit of a preamble GDS leads the Digital, Data and Technology Function in government, which is also known as the DDaT Function. And we believe firmly in user-centred design, hint hint - keywords. So there are several job families in DDaT, but can you tell me how many job roles feature in the user-centred design family?    [buzzer noise]    Kit Clark:  There's seven.   Vanessa Schneider:  You seem pretty sure about that. On a dare, could you name all of them?   Kit Clark:  I hope so because I've had some training on it relatively recently. So in the user centred design family, there's the user researcher, content strategist, the technical writer, and then there's the content design, graphic design, service design, and the interaction design.   Louise Harris:  Wow, hats off Kit. I had a feeling it was like about seven roles, but I don't think I could have named them.    Vanessa Schneider:  I am, I am very impressed. You gotta make sure that that team doesn't poach you away from us now. For those of you following along at home, you can find out more in the DDaT Capability Framework which is hosted on GOV.UK.    And as it happens, we actually spoke to some content designers earlier in the year. So we're going to play a clip.    ---------- [clip begins] Laura Stevens:  So GDS is actually the home of content design in the government too as the term and the discipline originated here under GDS’s first Head of Content Design, Sarah Richards. And why do you think it came out of the early days of GDS?   Amanda Diamond:  So really good question. And I think it is really useful for us to pause and reflect and look back sometimes upon this, because it's not, you know, content design, as you said, it came from, as a discipline it came from GDS.   So really, it only started to emerge around 2010, so 2010, 2014. So in the grand scheme of things, as a discipline, it is very young. And so it's still evolving and it's still growing. And so back in the early 2000s, before we had GOV.UK, we had DirectGov. And alongside that, we had like hundreds of other government websites. So it was, it was a mess really because users had to really understand and know what government department governed the thing that they were looking for.    So what GOV.UK did was we brought websites together into a single domain that we now know of as GOV.UK. And that was a massive undertaking. And the reason for doing that was was simple. It was, it was to make things easier for users to access and understand, make things clearer and crucially to remove the burden on people to have to navigate and understand all of the structures of government.    So back in the early days, GOV.UK, GDS picked I think it was around, I think it was the top 25 services in what was known as the Exemplar Programme. I think things like that included things that Register to Vote, Lasting Power of Attorney, Carer's Allowance. And so I think through that process, we, we, we discovered that it actually wasn't really about website redesign, it was more about service design.    And that's where content design and service design, interaction design and user research kind of came together under this banner of user centred design because you can't have good services without content design essentially.  [clip ends] ----------   Vanessa Schneider:  Alright on to our next quiz question. So at GDS, we like to talk about “build it once, use it often”, and are responsible for a number of amazing products and services as part of our Government as a Platform or GaaP offer. Many of our products have been put through their paces during the coronavirus response and have hit some impressive milestones in the last 12 months.    I'm going to award 2 points in total. It's a 2-part question, so I'll ask the first part first. So how many messages had GOV.UK Notify sent as of the beginning of December?   [buzzer noise]    Kit Clark:  Is it two billion?    Vanessa Schneider:  Oooh, ok.   Yes, Notify has sent more than 2 billion messages as of the beginning of this month. As you buzzed in first, I will give you first right of refusal. How long did it take Notify to send its first and second billion messages?    Kit Clark:  I'm going to pass it over to Lou and see, see what she knows about Notify?   Vanessa Schneider:  Very gentlemanly.   Louise Harris:  I'm really glad that Kit kicked this over to me because I remember seeing one of our colleagues, Pete Herlihy's tweet, which said that it took them a full 4 years to send the first one billion messages, but it only took them 6 months to send the second billion, which is an absolutely incredible achievement for Notify, and has shown just the kind of pace that that team's been working at.    Vanessa Schneider:  Truly is an incredible number. But Notify has really had a big year. And Pete Herlihy actually shared some of Notify's story in our May episode of the podcast. Let's have a listen.    ---------- [clip begins] Laura Stevens: But to talk specifically about Notify, they, in the blog post it’s talking about this huge increase in numbers, like 2 million SMS messages were sent using Notify on a single day in March compared to the daily average of 150,000. I’ve also got a figure here of daily messages up as much as 600%, as high as 8.6 million a day.    So what services are using Notify to help with the government’s coronavirus response?   Pete Herlihy:  Yeah, there, so the, the increase in communication is obviously massive and needs to be. And one of the biggest users of Notify is the GOV.UK email service, and they, they do all of the email for people who subscribe to any content that the government publishes - so travel alerts for example, if you want to know can I take a flight to Namibia, here’s the guidance, or if there’s hurricanes coming through the Caribbean and these countries are affected, then I need to like push out information to say don’t go to these places, or whatever it might be.    And those alerts are, you know, again potentially protecting people, life and property - they’re like really important. And there’s been a huge amount of travel advice and alerts being given, as, as you can imagine. So that’s been one of the biggest users.    And then I think, from, from the health perspective there’s, I’ll just say NHS because there’s like various bits of the NHS that are working like ridiculously hard and fast to spin out new services really quickly, and these services are like just incredibly crucial right now.    So the extremely vulnerable service, this is one where the government said if you are you know, in this extreme risk category you should stay at home for 12 weeks, and they’ve been texting this group of people.   There’s all the stuff around testing and results for testing, ordering home test kits, all these sorts of things. So there’s the very specific COVID response type stuff and that is, there is a significant volume of that that’s still ongoing.   It all came very quickly as well. You know this wasn’t a gradual ramp up over weeks and weeks to 5,6,700%, it was, it was almost overnight. [clip ends] ----------   Vanessa Schneider:  Ok, I feel like this has been a bit too easy. So I thought about making the next 2 tricky and then I thought I was being too mean. So they are again connected questions, but they will be multiple choice this time. So again, if you buzz in for the first one, you get first dibs at the second question as well. So on 20 March, the GOV.UK Team shipped the Coronavirus landing page, which established a critical central source of guidance and information for people across the UK. But do you know how many days it took to go from concept to live?    Was it A, less than 5 days, B, less than 12 days or C, less than 15 days?   [horn noise]    Vanessa Schneider:  Lou.    Louise Harris:  I think it was less than five days.   Vanessa Schneider:  Alright. That is correct.    Louise Harris:  Wahoo.   Vanessa Schneider:  In fact it was only 4 and a half days. We had Markland Starkie and Leanne Cummings join us on the podcast in April to explain how we did this and what effect it had.   ---------- [clip begins] Markland Starkie:  The thing that the landing page I suppose was able to do over and above the standard solution was really to bring together, in a more consolidated fashion, wider signposts to existing and new content across government. It also allows us the flexibility to redesign or extend or iterate on that landing page at pace, which we’ve been able to do in the, in the week since. So that’s based on ongoing research into the landing page and insights to move certain content around, add certain content that was missing in the first instance, and remove content that’s not working, all of those things.   Laura Stevens: And was also, one of the reasons why it’s been able to be built quickly and iterated quickly, is we’re using other GDS tools that already exist, for example the GOV.UK Design System. Is that, was that, has been part of it as well?    Markland Starkie: Oh absolutely, yes. So without those things in place, like the Design System that you’ve mentioned, this would take weeks and weeks. So we’ve been able to take existing patterns, modify them where needed to. So being able to bring in elements whilst using existing patterns to really like kind of push it through at pace. [clip ends] ----------   Kit Clark:  I mean, I personally still find it incredible that things went from conception to actually delivering in such a short span of time. It’s incredible I personally think. And also when you're talking with such high stake products as well. You know, this is a time when the nation was looking for trusted sources of information about what they could do to keep themselves and their families safe. So it's just an incredible body of work to have done. And not only that, but also in true GDS style, they were keeping the user at the centre throughout the whole process. So I believe the Coronavirus landing page was the first landing page that we designed to be mobile first because we recognised that was where our users were going to be accessing that information. So in addition to delivering some incredible services and information at a pace we’ve probably never had to do before, we’re also continually iterating and innovating to give people the best possible experience on the site. I think there's so much to be proud of. And just really hats off to GOV.UK.    Vanessa Schneider:  So you've earned yourself the right to answer the next question first. GOV.UK receives thousands upon thousands of visits every day, but in a week in March, it experienced a peak of how many visits? Was it A, 2 million, was it B, 67 million or was it C, 132 million?   Louise Harris:  Ok, so it was back in March, so that is kind of peak COVID times. I think it's got to be 132 million. It must be.    Vanessa Schneider:  You are officially on a roll.    Louise Harris:  Wooo.   Vanessa Schneider:  Yes, the answer to the second question is 132 million. Although that is probably an underestimate as our analytics only count users who accept cookies that measure the website use. So the true figures are likely even higher, as Jen Allum explained in a blog post on the topic. So visit gds.blog.gov.uk to check that nugget out.    Onto our next question. GOV.UK Pay has also had a busy year and last month we celebrated some recent milestones with them on this podcast. What were they?    [horn noise]   Vanessa Schneider:  All right, Lou.   Louise Harris:  I think it's been a really exciting time for Pay over the last couple of months. And I know that we spoke to them on a recent podcast, so I think that the milestone you're looking for is that they've onboarded their 400th service.    Vanessa Schneider:  Well, I'm sorry, Lou, but that was only half the answer I was looking for.    Louise Harris:  Oh no.   Vanessa Schneider:  Kit, it's your chance. Do you want to score another half point maybe?    Kit Clark: I believe they processed half a billion pounds since their inception.    Vanessa Schneider:  Well done. That is spot on. And together, those two factoids make a pretty sweet nugget - that was so cheesy. But yeah, it's, it's incredible. And they only started in 2015. So that's an amazing number of services and sum of payments to process.    So my next question for you both is that we were also very busy on the GOV.UK Twitter account this year and saw a huge spike in users coming to us with queries and looking for support. That is something that I actually blogged about back in May. But can you tell me as a percentage how much our engagement increased on our posts? Was it 12,500%? Was it 150% or was it 700%? And for a bonus, can you tell me to the nearest 100,000 how many people are following the GOV.UK Twitter account right now?    [buzzer noise]   Kit Clark:  I want to go with the 12, 12 and a half.    Vanessa Schneider:  All right, Kit, I can confirm that you are right. Do you want to, do you want to try and punt for the bonus point? Do you reckon you've got that?   Kit Clark:  Yeah, I’ll go for it. I think the GOV.UK Twitter account has got around 1.2 million people following it.    Vanessa Schneider:  Oh, you are so close. I'm going to give you a half point. It's 1.8 million. And I have to say, it's been a real whirlwind of a year because of that. So we completely changed the way that we approach community management, responding to people. Lou I think you oversaw the project, what did you think?    Louise Harris:  Well, I think it certainly felt like we experienced a 12,000% increase in engagement, and I know that you, Vanessa, and so many of our colleagues over in Comms have been working really, really hard to make sure that we get back to the, frankly, thousands of people who come via the GOV.UK Twitter account every day looking for advice and signposting to guidance on the GOV.UK website. So it's been a phenomenal year. You've all done a phenomenal job and I think you've got lots to be proud of.   Vanessa Schneider: That's very kind of you to say. I wasn't really fishing for compliments, but I'll take them anyway.    You can actually find out a little bit about how we tackle that, as I mentioned in the blog post I wrote. But we've also put out our Social Media Playbook earlier this year. We've made an update and it just talks about the kind of things that we've been considering over the course of the year. It includes updates on accessibility, security and very important in this time of year, mental health.   Louise Harris:  I think that's a really important point, Vanessa, because so often in digital comms, people think about the technology, but not the people behind that technology who are using it day in, day out. So I was really pleased when we were able to include that section on wellbeing in our GDS Social Media Playbook. And it's just another example of that GDS mentality of build once, use many. So we created that as a resource to share how we do things and what we're learning and what's working for us. And we just hope that that's a useful tool that our colleagues across government can put into practise as well.   Vanessa Schneider:  All right. I think we've got some points to pick up on this next question. Earlier this year, we launched the Data Standards Authority with our friends and counterparts over at ONS, which is the Office for National Statistics and DCMS, which is the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. You’ll hear from our former Director General Alison Pritchard now who explains a little bit more about the DSA.    ---------- [clip begins] Alison Pritchard: Government holds considerable volumes of data in a myriad of places. But often this data is inconsistent, incomplete or just unusable. If the government is going to realise the benefits data can bring, we'll need to fix the foundations. And one way of doing this is by focussing on data standards.    GDS is leading a new authority, the Data Standards Authority (DSA), that focuses on making data shareable and accessible across government services. The metadata standards and guidance we published in August were our first deliverable. They cover what information should be recorded when sharing data across government - for example in spreadsheets - to assure it's standardised and easy to use. It's a step in quality assuring how government data is shared. Our focus on standards is one part of the bigger picture around better managing data to assure better policy outcomes and deliver more joined-up services to citizens.  [clip ends] ----------   Vanessa Schneider: So now, you know what the DSA is. Have your pens at the ready. I'm going to read out a series of letters that relate to the DSA that I would like you to unscramble.    Louise Harris:  Oooh, ok.    Vanessa Schneider:  Alright.    So it's T-E-M-A-T-A-A-D. Those are the letters, 8 of them.    Louise Harris:  I find these so difficult. I'm so rubbish at these.    [buzzer noise]    Kit Clark:  I think I've got the letters written down right in my dyslexia mind might not be playing in my favour here but is it Data Team?   Vanessa Schneider: Oh, I would love that. That is a great one. And it makes use of the right letters. It's not the answer I'm looking for unfortunately. It has to be about the Data Standards Authority.   Louise Harris:  Oh, ok. I don't think I would have got this had Kit not unscrambled half of it. But if it's not Data Team, is it metadata?    Vanessa Schneider:  We've got a winner here. That's right. I'm not going to repeat the letters. It definitely spells out, if you get them in the right order, metadata.   So Kit do you mind sharing with our listeners what metadata is?    Kit Clark:  I realised that I was going for speed over quality in that answer and Data Team is a bit of an overly simplistic answer. Metadata is correct me if I'm wrong, but actually data that provides insight into other data, it's a little bit inception.    Louise Harris:  Other Leo films are available.    Vanessa Schneider:  Spot on. Yep, that's right.    Last month, so that's November, we blogged about the Document Checking Service pilot that is running until next summer. And there's still a number of points up for grabs here.   So let's see who's been paying attention. What does the Document Checking Service let you do?   [buzzer noise]   Kit Clark:  So the Document Checking Service is a project to see whether organisations outside government can use real time passport checks to build useful digital services.    Vanessa Schneider: Oh, I will score that as right. So it is great that we've got this pilot underway, especially considering that a lot of people are working remotely right now, given that individuals can provide their details without needing to go any place in person to prove their identity.    All right. So now we're onto a topic that both of you've already broached. So I'm confident we're going to get some points to some people here. In May 2020, we celebrated Global Accessibility Awareness Day by running a series of webinars and talks to help prepare public sector organisations for a forthcoming accessibility regulations deadline. Can you tell me what deadline we were building up to?   [horn noise]    Vanessa Schneider:  All right, Lou, point, a potential point for you.   Louise Harris:  So the most recent deadline, and particularly the one that we were working to for Global Accessibility Awareness Day, or GAAD, would have been the 23rd September 2020, which was the date by which all existing public sector websites and intranets needed to be accessible.    Vanessa Schneider:   Yep, that’s right.   To hear more about that, we are going to go back in time cheekily to January where we had Chris and Rianna on the podcast telling us a little bit more about public sector duty to accessibility.    ---------- [clip begins] Laura Stevens: I guess part of this is also thinking like why is it particularly important that government is a leader in accessible services. Like what, why is that so important?   Chris Heathcote:  I mean as you said at the beginning, you know you don’t choose to use government, you have to use government. So you can’t go anywhere else. So it’s, it’s our obligation to make sure that, that everything is accessible to everyone. And it does have to be everyone, and especially those with disabilities, or needing to use assistive technology, tend to have to interact with government more. So we do have an obligation for that.   Rianna Fry:  And I think if you think about it, these are public services. They’re online public services so they need to be able to use, be used by the public not exclusive groups. And I think that’s what it's all about.  [clip ends] ----------   Vanessa Schneider:  So looking ahead, there is another accessibility regulations deadline coming up. When is it and what is it for? One point to award here.    [buzzer noise]   Kit Clark:  Is it the 23rd of June next year, so 2021?    Vanessa Schneider:  That's right. Yes. And what is the deadline for?    Kit Clark:  And I think it's all mobile apps to become compliant as well. So not just websites.   Vanessa Schneider:  That is right. If you are worried about those deadlines, we have some great resources. You can find them on accessibility.campaign.gov.uk. That's not just restricted to the public sector. Accessibility is important to everyone. So please visit. We've got everything you need there.    All right. So we are slowly but surely coming towards the last few questions. GOV.UK is built on the principle that you shouldn't need to know how the government works to use government services. Very prescient. But the way people interact online has changed a lot over the 8 years since GOV.UK launched. Services like shopping, banking or entertainment are increasingly personalised, and that is something that GDS wants to explore for citizens too.   In September, we were excited to share our future strategy for GOV.UK Accounts. We think this is important and exciting work that will make it simpler for citizens to interact with government to do the things they need to do. But can either of you tell me how many times will the average individual in the UK visit GOV.UK in a year? Just guess away please, folks, guess away.    [buzzer noise]   Kit Clark:  Is it 400?    Vanessa Schneider:  I like the optimism, but also in a weird way, that's pessimistic, isn't it? I'd say it's a, it's a 2- digit number.   Kit Clark:  I doubted myself halfway through that.    Vanessa Schneider:  No worries. No worries. Try again. Like cut a zero.   Kit Clark:  Is it around 40 times a year?   Louise Harris:  I think this is a really difficult question because on the one hand, GOV.UK is such an important part of our national infrastructure. I mean, you can do so many things on GOV.UK, you know, you want to renew your car tax, you do it there. You want to check when the next bank holiday is, you do it there. But on the other hand, it's so easy to use that it's almost you're in, you're out. You got what you need. So often, like, I'm trying to think how often I maybe visit it. It's got to be at least like 4 or 5 times a month. So yeah, I think I would maybe land some where where Kit is.    Vanessa Schneider: That's a really good point, Lou. I think you've just overestimated it a little bit. We’ve done rough calculations and it looks like it’s more like 2 interactions with GOV.UK a month. So according to our rough calculations - it's something like 22 times a year. If you head over to the GDS blog you can see how we reached those numbers.   But yeah, it's really hard because obviously there's no competitor to government to provide the services that people need. It's not like you can register your car somewhere else. So we, we have to just try and make this kind of interface, the service, as easy as it can be. So it is painless, you know, that people aren't frustrated with that experience.    And we've come to our final questions of the quiz and we're ending by testing your knowledge of some common words and phrases you’ll hear used in digital government. So a lot of people refer to us as GDS, which stands for the Government Digital Service. But how well do you know other acronyms that we've been throwing around all year long?    Louise Harris:  Oh, I think Kit is going to have the edge on me here because he does so much cross-government engagement. I think this is where I'm going to really fall down.    Kit Clark:  Fingers crossed.   Vanessa Schneider:  All right. So fingers on buzzers.   What is DDaT?    [horn noise]   Louise Harris:  I'm going to get in there with this and an easy, early one. So DDaT is Digital, Data and Technology. And I know that because during my round of welcome coffees on day one, that was the acronym that kept coming up. And people said, if you just get one acronym under your belt today, make it DDaT, because it's so important to the work that GDS does as the Head of the DDaT Profession.   Vanessa Schneider: That is correct.   All right. Our next term that we're looking for is Retros.   Kit Clark:  Does it stand for retrospective?    Vanessa Schneider:  It's as simple as that. Indeed. So what happens at a retrospective, if you don't mind sharing?    Kit Clark: So a retro is I think it kind of does what it says on the tin really, where the group that's been working on a project will come together and essentially evaluate the good, the bad and the ugly of the work that's just being done to see what could be applied in the future, both in terms of positives as well, and things that could be improved in future, future pieces of work.    Vanessa Schneider:  Nice. An iterative process.    So obviously there's been a lot of change this year, but I think most of it has maybe been unanticipated. However, what we had been planning for this year is recruiting two leadership positions and I know everyone at GDS is excited about welcoming them in due course. One of them is for CEO of GDS and the other is GCDO. No pressure, given that they'll be your bosses and you don't know, they might even be listening.    But can you tell me for one more point what GCDO stands for?    [buzzer noise]   Kit Clark:  GCDO stands for the Government Chief Digital Officer.    Vanessa Schneider:  That is correct. Sorry Lou.    Louise Harris:  Missed out, too slow.   Vanessa Schneider: The quiz has come to an end. So let me quickly tot up the scores.   I hope everyone listening did well and I hope we don't have to go to a tiebreaker.    Louise Harris: Oh, do you have a tiebreaker?    Vanessa Schneider:  Well, fact is, I won't need a tiebreaker because the winner is Kit. Well done. Congratulations to Kit and commiserations to Lou. You almost had it.   Louise Harris: Kit, a worthy opponent. Very well played.   Vanessa Schneider: So, Kit, finish us off. Why don't you share with us what your highlight of this year has been? Might be tough. It's been a crazy year, but I'm sure you've got something.   Kit Clark: Yeah, it's been a bit of a funny one starting a role completely remotely. I think the the people that I work with have been a definite highlight, but also with this being my first role within the Civil Service and within the public sector, just the kind of confidence of standing on my own two feet and being more confident in the work that I'm doing and getting more responsibility with each passing month is, is a really good feeling.    Vanessa Schneider:  That is such a lovely thing to say. I'll make sure to pass that on to your colleagues, because, yeah, I really enjoyed that. How about yourself Lou?    Louise Harris:  Well, I think similar to Kit it's all about the people, so I'm lucky enough to lead the team that's responsible for recording the podcast that you're listening to. And what you folks don't get to see or rather hear is just how much work goes into this each and every month. And of course, earlier this year, the team had to pivot, as so many of us did, to do things differently because recording in the way that we once did would not be safe or within the guidance. So I wanted to say a big shout out to Emily and to Vanessa. So Emily is our Producer, you never hear her here, but she's a big part of the podcast. And also to Laura Stevens, who's one of our old hosts and is now in another part of GDS. And to everybody else that's been involved, because it really is a huge challenge to do this. And I think they do a phenomenal job. So we hope you enjoyed listening and we hope to see you again in the New Year.   Vanessa Schneider:  I don't want to sound like I'm gloating, but actually it's been a really good year for me. I've had a lot of great opportunities come up this year, maybe because of what's changed, you know, and working remotely. But I don't think it's a bad idea to not acknowledge it. I got to write for the blog for the first time at GDS. I presented to the entire organisation, which was simultaneously nerve wracking and thrilling. And I've been able to share my expertise among members of the devolved nations thanks to our National, International and Research Team. So there's a lot to reflect on really positively. I think all of that could not have been done without having a really good team backing me. So I think that's probably my highlight.    Louise Harris:  Oh, my God. So cute.   Vanessa Schneider: Thank you so much to our guests Lou Harris and Kit Clark for coming on today. We wish all of our listeners a happy New Year and look forward to sharing new episodes with you in 2021. You can listen to all of the episodes of the Government Digital Service podcast on Apple Music, Spotify and all other major podcast platforms. And the transcripts are available on Podbean. Goodbye.   Louise Harris:  Bye folks.    Kit Clark:  Bye.

Laura Stevens:   Hello and welcome to the Government Digital Service podcast. My name is Laura Stevens and I'm a Creative Content Producer here at GDS.   For this month's episode, we're going to be taking a look at GOV.UK Pay. GOV.UK Pay is the government's payment platform, letting service teams across the public sector take payments quickly and securely.   It's hit a few milestones this year as it's now used in more than 400 services in around 150 organisations. These services include applying for a Blue Badge, sending money to someone in prison and further afield in many British embassies around the world as part of the apply for an emergency travel document service.    And since it started in 2015, GOV.UK Pay has processed more than 10 million payments to the total value of more than £537 million. And today, we're going to hear from users of GOV.UK Pay from central and local government, and we're also talking to Miriam and Steve from the GOV.UK Pay Team to hear about the product, its features and where it's going next.   So welcome, Miriam and Steve. Please could you both introduce yourselves and what you do on GOV.UK Pay. Miriam, first, please.   Miriam Raines:  Hi, I'm Miriam Raines. I am a Product Manager on GOV.UK Pay.   Steve Messer:  And hello, I'm Steve Messer. I'm also a Product Manager on GOV.UK Pay.    Laura Stevens:  I gave a brief introduction to GOV.UK Pay at the start, but I was hoping that you could both maybe explain a bit more about what it is and how it helps service teams across the public sector. So could you describe a bit more about the product, please?   Steve Messer:  So the GOV.UK Pay is like a part of the Government as a Platform programme. And the basic idea behind that is that service teams across government and local government have to do a bunch of the same stuff in order to move users through transactional services. So loads of people have to pay for things inside of a service, people have to apply for things, they have to receive emails - that kind of stuff.   And there was an idea a while ago to turn those common problems and solve them with like components, common components. And that's where the products from Government as a Platform come from.   Miriam Raines:  And there's sort of 2 parts to Pay: there's the bit that the paying user would see and they're one of our key groups of users. So these are the payment pages that will ask for your card details and give you sort of helpful guidance and helpful error messages, make it really easy to pay, they're really accessible, they're designed in line with the Service Standard and Design System and they're intended to be really easy to use and we're really regularly user testing those to give a sort of consistent, trusted, experienced for users who are paying online across the public sector.   And then there's the other part of Pay, which is for our other group of users, which is sort of public sector workers. So that is civil servants in central government and arm’s length bodies, it is police teams, it's finance people or digital teams in local government or the NHS. And this allows you to set up and manage your services, to take payments to really easily see what money you've had come in and make, issue refunds and track cases and applications and transactions.    Again, very much designed to be as simple to use as possible. We don't want to make this something that needs like a whole lot of training. We want to be really intuitive.    Laura Stevens: Ok, so how does GOV.UK Pay work with a service?   Miriam Raines:  So you can plug Pay into your service. So if you've already got an existing online service, you-your users are on that service, they're paying for their licence, they're paying for, they're, they're making their application. At the point in which they're ready to pay, they're transferred over to Pay, it should look really seamless for that user, and it doesn't feel like jolting that they're going somewhere unexpected. That user can then really easily pay and is redirected back to that service. So that's when we do it in a sort of fully automated, integrated way.   And we've also got options for teams that don't have digital services to really be able to take payments online instead of taking payments via a cheque or expecting someone to call up and pay over the phone, which we know can be time consuming, it could be quite expensive to handle those, you're much more restricted on the hours that you're able to manage those payments. So we've got those 2, those 2 options for different users.    Laura Stevens:  And can you describe some of the services it's been used in?    Miriam Raines:  Yeah, we've got sort of a whole range of services. We've got some really big central government services right through to, so you mentioned, ours, we're open to local government, to NHS and police forces as well. So at sort of big central government level, we work with DVLA, we work with the Passport Office, so if you're making a digital application for passport, you'd be paying on GOV.UK Pay. We work some national services like Blue Badge. So we support a, lots of local authorities to handle Blue Badge payments. Right down to some really like small services that don't see a lot of transactions: we can have like yacht racing certificates. If you want to pay for an image of Field Marshal Montgomery at the National Archives, you can pay for that using Pay. It's quite, quite a variety. It's absolutely fascinating seeing all the things that government handles money for.  Laura Stevens:  So you mentioned there how some of the people who use it are from health and also from local government and central government, and I’ve got here as a brief history, we started off in 2015 with central government departments, then opened up to local government in 2017 and then in 2018 the health sector started using GOV.UK Pay.    But I also wanted to talk about some of the successes that have happened this year, 'cause this year has been a big year for GOV.UK Pay. I see from Steve's weeknotes - every week there seems to be a new headline. So I just wondered if you could just take me through some of the highlights from this year in GOV.UK Pay.   Steve Messer:  Yep. So I think it was a couple of weeks ago, so maybe mid-October when we had our 400th service go live, which was a good milestone. I think compared to last year, there were, I think there was something around about 100 live services. So we've seen a massive increase over the last 12 months, which is fantastic. It's good to see that the product is being used and talked about, but you know, it does mean that we have to work a bit harder now. So many more needs coming up, but that's fine, that's what we're here for.    I think we've also just before then, so I think it was around about September, we passed a milestone in the value of payments that we've taken and we've now taken well over £500 million from users and passed that on to government departments. So you know half a billion pounds moving through the product is quite a big milestone because you know, a lot of people on the team remember when the first quid went through.   But it's also it's, it's, it's exciting to see the benefits that it can generate as well. So in our economic model, we know that it can save service teams, tens of thousands of pounds in procurement costs and the time that's associated with that.    Miriam Raines:  I think we've also seen, we've able to sort of respond quickly when teams have needed to get set up with services that related to sort of COVID support. You know we are one small part of that massive thing that those services are handling, but if we can make just even the payments bit of it that bit easier and take that burden off the team when they've got all these other things to work on and get people set up really quickly, that's felt really valuable.   Steve Messer:  There was another episode just after the lockdown got lifted as well where like, no-one was applying for fishing licences because everyone was inside obviously. And then all of a sudden the, the, the break of the stay at home order was announced and people could go fishing again. And the number of fishing licence applications went from 0 to up to something like 2,000 per minute or something like that, within an hour. And it was just, it was fascinating to watch the dashboard just go, 'bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep' and you know things start happening. It was, it was a very cool.    Laura Stevens: And yes Steve, you actually set that up very nicely as well, because we're now going to hear from the Environment Agency and they are talking about fishing, so you've clearly got some friends over there. ----- Haroon Tariq:  I’m Haroon Tariq. I'm the Delivery Manager for the I Want to Fish Team, who are responsible for digital service that enables anglers to purchase fishing licences and submit catch returns.     Laura Stevens:  Can you tell me a bit more about what the service provides?     Haroon Tariq:  So the I Want to Fish Team looks after the service, which allows anglers to buy fishing licences which are legally required by law and also to submit catch returns, which basically means that if you go fishing for salmon and sea trout fishing, then we need to know where you fished, where you've caught, et cetera. So that's what I help look after.     Laura Stevens:  And so I wanted to just give our listeners some context for this service for anyone who doesn't regularly fish, and because the numbers involved are quite big, aren't they? I've got here a million licences are purchased a year.   Haroon Tariq:  That's right, yeah, so so about kind of a million licences get purchased a year. I mean, just to give some context, in England alone, angling is worth 1.4 billion and supports at least 27,000 jobs. Angling is increasingly being used to address mental and physical health, social inclusion, which are key issues in society, especially pertinent in recent times with the COVID-19 pandemic.    Laura Stevens:  And can you describe what the licence is? Is it something that's on your phone? Is it a physical licence or how does that work?    Haroon Tariq:  So the licence is basically provided via you get an email confirmation and you will typically get a paper card with that licence as well. And that is something that we're looking to review going forward, so watch this space! But at the moment, it's a legal requirement. If you get caught fishing in England or Wales and you don't have a fishing licence, then it is a prosecutable offence. So it is very important that anglers do have a fishing licence.    Laura Stevens:  And how does GOV.UK Pay work with this service?   Haroon Tariq:  So GOV.UK Pay is our kind of payment services platform. So we use it to process online card payments for fishing licences. We are one of the larger volume services that use Pay. So we process between 2 to 5000 transactions per day.   Laura Stevens:  And you mentioned it earlier, and also from my research you mentioned about how more people are fishing now with coronavirus with the lockdown when it lifted over summer.   So from my research, I’ve seen that when lockdown lifted in summer, there was a huge increase in people who wanted to fish, 6x in fact an increase with a peak of 1,575 applications per hour after the ease of restrictions, when there had been no higher than 252 applications per hour in the previous 30 days. So how did GOV.UK Pay help you process these?   Haroon Tariq:  So when lockdown restrictions eased, licences sales are shot through the roof and the service suitably with the additional load of anglers purchasing licences over a short period of time. This is made really easy due to the close collaboration between our internal teams at I Want to Fish and the GOV.UK Pay teams, making enhancements to service to cope with the surge in demand for fishing licences.    GOV.UK Pay was very good in working with us to understand in terms of the potential spike in peak of kind of people buying fishing licences. So effectively, we made the systems even more resilient than they already were. So they are very resilient anyway, just to kind of try and support that additional surge in demand.    And I'm pleased to report that it did work really well. As you've quoted in some of your figures there, sales figures for fishing licences kind of hit the roof when Boris did kinda ease exercise restrictions back at the beginning of the summer. So, yes, it was very well kind of work together and it worked well for us.   Laura Stevens:  And so what features does the Environment Agency make use of GOV.UK Pay in both now with coronavirus, but also all the time?    Haroon Tariq:  So I think one of the key benefits of working with GOV.UK Pay as a kind of payment services provider is that it allows us to benefit from platform enhancement. So what I mean by that is as the platform evolves and iterates, then we can kind of gain benefit from that.    So one of those examples is the recent card masking feature, which basically masks the card payment details when they’re entered. One of the other features that kind of is out of the box that we use is the transaction reporting, so we can review kind of transaction volumes and look to kind of forecast any potential peaks, such as you've mentioned, in light of Covid and exercise restrictions being eased.   One of the other features that I quite like is that if there are any production instances that occur on the service, we have the access to a live issue monitoring alert system, which allows us to track what those are, keep abreast of any updates and help us kind of predict any volumes going forward.      Laura Stevens:  And looking forward with the future of your service, how can GOV.UK Pay help you with that?    Haroon Tariq:  So we've got lots of exciting stuff coming up on the service for us, on I Want to Fish, which you'll have to wait and see. But GOV.UK Pay is our kind of payment platform provider as it kind of continues to try and add enhancements on the service. We will look to kind of gain the benefit from those as we move forward.    So I've already mentioned about the card masking feature. I'm sure there will be other benefits such as this that will look to glean and take forward. So I think that's one of the key things for us, is having a payment service provider that can iterate and move forward and kind of give us the benefit without us having to kind of spend time and research and money in that area. So with the GOV.UK Pay Team, it's very good. We've worked well together and look forward to working for in the future.     Laura Stevens:  And I'll be playing this back to the GOV.UK Pay Team during the podcast, is there anything you'd want to say to them? Anything, any requests you want to put in for any of these new features?    Haroon Tariq:  Firstly to say thank you, we've kind of created a really good partnership with all the people that we work with, with the team and very much going to continue the good work. We've got some exciting stuff coming up. We're looking at different payment methods, which we're going to be working with GOV.UK Pay going forward on. So watch this space, but for now thank you.  ---------- Steve Messer:  That's just really nice - it's so lov-lovely to hear. That was wonderful.    Miriam Raines:  One, one thing I thought was really good and really interesting to hear about that sort of idea of partnership. I think we really do try and work very closely in partnership with our services. We sort of regularly talking to services about how they're finding it, you know what's working well, what's not working well, and really involve all of our users in shaping that future roadmap. So when we're talking about releasing new features and make sure that functionality is available, and really just sort of like upgrades that get sort of passed through to the teams without them having to do any sort of additional work - all of those things that we build in our roadmap are really based on these conversations with users that come out of the, the feedback we get from them and trying to understand their needs and expand the way that Pay can support that.    Steve Messer:  Yeah, that's, that's the cool thing, really, and that's, I think that's one of the reasons I get up in the morning as a Product Manager, is that the job is never done. There's always more to be doing. So whilst we've created a product which allows government to take card payments pretty easily and simply and then manage those, there's always going to be some other problem around the corner that people need solved. And as you hear from Haroon there, they're sort of looking at other payment methods in the future. Things that were interesting to explore with people and looking at the moment.   Laura Stevens:  And Miriam, to quote your words back at you, you along with Mark Buckley, blogged about the use of GaaP products with Coronavirus, and in there you said “some services needed to stop taking cheques or reduce reliance on call centres as offices close and call centres have fewer staff. GOV.UK Pay has been able to help these services start taking payments within a day and keep important services running.” So what I wanted to do is I want to play a clip from Home Office who, like the Environment Agency, are a long established user of GOV.UK Pay to hear about their journey with GOV.UK Pay.  ------ Lisa Lowton: Yeah, so it's Lisa Lowton. I'm from the Home Office and I am the Head Functional Lead for our ERP solution - and the ERP solution being the Enterprise Resource Planning Tool that we, we look after all of our HR and finance activities.   Laura Stevens:  Lisa, I know you've worked in the Civil Service for quite a long time, particularly in finance and project work, could you just give us a brief description of your career?    Lisa Lowton:  Yeah, sure. So my career started, I was an accountant in the private sector and decided I wanted to change. And an advert came up to work in the Home Office as an Immigration Caseworker - so that's where I started.   Done a number of years as an Operational Caseworker and then moved into the project space. And that slowly moved me then back into finance and looking at ERP [Enterprise resource planning] systems again.    Laura Stevens:  And as well as obviously being in the Civil Service for while, you've also been involved with GOV.UK Pay for a while I believe since its inception back in 2015 with, under Till Wirth at the time, the then Product Manager. So can you tell me how you used the GOV.UK Pay over the years?   Lisa Lowton:  Yeah sure. So, yeah, I met Till 5 years ago it was, at a Civil Service conference down in London, when we were allowed to travel at that point. So, so Till and I met when he was doing a stall and he was talking through payments and, and how things were going to be done in one place for government, and, and I kind of really enjoyed speaking with Till and I was quite interested.    It was literally by chance that about 4 or 5 months later, where I was working at the time, the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS), decided to look at developing a product in-house and that would mean an element of payments that would be taken - so straightaway Till came to mind. So that literally was the-the start of the journey really.    So that was the DBS Basic Disclosure Service and they use all 3 of the GDS products - so Verify, Notify and Pay. So we were the first ones to go live with that. And it took around 2 years and it went live in January ‘18. And Gov.Pay was obviously a key element of that. So it was really nice to see from inception, them conversations in Civil Service Live to then actually it rolling out into that service - so that was where it started.    Laura Stevens:  And more recently, I know coronavirus has, like for many of us, pretty much all of us, have forced you to change some of the way you take payments on services. So can you explain a bit more about this service and how GOV.UK Pay has helped you with that shift?    Lisa Lowton:  So we were looking at the, the pay portal to move all our invoice payments to. So, so currently our card payments were, are taken through another provider, and they're kind of a shared service centre as such, and, and card payments are actually took through manual card terminals, which was, obviously means the-the agents having to obviously be in the office at the time, and also the number of issues that the guys faced with their manual card terminals including lack of, lack of Wi-Fi, that type of thing was-was also an issue.    So we were already looking to move the service to Pay. It was just by chance that COVID came along and meant that there was a real risk that the, the guys in Wales potentially might not be able to be in the office, which meant that we would, we would then have a bit of a gap as to how we would take payments for invoices that needed to be paid over that period, and who, who, people prefer to pay by card as well. So so that was the opportunity that we had.    And therefore we-we had a conversation with your development team as to look how we could use a payment link in that situation. We put it through our internal governance - our DDaT [Digital, Data and Technology] governance - who were really supportive of us in-in getting this up and running. And it took around about 5 weeks and we managed to, to get it up and running to be able to provide that as, as a backup service should, should the team in Newport not be able to be in the office.   Laura Stevens:  And you mentioned payment links there, and I know this is a feature that's been really helpful to you. Could you explain a bit more about what a payment link is and how it helped you?    Lisa Lowton:  Yes, sure. So as I spoke about before the, the COVID response was how, how are we able to give customers the way to make a payment without having to, to call the call centre for example, or where the call centre can't take that payment.   So the payment link was,was really handy so that we were able to put on, counter the IVR - so the telephone solution, where we can say, you know, we can't take a payment right now so if you go to this GOV.UK and, and provide that information, and also we've put it on a number of, or we are about to put it on a number of potentially e-ma, at the bottom of emails that, that go out from the shared service centre, as well as the, the kind of the longer term view of putting it on the back of an invoice, and also on some of the, the penalties, which is also where we need to add that payment linked to as well.     So just on the payment linked functionality - really easy to set up, very quick. Obviously the, we had some thinking internally as to how we make sure people provide the right information, because at this point, weren't quite sure how, how the data would come in. And so, so that was really easy to set up. And there was, you know, we did some internal reviews and to be able to make the changes like we did so quickly, I think there was absolutely astonishment because normally when you make changes on any type of, of portal, it normally takes a number of weeks, a number of months, and normal has a pound sign on it.    And that wasn't the case. It was all, it was all at our fingertips and we were able to change it there and then in the sessions that we were having with the internal business colleagues as well. So that, that was really good.     So we've been going for 5 months now, and again, this is not been advertised anywhere specific, this was only set-up for the, for people who weren't able to make a payment when they called up - to date we've had just under £200,000 of, kind of, revenue coming in. So which is great, which, which has come through a portal that would never existed 5 months ago.   So, so we've got to remember kind of you know, some of our customers you know don't want to, don't want to pay, you know some of these are penalties, and, you know, like any, anything like that, you, you potentially do struggle to, to get the income in. But it does show either how easy the solution is and how people are, the usability of it is really good. Because therefore, you know, we've got that promise to pay and you know, over 90%, which is, which is superb.    Laura Stevens: And what other features have you used?   Lisa Lowton: I guess one of the advantages of going to GOV.Pay was that obviously as the payments industry develops, GOV.Pay are absolutely there at, at the frontend of this. And a recent example, well maybe not that recent but you know, 12 months ago when Apple and Google Pay we're, we're very much kind of hot on the heels of, of how people want to pay. That was something that, as part of where I spoke about before the Disclosure and Barring Service, Basic Service, that's something that we wanted to use. Again it gives people the opportunity to you know, more, more opportunity to pay through however they want to pay.   I was really surprised, I don’t know why I was surprised, it was just a really good example of the where you guys had built the technology, and all I did was click a switch and that was it. And then my customers were then able to pay by Apple and Google Pay. And, and that for me was a real key benefit because it was something similar that we were looking at in another area of the service, which potentially would have cost that organisation quite a lot of money. So that is, that is something that I'll always remember that first kind of, I suppose it's an enhancement as such, of how that work was done you know, in GDS and we were all able to benefit from it. And that's something that I want to kind of make sure that people are aware of these types of things and the benefits of moving to GOV.UK Pay.    Laura Stevens:  And when I'm playing this clip back to the GOV.UK Pay Team, is there anything you'd want to say to them, or any requests you have or anything else?    Lisa Lowton:  Ooh..so, so firstly it is a massive thank you. And I guess it's, it's just what I suppose, you know, when I think about how, how can we make this service better, we've got to get the word out there. So things like this podcast, you know other, other advertisements that we can do, that I can do as a department to try and sell this service will only help longer term, and will also mean that you know the guys back in the GDS office, or in the, or in their living room or wherever they are now, understand that the important job that they do for central government.    It's very easy for people in the back office not to understand the impact of, of the front line. And I can give you an example really, a quite recent example of conversations that we're having with our colleagues at the border who want to be able to make sure they've got access to see information 24 hours a day, you know, our operation does not close down in the Home Office, it absolutely stays open 24 hours a day.    And we are now working with them and using the Pay, using the Pay portal to provide them some information to which they, they're over the moon with. We're still early days. But just, you know, just for me to hear these guys tell me the impact of having this information 24 hours a day was, was quite emotional if, if I'm being honest, and sometimes people like ourselves and people in GDS might not see that front end impact, but it absolutely does, it does make a difference. And we need to make sure that we always keep that in mind - is that why we're doing it.     --------   Miriam Raines:  I'm pretty happy to hear Lisa's happy. Lisa's been such a great advocate for Pay, and you know, as she said we've been working with her you know, for the last 5 years through various, through her various jobs that have taken her to different parts of central government. As Pay has grown and changed and been thinking about the new things that we can offer, and hopefully you know, sounds like she's had some benefits from, from using us and from the things we've been able to add, but we've also gained hugely from like getting her insight into what it is like to be a finance person in central government. Like how, how can that work better, what are the problems they've got, what are the things that we can help with to make that easier. So she's been really great with her time sort of sharing that information with us.    Steve Messer:  So that's one of the things that really excites me, is thinking about these different scenarios that people are in when they do need to pay government. So they might be on their way to work, on the bus using their phone, and they don't really want to like have the hassle of sort of going through a government service really. They have to do it. But knowing that they can just like coming along to GOV.UK, go to a service, fill in a form, use Pay to pay us, and then get on with the rest of their life quickly, simply and easily, I think is the value of what we do.   I sort of did actually wonder what are the different devices you can use to pay government on? Because not everyone has access to the latest smartphone or a laptop or a computer or that sort of thing. So I had a bit of a play using some devices that might be more common that are a bit easier to get hold of, like a really old Kindle. So it's nice to know that you know anyone, no matter their digital access or requirements, they should be able to just pay government and get on with their life.   Laura Stevens:  Any other devices or just the Kindle? I know we've had, we've heard before that GOV.UK's been accessed by a PlayStation, services have been used on that as well.    Steve Messer:  Yeah, PlayStations, games consoles, I've used it on a TV as well, that's like quite common. People have smart TVs but might not have a smartphone. So you can use it on that. I don't know what else I've tried it on. That's it - I need to try it on the very first Web browser and see if it works on there, I'm hoping it does. That's a bit of time travelling if you do that, it's quite fun.   Laura Stevens:  And yes, and before we hear from our final clip, which is from Surrey County Council, I wanted to talk about local government. And I wanted to talk about the collaborative project with local authorities and the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government or MHCLG. Could you tell me a bit more about that, what it was and what you found out about it?    Miriam Raines:  So, yeah, MHCLG had set up the Local Digital Collaboration Unit and GDS has been working very closely with them to support that. They had a fund that local authorities could apply for to help solve common problems. And so local authorities could form groups, partnerships with other local authorities looking at the same problem, apply for money to investigate that either at sort of a discovery level or sort of alpha level if they'd already done some work on this in the past.    And there were a group of local authorities led by North East Lincolnshire that included a few other local authorities of different sizes and different sort of geographic places around the country, who wanted to look at how they could make GOV.UK Pay easier to use and make it more sort of widespread within local government. They saw there was an opportunity there, but they wanted to understand you know, why wasn’t it necessarily being used more, how could they check that it was meeting the needs of local government as well as central government and sort of understanding the case for using Pay. So we worked with them January 2019. And it was really, really interesting.   We travelled round to lots of different local authorities. We watched finance teams and caseworkers sort of doing their jobs, what the tools they were using at the moment. Try to understand what the current payment platforms that they use, what were sort of good things about that, what were the pain points around that, how Pay might be able to address it now with the functionality we had at the time and what things you might need to do to enhance Pay. So again, basing our future roadmap entirely on the feedback that we've got from users, making it much easier to use and thinking about some specific issues for local, for local government as well. And I think it's been really beneficial so we've been able to do some of the changes that we looked at.    Steve Messer:  Yeah, that would be great actually, if everyone could go to our website and look at the roadmap and just let us know if something's not on there or definitely let us know if something's on there and you're excited about it. This kind of feedback is what helps us make Pay and make it work for people.   Laura Stevens:  And now we're going to hear from a local government user from Surrey County Council.  ------- David Farquharson:  So my name's David Farqharson and I work at Surrey County Council and I'm a Developer who works in our integration team, which is a team that is specifically concerned with system integration. And part of that integration is the online payment solution.   Laura Stevens: Could you tell me how you came across GOV.UK Pay?   David Farquharson: Yes. So my first exposure to GOV.UK Pay was when we implemented our Blue Badge scheme. And as part of that, there's a payment that has to be made.    We implemented a government solution as part of the end-to-end system, incorporated the GOV.UK Pay platform for online payments and the GOV.UK Notify for the messages and notifications. So that was my first exposure to it.    And as we implemented it, I was quite impressed by what it was offering. And so decided to do an assessment of whether it would be a solution that we could look at for the whole council online payment strategy.    Laura Stevens:  So yes, Surrey came across GOV.UK Pay through the Blue Badge. I also wanted to ask about how GOV.UK Pay helped Surrey County Council during coronavirus. On a blog post on the GDS Blog there was a quote from Surrey County Council talking about a service that was set up in one day using GOV.UK Pay.    David Farquharson:  Yes. I mean, we had a particular example where we needed to take for COVID-19, we needed to take payments for a crisis fund. So it was a sort of fund set up where people could donate money to help people that were in immediate problems due to the COVID-19 issue. And as a result, we needed to get something up as quick as possible, to start taking that money. And so we used the payment links function that is provided by GOV.UK Pay, which is extremely quick way of getting up a payment page and taking those payments online. So that was the particular one that we were probably talking about.    But since COVID-19, we've already set up a number of additional live services, some using the payment links and some using more sort of in-depth integration.    Laura Stevens: And so what features does GOV.UK Pay have that make it helpful to you as somebody working in local government?    David Farquharson:  The GOV.UK Pay platform underpinned fully by the accessible rest APIs [application programming interfaces], which enable developers and local authorities like ourselves to build custom add-ons and to access data and information from the system and embed it in some of our external applications. And also allows us to do things like journaling for our ledger, by accessing the APIs. And the documentation of support for developers is excellent - it's accessible on the website so if anyone went to your website and looked, there's a documentation section and it's excellent on the APIs and how to use them. In fact, on the whole on the whole admin site and how to integrate it, it's very good for that. And the support both online from the call logging system and telephone supports has also been very good and responsive to our needs.    We've also actually been in personal discussion with some developers from your team, and they're very willing to speak to us and listen to our requirements. And we've actually, in conjunction with them, requested some additions and amendments that they have actually now developed and put live.    Another major advantage is how quickly it is to set up a test service on the admin site, it literally takes minutes. You can start, your developers can start carrying out some initial developments and proof of concepts very quickly. So we were able to do that. And it fits in with an agile development approach as well. So you can quickly get something out very quickly, show your, your customers so they immediately get an idea of what it is they're going to be getting.    We've touched on the payment feature, but again, that's a very nice feature. If you are looking at taking online payments that you don't need to integrate with another system and are fairly simple in their nature, you can set that up literally in a day, you could have something up and have a new URL that you can put out for people to take to make online payments.    We also found that each service set up, so we at Surrey, we've got 50 plus payment services that take online payments and that's growing all the time as well. So each one of these we call a different service. So they could be completely different things from highways to education to music tuition. So a lot of different services involved. And each of those is set up as a separate service in the GOV.UK Pay admin site. And you can then control the security and the access to those services. If you will use the admin site and using the admin site for your users, you can control the use of security so that they only see the service they're responsible for. And so in the council where we've got a very disparate level of services and of users, that's was very useful to us.   So, I mean, that's just an example of the advantages. But that’s why we’ve changed our whole strategy, which is to move over to the GOV.UK Pay platform.   Laura Stevens:  If GOV.UK Pay didn't exist, how would that have impacted your work at Surrey?   David Farquharson: We possibly would have had to have built a similar thing ourselves.    So it's probably saved us a lot of our own in-house development work, but would also have been specific to Surrey County Council and one of the things we're looking at with this is the hope that this might lead to more of a standardised local government approach as well. We've been in talks to local authorities because then we can share our experiences. We can look for joint improvements rather than working independently and developing separate solutions. And I think there is a benefit in terms of costs going forward for local authorities to do that.    Laura Stevens:  If any of our listeners are from local government and want to know a bit more, how would they get in touch with you?   David Farquharson:  If anyone wanted to follow up on any of the comments I've made or ask us how at Surrey we've approached some of these issues, I'll be more than happy to talk about that. I think the easiest would be to contact me on my work email address, which is david.farquharson, which I better spell F for Freddie a r q u h a r s o n. S for sugar, s o n. At Surreycc.gov.uk [david.farquharson@surreycc.gov.uk]    So just drop me an email and I'll either get back in the email or I can contact the person that's I’d be more than happy to do it. ---------   Miriam Raines:  Surrey have been such good supporters of, of Pay and we've, it's good to hear they were saying we've worked really closely with them: we've done like a couple of really useful research sessions with them. And yes, as you mentioned, we were able to release some changes pretty recently based on feedback that they'd given us. And yeah, that's really, it's just really positive.    Laura Stevens:  And would you say there, where, what David was talking about the sort of experience of GOV.UK Pay - is that typical for a local government user of GOV.UK Pay?   Miriam Raines:  Yeah. So it's actually interesting, we've got some local government users who do sort of split everything out so they've got a different service in Pay for every different type of transaction and then they can really carefully manage the nuances sort of each of those services and who's got access to it - and in some ways that can make sort of, if it works for their process, it can make finance and reconciliation easier. And that was one of the things that we were doing research with Surrey about.    There are other teams where they just have one service in Pay, and they run absolutely every single thing through it. They've got other ways of handling reconciliation and they like to sort of just, keep, keep it quite simple with their sort of interaction with with Pay. So it will depend on how teams use it.   Laura Stevens:  I was thinking about how GOV.UK Pay will develop next. So we've talked a lot about the various features since it's launched and there seems like there's been lots of things added and has adapted with different users, different features. So what are you thinking about looking forward in the, in your roadmap? What's, what's on the horizon?    Steve Messer:  So there's quite a few things, because the payments industry has changed quite a lot since the internet came along. You know it's not only online payments that have been enabled. Some exciting - if I can say that, regulation, exciting regulation, does it exist? Yes - exciting regulation went through in 2017 I think, which is open banking regulation. And this, what this does is it sort of opens up the way that you can transact with services by using your bank account.   Previously it would have been like quite expensive to build these kinds of things, but now there is a way for any kind of online service to integrate with an open banking solution and then provide information from your bank account to that service. And also to, to send money as well. So there’s quite exciting opportunities there where for people who don't have access to a card maybe could pay by bank account, which in most scenarios is quicker and might be simpler for them.   I think we also want to be looking at how we can make it cheaper for government services to use GOV.UK Pay. We are pretty competitive and we work with the market rather than against the market, which means that you know services can save a lot of money. But again, there are ways that we can really reduce these transaction costs and make it quicker and easier for service teams to convince their governance to start using Pay.    Miriam Raines:  And sort of related to that, we've also been working very closely with Government Finance Function and Government Shared Services. So we're looking at what their aims and ambitions are for sort of better efficiency or sort of automation in those processes in government. And then we looking at how Pay can sort of support that, how we can be the vehicle to enable them to roll out these new sort of finance standards or data standards and make it easier to have that sort of that same technology used and reused across, across government. So that's really, that's really interesting - and Lisa has been very helpful in that. She's been very involved from Home Office as well.    Laura Stevens:  And I guess out of all those plans, what excites you both the most coming up in the next few months to work on GOV.UK Pay?   Steve Messer:  I'm quite excited about so, we do offer a Welsh language service for our services. And so if you're a Welsh language speaker, you can go from start to finish with a completely Welsh journey until Pay sends you an email confirming your payment - that's the only bit we haven't done yet. So I'm quite excited to work on that because it means I get to use the people I live with as a test group because they all speak Welsh. It might make the Christmas dinner quite interesting.   Miriam Raines:  Steve's learning Welsh, so Steve can practice too.    Steve Messer:  Yeah, I can show myself up in how poor I am at my Welsh.   Miriam Raines:  I think we've been thinking about, I don't know if I'm allowed to get excited about invoicing, but I think I might be excited about invoicing. One of the things that Lisa was talking about in her service was they're using Pay for invoices. And definitely we have teams that are using Pay in that way, they might be using our API integration, more likely they're using that payment links functionality. But there's a lot of ways that we could probably make that better and tailor it a bit more to how people share invoices, receive invoices, want to check the invoices have been paid.   So I think there's some work there that we can do because that can be quite expensive to handle in government, it can be quite manual, it can be a bit awkward for users: lot of time they might have to make, you know call up and pay over the phone or something. So we're looking at how we could do that. So that's pretty something we might look at in the, in the New Year.    Laura Stevens:  Fab. And if I've been listening and I want to find out more or I want to get in touch with you, how is best to do so?    Steve Messer:  So probably go to our website, which is payments.service.gov.uk. There you'll be able to find information on what Pay is, how to get started, our roadmap that shows you what we're working on now, next and things that we're exploring. It also has a page that can allow you to get in touch with us. You can contact the support team or get in touch with us to tell us about anything you're excited about.    Laura Stevens:  So yes, thank you both and thank you to all our guests for coming on the podcast today. This is actually my last episode as I'm moving onto a new role in GDS so it's been great to leave on a, such a great product. And you can listen to all the episodes of the Government Digital Service Podcast on Apple Music, Spotify and other major podcast platforms. And the transcripts are available on PodBean. So thank you again both.    Miriam Raines:  Thanks, Laura.    Steve Messer:  Thank you. That was great.

Laura Stevens: Hello and welcome to the Government Digital Service Podcast. My name is Laura Stevens and I'm a Creative Content Producer here at GDS. And for this month's episode, we're talking about Content Design. We're going to find out what it is, how it helps government and where you can learn more. And to tell me the answer to these questions are Amanda Diamond and Ben Hazell. So welcome both to the GDS Podcast. Please could you introduce yourselves and your job roles here at GDS. Amanda first.    Amanda Diamond: Yeah, hi, Laura. I'm Amanda Diamond and I'm Head of GDS Content Design and Head of the Cross-government Content Community. I joined GDS in 2016, so August 2016, in fact. So it is 4 years exactly that I've been at GDS. Last year I went on loan to Acas as their Head of Content to help with their digital transformation. And prior to that I have worked in journalism. So I started out as a journalist. Prior to GDS, I worked at Which?, the consumer association, as their Deputy Editor for Which? magazine, Deputy Editor for their travel magazin, and I helped launch and run their consumer rights website as their Consumer Rights Editor.     Ben Hazell: Hello, I'm Ben Hazell. I'm a Content Product Lead here at GDS on the GOV.UK programme. I currently work on a team dealing with Coronavirus Public Information Campaign. In the recent past, 5 months ago, I was working on the EU Exit Public Information Campaign. And prior to that, I've been working on the means of publishing and production for content on GOV.UK, looking at workflows and providing the tools and data that help people manage the content on GOV.UK. Prior to that, like Amanda, I was actually in journalism. I worked on a big newspaper website for about 9 years.   Laura Stevens:  So thank you both for introducing yourselves. And I want to start with the first of my questions which is, what is content design?     Amanda Diamond:  I don't mind starting, and that is a great question, Laura, and one that I love to answer. So basically and I'll tell you for why, people often confuse content design with different things, mainly comms. They also think that content design is just about the words. And of course, words are really important and content design is you know concerned with words. But it's not the only thing when you're talking about content design.    So content design could be a map, it could be text on a button or a sign. It also includes things like charts or graphs. Content design is about packaging up the right information in a way that makes it easy for people to understand at the point that they most need it.    So for me, I often tell people that content design is at its core: problem solving. And what do I mean about that? Well, I mean that it's about asking the right questions to get to the best solution for your audience. So the best solution for your users. So asking questions like, well, what do our users need to know? What do they need to do? And what evidence? - it's all about the evidence - what evidence do we have to support what we think our users need to know or need to do? Because there’s a big difference between what we think our users need, and what they actually need. And that can often confuse things. And we also ask things like, how can we make the overall experience better for our users? So before Content Designers even put like a single word to a page, what they need to do is like dedicate a lot of time, a lot of effort to understanding the problem in the first place so that we can give people what they need.    Ben Hazell:  Yeah, and I definitely, I agree with all of that. There's no doubt that there's a fair chunk of writing in what we do. But it's also about use of evidence, about research and about iteration, about constant improvement. And I think a lot of it comes back to being humble about understanding that it's not about what we want to say, it's about finding out what people actually need from us.   We're trying to make things simple. In my teams, we often talk about making information easy to find and making sure information is easy to understand. And making things simple - that's not dumbing down. That's actually opening up and being able to process complexity and distill it down to what other people actually need to know and can act upon. That is both important and rewarding. And it's often the kind of fun puzzle and it can be as much about what you're getting rid of and pruning down to find the shape. So perhaps I could compare it to sculpting. You know, the thing exists in the centre of the marble and you just keep chipping away to get to the beautiful thing that people need.   Laura Stevens:  I did enjoy the sculpture one as well because Amanda you're coming to us from an artist's studio as well. So clearly there's something in this recording.   Amanda Diamond:  And interestingly, my other half, he -it's not my studio, my artist studio, I’ll hasten to add, if only! It’s my partner’s and he is a sculptor by trade. So yeah, full circle.    Laura Stevens: So now we know what is. Let's go back in time a bit. So GDS is actually the home of content design in the government too as the term and the discipline originated here under GDS’s first Head of Content Design, Sarah Richards. And why do you think it came out of the early days of GDS?   Amanda Diamond:  So really good question. And I think it is really useful for us to pause and reflect and look back sometimes upon this, because it's not, you know, content design, as you said, it came from, as a discipline it came from GDS.   So really, it only started to emerge around 2010, so 2010, 2014. So in the grand scheme of things, as a discipline, it is very young. And so it's still evolving and it's still growing. And so back in the early 2000s, before we had GOV.UK, we had DirectGov. And alongside that, we had like hundreds of other government websites. So it was, it was a mess really because users had to really understand and know what government department governed the thing that they were looking for.    So what GOV.UK did was we brought websites together into a single domain that we now know of as GOV.UK. And that was a massive undertaking. And the reason for doing that was was simple. It was, it was to make things easier for users to access and understand, make things clearer and crucially to remove the burden on people to have to navigate and understand all of the structures of government.    So back in the early days, GOV.UK, GDS picked I think it was around, I think it was the top 25 services in what was known as the Exemplar Programme. I think things like that included things that Register to Vote, Lasting Power of Attorney, Carer's Allowance. And so I think through that process, we, we, we discovered that it actually wasn't really about website redesign, it was more about service design.    And that's where content design and service design, interaction design and user research kind of came together under this banner of user centred design because you can't have good services without content design essentially. All services contain words or images or artefacts, content artefacts, workflows, journeys, and so you need a content designer to help build these. So I think that's kind of where it, where it sort of emerged from.    But really, fundamentally, with a relentless focus on putting the user at the heart, heart of everything, rather than always relying on what government wants to tell people and what government wants to, to push out to folks. It was a sort of like a reversal of that and a relentless focus on what folks needed of government and what folks needed to, to understand and learn to do the things they need to do as a citizen.     Ben Hazell:  I felt what I could add to that is perhaps my journey into content design and how I came to understand what GDS was doing, because in the late 2000s, kind of 2008, 2009, a lot of my work in newspapers was around search optimisation. And that was quite a big change for that industry, because instead of everything being based upon some kind of monthly reports of sales figures and editors who had a kind of supernatural knowledge of their reader base, suddenly you actually were presented with almost real time data about what people were looking for and interested in.    And sure, there were all the criticisms about tons of stories about Britney Spears all of a sudden, but what it actually came back to was you could see what people wanted to find out from us and we could start to model our online content around what people's expectations were. And it opened up a really interesting era of kind of experimenting with formats, experimenting with the ways in which news content was produced.    And from there, I started to kind of get quite interested in what I could see GDS was doing and they were winning awards at that time for user centred design because it was taking that evidence base about what people actually need for a variety of digital mechanisms and applying it to create not just pieces of content, but structures of content that better serve people. And of course, it was wonderful to move from the media over to somewhere like GOV.UK, which is not beholden to advertising.   So it was that combination of the availability of digital data and being able to more effectively get to what government wanted to happen, because this is also all about not just about making things simpler for users, but making things simpler for users has great benefits for government. If you make things easy for people to do, you reduce any burden on support services, you increase the level of compliance, they're happier. It's more cost effective for government.    Amanda Diamond:  I don't have exact figures, but I, I do know that savings in the millions have been made because of, as Ben rightly describes, our reduce on support services, calls to contact centres and enabling people to do the things they need to do more easily and to self-serve. And so, I mean, that's a huge, that's a huge benefit not just to government, but to the taxpayer, to the public purse.    Laura Stevens:  And I think one example of content design that has also got a bit of attention recently was the Sara Wilcox NHS blog on the language of health and why they need to be searched and found using pee and poo, people understood that and that is a huge benefit that people will search that and that will help their health. So I think as well as saving time or money, it's also directly making sure people get the information they need when they need it at those urgent points.    Amanda Diamond:  Exactly. If you think about the history of language and the history, sort of professional or sort of authoritative language - it’s, it's lofty and it is full of jargon and it is full of often if you think of legal, the legal profession is full of Latin terms and even science as well it’s full of, you know, the medical profession is full of Latin phrases.    Now, that doesn't do anybody any justice because it is just putting up barriers for people to be able to understand and act on. And so what we do as content designers is we and, and that blog that you talked about, Laura, is about reducing those barriers and really sort of democratising language - like language is for everyone. And we shouldn't be, we shouldn't be sort of putting those barriers in place. We should be trying to break them down.    Ben Hazell:  Yes. And I'd say we have to also we do think about the audience for any given piece of content. So it's not that there's a general fight against technical language. Sometimes something has a precise term and a precise name, and that is the efficient way of communicating it that's right for the audience in question.    But on the other hand, what we also know and we have evidence to show this, is that there's this assumption that as people pick up more professional skill, they like more and more verbose language, which seems exclusive. Whereas actually the opposite is true. People in high skilled professions, highly qualified professions, often want things to be simple because they don't want to have to spend their time unpicking complex documents. They need to get on with their job. So, yes, we use technical language where it's appropriate to do so. But we're also always looking to make things simple whilst also keeping them precise.    Laura Stevens:  Picking up on what you’re both just saying, and I just want to talk about the link between content design and accessibility. We should always think about accessibility with everything GDS does because people don’t have a choice when they interact with government, they have to use our services. They can't shop around. So would you would you talk about how the language being used helps with making sure that we don't create any barriers unnecessarily to services?   Amanda Diamond:  Yeah, absolutely, Laura. I mean, like accessibility is, I think really is at the heart of content design as a discipline. If you make things clear and simple, that means writing things clearly and simply in plain language and in language that users use themselves.    Also, I think people, people make a mistake and often kind of confuse what we mean by accessibility. Accessibility is not something that is just for a certain group or subset of people. Accessibility is about catering to everyone and all of the time. So there is a difference between, you know, there might be people who have permanent accessibility needs, there might be people who have some temporary accessibility needs and there might be people who have situational accessibility needs.   And the great example that I can point to is, you know, somebody who has got - who’s had an arm amputated. That is one that that is a permanent, that is a person with a permanent need, accessibility need. Somebody that might have sprained their wrist or broken their wrist. And so their need is temporary, but they still need, they might still need to access and access our services. And then there's a sort of a situational need as well. So, you know, if you're a parent and you have to hold a child, well, you have to do something quickly, then you are impaired because you are holding a child and that’s situational, that's not going to last, but you still may need to you know, do something in that time.    And the same thing goes, I think, for sort of cognitive access needs as well. If we are, you know, if, if we are writing in language that is convoluted and verbose and lofty, we are unintentionally creating barriers to people who might have cognitive challenges or who might have dyslexia or people who who are just reading at speed and need to do something really, really quickly and access and sort of comprehend something really, really quickly.    So, yeah, I think like accessibility for me, beyond the legal requirements that we have, we know that there are new accessibility requirements coming into force on the 23 September this year. It's beyond for me, beyond a legal duty and it's also a moral duty as well. And I think that should be at the heart of everything that we're that we're doing as government.    As you said, Laura, people don't have a choice other than to interact with government. People are not looking at the GOV.UK website and hanging out in their lunch break and just browsing and having a good old read. People are coming to our site because they need to do something because government has mandated that it's a legal requirement to do a thing or to get, you know, get document to do a thing or whatever it might be. And so it really is our duty then if we're making people do these things that we have to make the information in the ways in which they need to do these things as simple and as clear as possible.    Ben Hazell:  I would agree with all of that, I’m reminded of that phrase, ‘this is for everyone’. I specifically work for GOV.UK, which is always worth mentioning is just one highly visible part of what GDS does. But GOV.UK as a platform is designed to be very, very adaptable. So all the information that is published should be in a clean HTML form, which can then be picked up and experienced in different ways. Now, some of that is going to be about assistive technologies, but actually it also speaks to the need for people to come by information from GOV.UK in a variety of different ways now.   So by having properly structured clean text, we can work with voice interfaces. We can make sure that Amazon, Alexa or Google Home can interpret our information. We make sure that a Google search results page can quickly deliver a quick answer to a person. We make sure that content can be syndicated out through API so it can be republished by other organisations who might have closer contact with people who need it. So we can syndicate things very efficiently in a structured way over to organisations like Shelter or Citizens Advice if they were able to make use of it. There's a lot to be said for the platform itself being quite an open platform which can easily be adapted upon.   One interesting thing about coronavirus content has been the accelerated shift in the mobile audience, as you might imagine, with everybody staying at home, they're not actually accessing the internet quite as much on work computers. And we saw at the peak up to 90% of all traffic to coronavirus information was coming from smartphones. Now, we've long on GOV.UK practiced mobile-first design, but something like that really draws attention to needing to communicate clearly and put things in a logical order for people viewing it in a single narrow screen. So when we talk about accessibility, another thing to think about is just the sheer movement to a mobile audience. And what that actually means for how we produce things. We simply can't get away with big charts or diagrams that are only designed to be read on a work computer screen. People are using their mobiles at home and that's what we need to design for.    Laura Stevens: And sort of I thinking about, Ben, what you're saying about your SEO, your search engine optimisation experience earlier, also content design surely helps like how, where to find all this information on GOV.UK.    Ben Hazell: We're in a time with coronavirus and the EU Exit when lots of things are changing quite rapidly. I think some of the most exciting things we've been playing with on GOV.UK is around adaptive content, about the fact that there are many variables. So the guidance for any one person needs to follow could vary quite a lot based on their individual circumstances. And we've been doing more and more with experimenting with content, which actually asks the user some questions so that we can understand exactly what their needs are and then modifies and adapts the guidance to give them just the elements which are relevant to them.    So one of the most interesting examples of that has been the Get Ready for Brexit campaign or which we refer to as the EU Exit Checker. The Brexit Checker is about, is about asking people to help us understand exactly what they need and only showing them the information which is relevant to their circumstances. So it makes - it drills the information down to just what they can act upon without needing them to wade through lots of supporting material. And it also can join up quite effectively lots of related documents that relate to the task they have in mind. So they're not having to look up one list over here to see if they are included in the category and another list over there. That's a challenge across government. And I think adaptive content is a really exciting opportunity. And we've been trying lots of things and we've been making mistakes and we've been learning a lot of things.    Laura Stevens: Well, that's led me nicely on because I was going to ask actually what are some of the challenges you've both faced in your career as content designers. Is, is it something to do with the, perhaps it's an emerging discipline, so you're working with people who are unfamiliar with what you do or what you're trying to do? Or is it something broader than that? Or yeah, what challenges have you come across when working in content design?    Ben Hazell: An interesting challenge I'm aware of at the moment is recruitment. Is how do we expand the pool of people we're bringing in as content designers? Because I did a lot of work, that was probably content design adjacent in various roles, often job titles I got to make up because professions didn't exist. And it was very late in my career in newspapers that I’ve ever heard of the term content design. And I think we can do a better job. And we're definitely doing a lot at the moment with running events. But we're trying to widen access to content design to help people who have things to offer, map what they already can do and their skills to the sorts of things we're looking for.    There's quite a wide variety of skills which can blur into it, and we have colleagues with a wide variety of backgrounds, because these are overlapping skill sets, they are thinking about an audience or user need and how things can be communicated and how you can better understand people. So that's a really interesting challenge for me. How do we widen the pool from which we are drawing people in to both increase our diversity and also make sure we're getting the most skilled people we can get because it's really important work and we need we need people who are going to really thrive on it.    Amanda Diamond: Yeah, that's a really great point Ben. And as Ben said, we are we're doing quite a lot at the moment in this in this area, both, as Ben said, to bring in diverse voices, but also to bring in people from underrepresented groups into the profession.   There are lots of different routes into content design and the skillset is varied. And so I think, again, in the way that I think it's incumbent upon us to educate, you know, within government about the value of content design, I think we also need to think beyond government and talk to sort of a wider pool of people, wider audiences, about what content design is and how, you know, what transferable skills, skills are useful.    To that end, we've been running with our UCD, user centred design colleagues, careers events and we're actually going to run a content design careers event so dedicated for content design.   And it's also probably worth saying as well that the actual profession, the discipline as itself, is changing. As Ben mentioned, this idea of structured content, of serving up content to people that is configured to their specific circumstances - there’s quite a big technical element to that as well. And so I think content designers of the future, I would certainly encourage them to to be more technically minded and also to look across different disciplines.   So, yeah, it's an exciting profession. And it's exciting time, I think, to be in content design. But it's changing as the world is around us. And so I think we need to be adapting to that and looking ahead to what the profession needs so that we can be equipped as government to continue providing, you know, excellent digital services to our citizens.   Laura Stevens: And talking about new ways in which you're reaching out to people to speak about content design. I also wanted to talk about The introduction to content design course. And I've got it a clip now from our colleague, Agnieszka so I'll just play this.   Agnieszka Murdoch: So my name is Agnieszka Murdoch and I'm a Content Learning Designer at Government Digital Service and I'm part of the content community team.   Laura Stevens: And what are some of the things you've been working on during your time over the past 8 months or so you've been in the Content Community Team?   Agnieszka Murdoch: Yes, I started in January this year and basically I sort of jumped straight into working on the introduction to content design course scheduled to go live in May.    Laura Stevens: And so what is the course?   Agnieszka Murdoch: Yes, Introduction to content design is basically a course hosted on FutureLearn, which is a social learning platform with approximately 12 million registered users. The introduction to content design open course that we launched in May actually had just over 11,000 learners register, which was fantastic.    And it's basically an introductory course for anyone who's interested in user centred content design. We teach people about things like how to think about your users, how to do user research a little bit, how to design and kind of clearly structured easy to read accessible content, how to write in plain English. We also cover topics like evaluating the success of your content and managing the content lifecycle. So a wide range of topics. And it's basically a self-paced course, it’s divided into 4 weeks and learners can kind of do it in their own time.   Laura Stevens: And you mentioned there that 11,000 people did the course when it was launched in May. So who were these people? Who can do the course?   Agnieszka Murdoch: The original pilot of the course was just for those working in government, whereas the open course that we launched in May and that we're now launching the second run of is open to anyone who's interested in content design.     So this will be obviously colleagues from different government departments. There will be people working in local government as well. Other public sector organisations as well as the private sector. And we had people from lots of different places in the UK, all different nations, lots of different countries around the world.    The pilot of the course was intended just for content designers, but this open course actually attracted more people than just content designers and people who have ‘content designer’ in their job title. So it's obviously for those starting out in the role. But it's also for those working in related disciplines.   What was also interesting was that was the range of experience among the learners on the course. So even though the course is called an Introduction to content design, we had people who were completely new to the field, but also people who are very experienced. And what we found was that it was sort of equally beneficial for those different groups, regardless of the level of experience they had.    So like I said at the start, FutureLearn is a social learning platform, which means you're not just following the content of the course, but you're also expected to get involved in conversations, to complete tasks, to answer questions and to interact with other learners. And that's part of the learning.   Laura Stevens: And I also saw on FutureLearn you received a 4.5* review from the learners. And so can you talk a bit more through about people's response to the course? Was there anything particularly that went well or anything that needed improvement? And perhaps has that changed as the course has gone from pilot to first opening and now to the second one?   Agnieszka Murdoch: Yes. So we got, we got quite a lot of feedback actually from that first open run, which we did in May. And the second iteration of that we’re working on at the moment is going to be addressing some of those feedback points. So what people really enjoyed were the interactions with other learners, so being able to kind of share experiences, but also read about other people's context. Yeah, the social interactions between learners was something that we got a lot of positive feedback on.    Also, the fact that we conveyed the content through stories rather than just telling people the rules or sharing the theory of content design. I think that was a very important aspect of why people, why learners potentially benefited from the course. Also, the variety of content so FutureLearn is a platform that allows you to add different types of content to it, such as video, audio, articles, polls, quizzes. So I think the variety of content really was a great thing because sometimes it can be quite tedious if you're just going through a self-paced course that just has video or just has articles.   And in terms of improvements, we had some feedback on actually accessibility. There was one task that we included that wasn't accessible because it involved highlighting things in green and red. And if you know anything about the basics of accessibility, you will know that that's not very helpful for people with kind of accessibility, certain types of accessibility needs. So that was, that was a mistake that we're correcting.    Laura Stevens: I also wanted to talk about it being an online learning course, which has always been the case since it’s development back in 2019. Of course given the developments of 2020 with coronavirus and a move of lots of things to remote working or remote learning, but why were you thinking about online back in 2019?   Agnieszka Murdoch: So the main reason, so that kind of if we go back to the pilot, the reason why the pilot was designed was to address some of the kind of practical challenges with running face-to-face training.    So things like obviously the cost. The fact that the trainers would have to go, travel around the country and go to each face-to-face session, kind of separately, train the people there. It costs a lot to travel. It costs, it takes up a lot of time. But also, I think another challenge of face-to-face learning is that you only have access to those people who are in the room at the time the training is happening. Which means that you're not really able to share ideas or generate new ideas as effectively as as you are if you're doing things online and opening it up to thousands of people. The practical kind of challenges and the challenge of sharing were the 2 main reasons.   So just to give you some numbers, like I said, we had about 11,500 people enrolled and we were actually only expecting 2,400 because that was the mean number of sign ups in that specific course category on FutureLearn. We had 18,500 comments. So as you can see, this is quite an overwhelming number for a moderator or somebody who's even reading those comments as a participant. But it shows the kind of how active the discussions were and how active the learners were and how much knowledge was shared.    Sixty-seven per cent of those learners were active learners, which means they completed a step and 26% were social learners, which means they commented at least once. So, again, you know, if you're running face-to-face training, you can't expect every single person to contribute. There isn't enough time for that. And also, the different kind of learning styles that people have don't always allow for that.    Laura Stevens: So yeah, I want to talk about this - the September opening of the course, which starts on the 21 September. And so if I'm hearing you speak about it, and I’m really excited to hear more. How do I sign up?    Agnieszka Murdoch: Yeah so if you want to join the course, you can keep an eye on the GDS Blog. We will be blogging about how we built the course and how we sort of iterated it. And there will be a link there to sign up. But if you're too impatient and you don’t want to wait for the blog posts, then you can go on FutureLearn and you can search for it there, it's called Introduction to content design.   The course is perfect for anyone who is starting out in content design or who is thinking about moving into content design or anyone who kind of already works with content and feels that their work could benefit from learning more about content design.    Ben Hazell: Yeah, so the thing that put me in mind of was the content design is a set of job titles and a role within the government digital jobs framework. So there's a nice clear job track that you can join. But it is also a set of practises. It's a set of methodologies and a mindset so I think it's a really valuable skill set even if you don't intend to become a titled ‘content designer’. I think you can apply it in lots of ways and this is a great opportunity to dip your toe into those waters.    Amanda Diamond: And for me, I am just astonished at the number of people who signed up and who are interested and also the number of folks who completed the course as well. And just the level of social interaction that Agnieszka spoke about there. I mean, that is fantastic.    And I think for me as well, it's just about the reach. You know, an online course like this that can scale to this extent would, is, is, is, is the only way we can reach all of those people from different backgrounds, different, you know, different skill sets. And we would never be able to reach that number of people and that volume of people around the world as well if we were just doing face-to-face training.    Ben Hazell: And most importantly, it can be taken at the user’s own pace and in their own time - they can go back over things, they can expand in particular areas of interest. And I think when you have engaged and willing learners, that becomes a very effective opportunity. And I used to do a lot of in-person training for GDS on content design, but obviously with a reach of more like 12 people a day rather than 10,000. It was always hard with a classroom full of people to meet each of their individual needs and to find a pace that wasn't leaving people behind. And it was also not kind of losing the engagement of the people who were running ahead. And that's where this adaptive content in these online courses can really excel. And I think are really interesting examples of that sort of personalisation of content to people's minute by minute needs and requirements.    Laura Stevens: Yes, for sure. And as Agnieszka said, there will be a link to the course on the GDS Blog if you’re interested. And so that's all for today, so thank you both so much for joining me, and to Agnieszka too.    And you can listen to all the episodes of the Government Digital Service Podcast on Apple Music, Spotify and all other major podcast platforms. And the transcripts are available on Podbean.    So yeah, thank you both again.    Ben Hazell: Thank you.   Amanda Diamond: Thanks Laura, thanks for having me having us.

Laura Stevens: Hello and welcome to the Government Digital Service podcast. My name is Laura Stevens and I’m a Creative Content Producer at GDS. And today we’re going to be talking about the Local Digital Declaration. This is a set of guiding principles that help support local authorities, of all sizes and capabilities, to deliver great digital services and platforms that meet the needs of their users. And since it launched 2 years ago, 223 public sector organisations have signed up to it.    And to tell me more about the work the declaration has done is Lisa Jeffrey and May-N Leow. So welcome both to the podcast, please could you tell me who you are, where you work and how you’re involved with the Local Digital Declaration.    Lisa Jeffery: So yeah, I'm Lisa Jeffery. I'm a Regional Relationship Manager for Government Digital Service, GDS, I'm based in Leeds. And we're here to help open doors and raise awareness of the support that's available from GDS and to connect people where it's beneficial to do so to support digital transformation. I started working at GDS in May 2018, and that's just a couple months before the Local Digital Declaration launched in July 2018, and I've been involved ever since then really over the last 2 years.    May-N Leow: Hi everyone. I’m May-N Leow, and Head of the Local Digital Collaboration Unit. So almost a year now at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government [MHCLG], and yeah, Lisa is a fantastic champion of, of the declaration and we love working with her and GDS.   So I’ve actually seen it from both sides. So when I was working in the council in Southwark, we were co-signatories of the declaration, we also applied for the funds - so I have that perspective of what it feels like to be in the council. So yeah, it’s been really fantastic seeing it from both sides of, of the pond.   Laura Stevens: So I described the Local Digital Declaration briefly in the introduction. But I’d like to hear a bit more about it. It’s a set of 5 principles - could we talk through them?   May-N Leow: So it's, it’s, as you say kind of Laura, it’s, we’ve got 5 principles in the declaration, and it's based around the GDS Service Manual as well as the Technology Code of Practice.    But the key things for us is that obviously we want users and citizens need to be first when you know, designing a system and offering good local services. And the second one is around fixing the plumbing - so we want to fix the hard, complex problems. It's not very sexy but it's completely vital for delivering good services. And then we want to design safe, secure and useful ways of sharing information and data and that's even more critical from COVID and what we've learned in the crisis response. And then the fourth one is to kind of demonstrate leadership in creating the conditions for genuine organisational transformation, making sure that it can actually happen. And then lastly, working in the open whenever we can so as many people can learn from, from each other.    So those are kind of, the 5 principles we have in the declaration.   Laura Stevens: So the Local Digital Declaration is a joint initiative from GDS and MHCLG. And can you describe for me who is it for?    Lisa Jeffery:   So it's aimed primarily at local authorities and other public sector organisations that meet the requirements of signing the Local Digital Declaration.    I think the Local Digital Declaration is a, is a great example of what can be achieved if, if we all work together. It's co-written by 45 different organisations, so it's really about shared ambition for the future of public services in the internet age. And it's now been signed by 223 different organisations.   Laura Stevens: And can you describe some of the councils who have signed it? Sort of, are they big councils, are they small councils, who’s signed up?   May-N Leow: I think it's all across the board. So we have obviously your big city, metropolitan kind of councils right through to your county and district councils. Obviously there are other organisations, other than councils, that have signed up to the declaration, so we're pretty much approaching that three quarter mark of, of all councils in England, which is you know, great and shows the level of ambition that, that councils are, are showcasing in terms of wanting to deliver like modern, amazing services to, to their citizens and community.    Laura Stevens: And I know you, both of you referenced this in the introduction, I wanted to go back in time a bit, looking back to 2018 because it's obviously its 2 year birthday coming up very shortly. So could you tell me, perhaps Lisa from the GDS point of view and May-N from when you were working Southwark Council point of view, why was the Local Digital Declaration created?   May-N Leow: Yeah. And, and I would say certainly being on the other side when the Declaration was being created, it was, it was, the need born out from it's kind of like a place, one place can state what does good look like for local services and what the ambition looks like for local services? And certainly in, again, in, in Southwark, I used it as a mechanism to drive forward a lot of things that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise - so saying here's the declaration, we’ve committed to it, you know other organisations have committed to it and this is the bar that we should try to kind of meet. So using that to say you know, we need to have user research, we need to do-build services in that user-centered way.    Again I could not have done without the Declaration, without kind of the Local Digital Fund. So certainly being a council officer, having something like that, it's just such a powerful mechanism to not only showcase what's possible, what we should be doing but then, but then also sort of say to senior management, this is what we're committing to so let's do it.   Lisa Jeffery: And at the beginning as well, we did, we did some roadshows. I think it was really important that we got out and about around the country when, when we could, and that we could understand each other and work together across local and national government.    Laura Stevens: You mentioned there about the roadshows, and you mentioned there about how you, it showed you what good looked like specifically for local councils, how important was that creation and collaboration between local and central government?   May-N Leow: I mean, I-I think it was crucial to make something like this actually work, because you, you need both perspectives of organisations from a council side, what central government is trying to achieve, and other organisations like LGA [Local Government Association] as well, that kind of fed into the, the declaration.   So it's, it’s not really that MHCLG kind of holds the declaration or is responsible for it, we're just kind of like keeping it for, for the sector at this point in time. And it's very much like a shared commitment and an ownership of, of the declaration. So I think it was really crucial that it was co-written and co-published.   Lisa Jeffery: Yeah I-I think I'd agree. As in there's, there's, it's more like a movement of course, than a mandate. So I think we're all on a journey to improve public services and to make things better for people fundamentally - so collaboration and building capability and community and being human centered and understanding how we are connected, are all enablers to that goal really.    Laura Stevens: And Lisa, so can you explain a bit about your role as a Regional Relationship Manager? Because I know since you've been here for 2 years, you’ve made about, over 40 visits in person to councils?   Lisa Jeffery: Yep. So as a Regional Relationship Manager for the Government Digital Service, GDS, based in Leeds, we’re here to sort of open doors to GDS, raise awareness of the support that's available from GDS and to connect people where it's beneficial to support digital transformation. And since the launch of the Local Digital Declaration, I’ve made 40 visits in person to local authorities and I've also met with many more local authorities through communities and events like LocalGovCamp, where the Local Digital Declaration had a launch.   It's been really helpful to connect with local authorities and to learn with them and to visit them in their own context. And I've seen the value of that and joining up services, people and places to act as an enabler for collaboration.   Laura Stevens: May-N, I know your team is the Local Digital Collaboration Unit. Can you talk about your work there and also how you saw it from the other side at Southwark?   May-N Leow: Yeah. So currently we've got a number of projects that we're funding via the Local Digital Fund.    So we’re funding basically projects to solve common challenges that councils have. So we're currently in round 4 of our funding, so we do it in a stage kind of way, and some of the rounds are open so councils can apply with completely new challenges or new ideas, and some of our rounds are closed - those ones, those rounds are to allow our funded projects to kind of progress to, to the next stage.   So we've actually funded 23 projects so far and 100 distinct councils have actually worked collaboratively together on those projects - so we've, we've definitely shown via the fund that you know councils can actually come together and work on common challenges. And like to be completely frank, I, when, when I was still there, I was a bit dubious about this myself, ‘cause everyone knows it's hard - like yeah, everyone wants to kind of share and collaborate together but you know, everyone's got their own day jobs, it takes time, it takes you know resources to actually do collaborative working.    So with, with the fund, it actually managed to bring councils together that we wouldn't have necessarily work together before. So for example, when we were running the housing repairs project in Southwark, we had Lincoln, Gravesham and Lewisham working with Southwark. And we didn't have a relationship from a housing repair side before, but because that was a priority problem for those councils, we actually came together and it worked!    So I think it kind of demonstrates that when those problems are you know, unique but a priority to certain councils, councils will come together to, to solve those common challenges. So I think that's the great thing we've actually seen and proven is that, that is possible as long as we remove and de-risk a lot of those barriers to collaborative working. So obviously that's why we offer the funds so that you know councils with really stretched budgets are not using kind of like their own money and, and resources to actually solve those challenges. And some of these problems are really big for, for just one council to solve.    Lisa Jeffery: It's been super helpful I think to connect and to learn alongside with local authorities and going to visit them in their context through my visits, and I've seen the value in cross-organisational sort of connections and to join up services, people and places to, to enable the collaboration.     I think it's really helpful what the, what the Local Digital Declaration is doing to sort of highlight the good work that councils are doing, and finding those assets that we can build on together and it's also helping create that space for the people and organisations to create their own value within, within that space.    Laura Stevens: And this has sort of preempted my next bit of question, because I was gonna ask about what has it allowed to happen over the 2 years.   May-N Leow: Yeah. I guess that, that bit about demonstrating the willingness and the ambition in council. So when the Local Digital Fund was first announced and we'd launched the first round, we had 389 expressions of interest which was amazing, and the majority of the ideas were all really sound.   And I think that, that bit about, what Lisa was saying, on the amplifying the great work that is happening - most councils just don't have the time to kind of blog and write about the amazing things that they're doing, and a lot of the times they don't think it's amazing.    So I think the, the sharing and the learning from each other can't, can’t be underrated - it's, it's so important, whether they're funded projects or not funded projects, I think it's really important to get all these different approaches out so people can say, ‘yeah that works, that will work for me’, or ‘no I can actually just tweak this kind of approach’, so they're not starting from zero.    Laura Stevens: And I think one thing as well, in terms of not starting from zero, we've seen the increased use of common components across local government. Pete Herlihy, in last month's podcast, said we do have nearly as many service teams in local government using GOV.UK Notify as we do in central government. And so, and things like GOV.UK Pay as well, that local government able to pick up and use in their service. And Lisa, I know you've spoken at design calls about, about this as well.   Lisa Jeffery: Yeah, absolutely. I think local authorities, they're delivering complex services, there's, there’s limited resources and it's often done at pace in, in these super challenging times - so there's real potential for platforms to improve outcomes.    So for example, yeah Lisa Trickey, at Dorset Council, ran a great session with us the other week about how they are using GOV.UK Notify and Pay within their services. We announced GOV.UK Notify and Pay local authority pilots back in 2017, and then we opened a lot more alongside the launch of the Local Digital Declaration. And since then uptake of these platforms, especially Notify, has grown a lot as you say, in local government. And there does seem to be a universal willingness as May-N said, among Local Digital Declaration projects to be using government platforms - so that's just fantastic to see.    Laura Stevens: And you've teed that up very nicely, because we now have a clip from Lisa Trickey.    Lisa Trickey:  So I am Lisa Trickey. I was appointed last summer as the Service Manager for Digital Strategy and Design at Dorset Council. So we're a relatively new council. We were only formed on the 1 April last year, and prior to that I worked in the County Council and I was, I've always pretty much been involved in technology and digital work.    Laura Stevens:  So as you said Dorset is a new council, and in a blog post you wrote, by signing the Local Digital Declaration in the summer of 2018, “it was great timing for us because it aligned with our digital aspirations, work we were already doing and has enabled digital to be at the heart of the new Dorset Council that is being formed”. So can you talk a bit more about that, how it's helped you?    Lisa Trickey:  We, we were really keen. we wanted to create this brand new council you know taking the best of the bits of the work from previous councils but we wanted to create something new and different. But obviously on day one we didn't have all the policies and strategies that you would normally have in place for a new council. So the declaration for me in particular has been that mandate that I can reference, I can hook the work onto and I can talk about to the organisation.    We were able to create dedicated capacity for digital and change. So we've got that dedicated capacity to help the organisation to adopt digital but what was really important is we didn't want it to be seen as technology - we wanted it to be seen as something different to that. And from my perspective for digital to be a success it has to permeate through everything in the organisation.   But there is this really fine balance all the time between technology and then bringing it back to people and designing services. So the other thing that we've done is celebrated Services Week. So that's been a brilliant initiative from GDS because actually when we started to celebrate Services Week, which we've done for 2 years, we actually had a different set of people coming to the room and suddenly realised that actually digital isn't just about technology it's about yeah, doing things really differently and making sure that we meet the needs of our customers.    Laura Stevens:  What do you think by signing the Local Digital Declaration, it’s allowed Dorset to do that it would have been able to do otherwise?   Lisa Trickey: So I think in, in local government there are always lots of competing agendas, lots of competing priorities and unless you have legislation or some sort of government policy or guidance to hook your work on to it can be really hard to drive that work forward. Unless you've got a Chief Executive that really gets it you know and we're actually quite fortunate in Dorset that we do have a really fantastic Chief Executive when it comes to digital. But what the declaration does then is gives you a clear mandate to have those conversations, you can reference what is happening elsewhere and that's really helpful. And it's really clear it's really clear about what we should be doing and so you can start to think about the plans and priorities you know for your particular council as a result of that.    Laura Stevens: And I just wanted to ask about the common components because I know Dorset uses GOV.UK Pay for lots of your services including things like abandoned vehicle charges, highway licenses. And you also use GOV.UK Notify for other public sector services like blood online reporting tool and services to support young people. How in particular has Dorset used GOV.UK Notify?   Lisa Trickey:  So we've used Notify to both integrated with our systems and just using the backend of Notify to to send information. And we've used Notify for text messaging information, emailing but also probably the biggest through posting letters. So our waste partnership for example, have used it to notify residents of changes to rounds or recycling schemes. We've used it during COVID to respond to residents, keep residents informed and even a group of staff that don't have access to the IT network informed. It's so quick and easy to set up and in terms of trying to save money, using GOV Notify over the last year we've saved £55,000. Which I know is not massive in the scale of things but actually every penny counts at the moment for local government. So if you can quickly replace posting a letter with Notify or even better doing it by email or by text then that's that's really, really helpful.   We've also used it to think about how we improve our communication with customers and particularly around parents who have children with special educational needs and we had this concept of the educational health and care plan process takes 20 weeks so it's quite a long time. So how do we keep them better up-to-date? And that's changed the experience of that service completely for parents. It's improved the relationship between the service and parents so these components have a really you have a really big impact really positive impact for relatively, for relatively low time investment.   Laura Stevens:  So how has being part of the Local Digital Declaration community, how, how have you been able to connect with others? Have you spoken to other councils, perhaps in other areas of the country that you maybe might not connected with before?    Lisa Trickey:  Definitely. One of the best things for me that, that came out of the declaration is now we're able to connect with people through the Slack channel that has been put in place for this. And that's just brilliant - you can reach out to anybody and just ask ‘are you doing this?’, you know or ‘we're doing this’ and that's just been brilliant.    In particular we've been working with Barnsley on a Local Digital Funded project around income. So it's enabled us to get involved in that. But you know before it was just really difficult. You didn't know, especially I think being down in the south west, you know it's not like when you're in the London boroughs and you've got those connections quite close by.   So to, to be able to be part of that network and to be able to reach out to people. And I have to say it's one of the the best communities in terms of people are always so helpful to share information, prior to COVID, meet you, show you what they've been doing, you know it's absolutely fantastic to have that, that network, and to be able to use that.   Laura Stevens: And you mentioned COVID and I saw this month you tweeted: ‘the declaration and fund has been so positive for local government in raising the digital agenda locally, sharing and learning from each other across the country, it’s definitely positioned us better to respond to COVID-19’. Could you talk a bit more how the declaration has helped you?   Lisa Trickey:  Definitely. I mean because we've been in a place where we've been doing our own sort of low code and development, we’ve stood up over 10 online services. They've taken over 20,000 sort of applications so, we were able to move at pace for those things which was, which was really helpful.   In terms of the department, MHCLG, having the Friday calls and you know quickly putting those in place so we were able to connect into those and hear what other people were doing. And you know learn from others continually so they were brilliant - you didn’t feel so alone in what you were doing. And we, you, what we often find in the world of digital we find that information then you can share across the rest of the organisation and push into different areas so that's really helpful.    Laura Stevens:  Part of the declaration is committing to a project and Dorset's was about developing the digital skills with Dorset Council Partnership. I don't if you could tell me a bit more about that?   Lisa Trickey:  Yeah, so we've done, so, so our declaration project was around digital skills and we've come at that from sort of multiple different angles and actually we've just been nominated in Digital Leaders for it so quite excited about that.     So one of the strands is around developing champions within the community. So we have about 75 digital champions within the community, helping with that digital inclusion gap that we see. And when COVID hit that was, and that enabled us to be in a position where we could move that offer into a digital hotline and people were able to ring and get that support. So people who'd never even thought about going online pre-COVID suddenly were interested in order to keep in contact with their families. So we've had over 220 calls to that and I think that's just that will remain as a lasting legacy I think of COVID and will continue to grow.   Laura Stevens:  Well congratulations. I wish you luck with all the nominations.   And so if there's somebody from a council or local government who's listening, and they maybe haven't signed it, is there anything you'd like to say to sort of, to them about why or how it's helped you or they're like address anything you think they might be concerned about?    Lisa Trickey:  I, I get quite a lot of contact about people, how you get started? And I think just being part of that bigger network, hearing what other people are doing, learning you know from people like Hackney are, are doing fantastic work - I might not have had sight of that before this. So you know, having that ability to learn from others. And you know I hope we get to a point with the Local Digital Fund alpha projects that, you know they will be able to be shared and you will be able to take those and you know implement them here in Dorset.   You know what the declaration has done is just, it's opened up those networks. You can see what other people are doing. When you're starting out on digital in a local authority, quite often you're the only one trying to champion the cause and having people that you can talk to and see, actually the end, you know the end, well not necessarily the end results, but there's, there's good progress being made and it’s worth, it's worth the effort - that's really helpful. It kind of keeps you going and until you can build that coalition inside your own organisation to help with that messaging, those networks are really valuable.   May-N Leow: I think for me that, what, what Lisa says right at the end about that you're not alone. Certainly again, in a similar kind of feelings when you're, you’re in a council and you're thinking: ‘am I just a mad digital person in the entire council?’ So that definitely resonates with me when I was working in council, is like I said, being a part of that community, being able to say here's what good looks like and here's what we should be doing, is, is so powerful. So it's great to hear that you know, we're supporting Lisa in that kind of way and also giving her a place to call home - that she's, she's not the odd one out, there's lots of people in this space and, and everyone's willing to kind of share and help each other out - so that was really heartwarming for me.   Lisa Jeffery: Yeah. I think it just really struck me that, that local authorities are on the frontline of public service provision, and really helping people to do the things that they need to do within their communities and delivering such a lot, really.   I thought the, the comments around leadership, we're really interesting and getting that buy-in. And the focus on user-centered design as well, is really interesting.   I think that's kind of opened up - when we, when we held the Local, the first Local #GovDesign Day as well, in partnership with Birmingham City Council as well, that's kind of something that's kind of opened up as a, as, as, as something that's kind of come out of us all working together I think, with MHCLG - and that was something the user-centered design community did and that was attended by around 200 people.   Laura Stevens: Also part of the Digital Declaration is building digital capability, we’re now going to hear from Paul Fleming, who’s organisation has gone on GDS Academy training.   Paul Fleming: So, so my name is Paul Fleming. I’m the Director of Digital and Business Change in Blackburn with Darwen Council, which is a unitary authority in the north west of England.   Laura Stevens: And am I right in saying you've been at the council for about 2 years now? And it's been quite a busy time for the digital team over that period - there's a new digital directorate that’s been formed, and you’ve had a new website published.   Paul Fleming: Yeah it's been a bit of a rollercoaster couple of years. So I came over from the NHS, I'd, I’d worked sort of locally and nationally in the NHS. And decided to make the leap into local government and that was, that was - I think that’s 2 years this week. So it's been a really exciting couple of years.  It was a new directorate that was formed, quite a large team - just under 150 staff.  And it was really the dawn of a new era with, with digital and, and trying to take things further for our local population.   Laura Stevens: And you signed the Local Digital Declaration in February 2019, how has it helped you?   Paul Fleming: It’s helped us in many ways I think.    So first of all, it was a real visible commitment for us, signing the declaration. It was something that was really exciting for me. I've always been around collaboration, around learning. And I think it, it provided this, this brilliant framework for us. But, but first and foremost, it was a visible commitment for us - we, we got our exec member - our, our elected member - you know stood up in front of the press with me, talking about, about that locally. It was a sign to, to the public - it was a real sign to our organisation of, of a path of travel for us.   And it really it gave us a framework from, from there on in that I've been able to, to work with my teams and wider teams on to, to... I suppose beyond that create, create a bit of a culture with the organisation. I think you know, a lot of that would have been achievable without, without a sort of national and local collaboration like, like the declaration, but it, it definitely helped me. It definitely legitimised a lot of the thinking that we were doing.    And I suppose since then what, what it's opened up - you know some of the learning and some of the collaboration has definitely been able to take us, enabled us to go further than what we could have done I think, without it.   Laura Stevens: And you mentioned there about the collaboration and learning. Could you give me some examples of that?    Paul Fleming: Yeah, I think one of the major things the declaration has brought is the blogs, to me. I find this really interesting that there’s this open way of working. As a council, we launched our blog - I had my eye on many of the blogs, like learning from others, and, and I just found, found them so open and, and, and so much learning in there, that was a really refreshing change for me.    I think you know wider than that, collaborating on bids has been interesting. We've not, I don't think we've, we've been successful with a bid yet through, through the sort of collaborative funding over the last whatever, 18 months it's been. But what we have got from working on those bids is collaborating with others. So I know we were working with Lincolnshire Council around waste and we've talked to a number of others, Leeds Council amongst other local authorities.    I think important for me - I came from a different sector, a different part the public sector in the NHS, and it's helped me speed up those connections with, with people you know, through social media off the back of the blogs, off the back of the collaborations and, and I just think that would have took me a longer time, it would have took me more, more than this couple of years to really build some decent conversations up with people.   Laura Stevens: You’ve preempted my, my next question which was, if you, ‘cause you're talking there about how the Local Digital Declaration like really massively sped up things for you. I was gonna ask if you hadn't signed it, what do you think would have been different?   Paul Fleming: I think the pace of change might, might have been different, I think it would have been slower. And maybe you know, if I hadn't have signed it, I'd have been looking from the outside in. So I would have been picking up all of this but without being a signatory, and we wouldn't have then made that commitment to the wider cause and that's important.   And since signing the declaration and picking up all those different connections, I just have a much better network. And it's really important that I commit to that network and, and you know our counsellors are full signatory to that, so that I, I share that learning so other people don't go through maybe the pain I went through before in, in trying work some of these things out. So, so really really progress and transformation can work faster by this sort of you know, super learning network that, that is built up.   And you know when I looked into everything, there was some really good networks going on. And, and this is kind of, this brings together a bit of, a bit of a family of, of those networks. So it just opened, opened up my eyes to the sector, opened up a lot of connections, and yeah, definitely, definitely speeded up both pace for me, and hopefully pace for others learning from us now.   Laura Stevens: Yeah for sure. I think the community aspect of it is something, that when I've been researching, has come up a lot. So what shared challenges do councils have?   Paul Fleming: We're all trying to do the same things - we've got the same challenges, the same requirements for people. And it's up to us then to land those solutions, working with people locally, co-designing what we're doing to get that right for people. And the more we share those designs and those approaches, I think the faster we can get to the right conversation with, with people and residents locally.    We've shared challenges around, certainly COVID-19 and the pandemic and the challenges that’s thrown up. Massive amount of collaboration and good open working on that, that’s helped us. I think the website, when we released the website last year, we went open source and was doing a lot of learning from others on that.    Laura Stevens: And talking about the coronavirus response, and that is a challenge faced by everybody, I was reading a blog post you’d written where you said: ‘last summer we had undergone Government Digital Service training in Agile ways of working including rapid development of solutions, multidisciplinary development and user research - and we’re using this learning in dealing with the pandemic’.    And this learning was provided through the digital declaration, wasn’t it?    Paul Fleming: It was yeah. I mean this has been, this has been, I don't know if it's luck - it's definitely part design, part luck at around timing. But we, we went through the GDS Agile teams training last summer, summer 2019. That, that was perfect timing going into such a huge crisis because everything we've learned and, and, and expanded on since then, has, has been used. And I don't think we would have handle this pandemic as well without that training.    We, we really went on a journey after doing the agile teams training. A lot of the team started to get really interested in the agenda obviously, and get interested in, in the individual lines of learning you know, customer research or, or service design or, or other sections. So that started to break out, we developed our own internal learning track off the back of that, and we've expanded that across the council. And so we started with my directorate and probably, probably trained 100 people in the directorate on, on the GDS team’s approach, Agile teams approach.    But then we started to break that out into different departments. So we had people from social care, we had people from environmental health, we had people from environment and waste - all doing the same sort of training that we had through, through GDS. So it, I can't, I can't stress how valuable that, that has been going through that. And the fact that it was you know, it was complimentary, it was free training for us at that time through signing the declaration, was just, was just great and massive for us. I don't know if we could have invested as much as we did. So, so we created this movement off the back of that. And you know, it's part declaration, but the big part of signing up was, was, was the input we got from the training.    And the movement kind of started, the first thing we did, the first agile project we did was to redesign the space that the digital team worked in. And this engaged the whole team, they ran it on sprints, they ran it with kanbans in this one corner of the office that, that they had, you know. So the office then you know, a couple of months later looked completely different. I think that then grew, other people saw that, HR then saw that and they started looking at the, the department and changing their layouts, and this was all based on the learning that we picked up in those courses from, from GDS through the declaration.    So yeah I can't stress how important it's been. It’s, it's kind of really changed the game culturally for us, and importantly it's give us those strong methods, that methodology, because you do need that, you do need that real learning and those real strong methods and approaches to create something good.   Laura Stevens: So it seems like there's been a big ripple effect from it?   Paul Fleming: Yeah, and you know that's exactly what we want. We want, we want a movement, we want a movement around digital and, and design and Agile and the best things for our residents, and, and you know these approaches help us, help us to achieve that.   So, so it, it has created a ripple effect, and it's really heartening to see people taking on board the, the thinking. I see things now just happening in the organisation that you know, I suppose many, many years ago you, you would have controlled that from an IT section and it would have gone a lot slower, and people would have been you know against IT sometimes, the technology teams for slowing things down. We, we've now created a movement where things, things are happening.    Laura Stevens: It's clear this has had a big effect in your organisation. And I guess is there one thing you'd say to somebody who was looking to sign up to the Local Digital Declaration?   Paul Fleming: So I-I think it's multifaceted, I don't think I could say one thing why you should. You know if I was to say one thing, it would be you know come and join, join this collaboration. but really it's multifaceted in, in the fact that, you need to commit - you need to make a visible commitment. And I think you know, as, as a local authority, you’re getting the buy-in from the politicians, ‘cause really you can't sign that declaration without getting executive membership buy-in to that. And by getting that, you're raising the profile of digital. So, so I think commitment, visible commitment and political commitment is important.   And then the other things are, and I think 2 more things - one is the framework and the skills you get out of it. And then the third, third part would be around the learning and the collaboration. And I've not even talked, I suppose when I first looked at it you know, I saw there was opportunities around funding. And, and when I was talking to politicians, I said you know if, if we sign this declaration, there is training, there is funding available, it opens up more doors. But the funding has, has not been; I mean we, we’ve not been successful in the funding rounds, but, but that hasn't mattered. We've actually got more out of those other aspects than you know, I can't put a price on some of that stuff because it's going to be taking hundreds of thousands of pounds off our cost lines by working in this way.    So yeah I suppose my, my eyes have been opened the more I've been part of, of what, what the declaration has opened up really is a whole new world for us.   Laura Stevens: So, what about next things you’d like to see the declaration offering?   Paul Fleming: Yeah, I think something I-I kind of called out very early on around, because I come from the NHS and they had like an academy for basically the CIOs [Chief Information Officers] that would go through you know a training, and that was basically like looking at the leadership issues we’ve gotten digital in the NHS. So I came out of that world and when I came into the council, I was looking for the equivalent. And I know the GDS Academy does certain things. I think the, the Digital Declaration could probably go a step further and look at like how we develop that leadership a little bit more in depth. I think that would be an area I’d be really interested in.    But what I did think was can we post more people out, can we either have short secondments, can we expose people. I would love to expose some of my people to GDS teams, and you know some of these central team were, I think you know sometimes you're at the really sharp end. So I think more, taking that collaboration a step further and actually exposing people - so whether that's across different local authorities, whether that's working between central and local. I think that's, that's an area I'd love to see developed up. You know I'd love to personally sit in another team for a few days and see how things work and invite others to come in and do the same in our team, and, and you know ditto for all, all of my staff who have got the interest on, on that side.   May-N Leow: Just fantastic to hear from, from Paul and the feedback that he's had in his council. It kind of mirrors the experience I had in Southwark as well as that. You know when you're initially trying to sell why you should sign the Declaration, you obviously use the funding and the free training as that kind of carrot to get your senior management and politicians interested, but then seeing the wider benefits of like the, the results of the training as well as that kind of organisational transformation and that ingraining of digital and user-centeredness approach is, is always fantastic to, to hear. And Paul's like a great example to showcase what, what is possible when you've got that someone who believes that and drives it and use the declaration, as well as all the benefits, to kind of spearhead the movement in his council. So I think that, that again, stuck with me.    And other, in terms of training, obviously it’s partner-partnership with GDS Academy. We've put through 1,183 Council Officers and leaders to date, on free training. And yeah, we've just had amazing feedback in response on, on that - especially the Agile for Teams, that kind Paul references. And because we go to the councils when we run that training - I think that's the great thing about that particular course, where it's in the council, it's with other people in your council rather than you in isolation doing that training.    So because of COVID-19, a lot of our training is on pause at the moment. But we are going to be looking with GDS Academy to start the training back up again. Obviously following government regulations.   Lisa Jeffery: Yeah,I mean wow, what, what, what a great story of, of change and, and overcoming challenges.   I really like how Paul is involving everyone on, on this journey and including people, and thinking about the enablers to change, even down to redesigning the space in which people work. So yeah, there was, as May-N said, there's MHCLG and GDS Academy run, run training to build this capability. And courses, some of them were delivered at the time at the GDS Academy venues, and then the Agile for Teams was delivered at the local authorities’s own location, and it kind of enables the teams to get this really hands-on experience about how to apply Agile methodologies within their own environment, within their own context. And I thought it was great how Paul's kind of really embedded the learning that he took from the, from the training and he's embedded it and really been able to, to use it.    Laura Stevens: Paul spoke about how the training has helped his organisation during coronavirus. And how else has the declaration helping during this pandemic?   May-N Leow: Yeah. So initially at the beginning of COVID, we had weekly calls specifically around the crisis response that local authorities are facing obviously, on the sharp end of the stick on supporting the communities.    And then now we're kind of moving to bi-weekly calls on that kind of phase recovery, as again councils start to kind of think of reopening services like libraries, community centres. But as well as that, that blend of face-to-face interaction versus remote interaction.    And there's a real willingness and thing of momentum now from not, to not go back to the way it was. So councils have seen that you know we can do things fast, we can share data, we can do things securely, but do it in a way that actually meets resident needs. So I think there's a real ambition and a real, the right time really to kind of look at all organisational transformation and seeing how digital can actually make service delivery even better and get in, engage more, more residents.    And so we’re, we're also looking at launching a special COVID round, which hopefully will be live once this podcast goes out, so that's in recognition of all that you know, the moving from crisis response now to phase recovery. So again, councils are coming up with similar challenges that we would like to help support councils with.   Laura Stevens: And sort of on that, if somebody is listening from local government, how do they get in touch, how do they stay connected, how do they sign up to the declaration?   Lisa Jeffery: Now I just say, the Slack channels are absolutely fantastic, and the Local Digital Community’s brilliant. And you've got GDS folks on there from all different teams wanting to support you, and answer any questions about any of the kind of support wrap that we had around the Local Digital Declaration, whether that's common platforms, GDS Academy training, we kind of raised a bit of awareness around the Digital Marketplace or the Crown Commercial Service and you know, the Service Standards.    May-N Leow: Sure, so our website, localdigital.gov.uk, has all the information on how to sign up as a signatory. You can also follow us on Twitter at LDgovUK, and we're all there. And yeah by all means, DM directly to us or to the channel, and we'd love to hear from you.   And because we're obviously coming up to our 2 year anniversary in July, not only the podcast, which again thank you for the opportunity to speak about the declaration, we're going to be launching a, a, a whole campaign in celebration, which is going to last a month. So there's going to be lots of activities that will amplify all the amazing work that the local councils are doing at the moment, but also kind of get people to think about how, what does it means to kind of recommit to the declaration, to like properly bring in more of the principles of the declaration, and what, what’s that kind of journey that councils, not just Lisa and Paul, but other people have had.    So we'll be showcasing a lot of those great stories more as well.   Laura Stevens:  So thank you both so much for coming on the podcast today, it's been great having you. And you can listen to all the episodes of the Government Digital Service podcast on Apple Music, Spotify and all other major podcast platforms, and the transcripts are available on PodBean.    May-N Leow: Thanks Lisa and Laura. It’s been good fun.   Lisa Jeffery: Thanks very much. It’s been brilliant. Thank you.

Laura Stevens:  Hello and welcome to the Government Digital Service podcast. My name is Laura Stevens and I’m a Creative Content Producer at GDS. And like last month’s episode, this one will also be recorded via Hangouts as we’re all remote working now.    So today we’re going to be talking about GOV.UK Notify. This is the government’s messaging tool which allows teams across the public sector to send out text messages, letters and emails to their users - cheaply and easily.   It sent its first notification in May 2016, and this month GOV.UK Notify reached a milestone and has sent out one billion messages.    Notify gets critical information to people that need it. It’s used by local councils, health organisations, central government departments, fire services and many other public sector bodies. And it’s used for a diverse range of services including flood alerts, blue badge notifications, doctor appointment reminders and informing prison wardens of their rotas, to name a few.    So to tell me more is Pete Herlihy, so please could you introduce yourself, what you do here at GDS and your role on Notify.    Pete Herlihy:  Yes, I can Laura. So yeah, I’m Pete, I work on the Notify Team, I help them out. I’m a Product Manager. I’ve been at GDS since the beginning, I haven’t, I haven’t made parole just yet.   I’ve worked a lot on a number of platforms in GDS, so publishing platform, GOV.UK, register to vote, petitions and more recently, when I say more recently, my, my latest gig is on Notify, which we’ve been doing now for just over 4 years. And we started with literally 2 people and we’re now 11, and yeah my role on that is just to help and support that team to deliver what is GOV.UK Notify.   Laura Stevens And why was Notify set up 4 years ago?   Pete Herlihy:  Well there’s a story there. So Notify was one of the solutions that came out of something called the ‘Enabling Strategy’, which was a piece of work GDS did. The, the reality behind that piece of work was we needed to figure out as an organisation what we could do to help the rest of government do what they do.   And so there was a bunch of stuff going on, we looked at various different kind of common problems across government that we wanted to solve, and, and that was kind of where the whole Government as a Platform programme emerged during that time. And one of the problems we wanted to solve was keeping people informed. And we, we learned very quickly that we probably didn’t need a status tracking application, but what we needed was a notifications platform. And the reckon was, which we did soon validate very quickly, was that if we could kind of just tell people what we knew as soon as we knew it, we didn’t have to wait for them to get anxious enough to jump on a website and look and you know, sign in and see where the thing was at. So it might have saved, or it would have solved our problems with regards to you know the cost of running contact centres and all that avoidable contact, but it wouldn’t really have helped our citizens or end users as much. And so we, we fairly early on validated that and pivoted from a status tracking application to a notifications application.    Laura Stevens:  And can you talk about some of the service teams that use it, like who uses it and what do they use it for?     Pete Herlihy:  Well we have now, what’s the number, around 2 and a half thousand service teams now using it, which is a lot. I think - when we started, someone, there was an external consultancy that did a little bit of work for us and they thought there might be 80 services that would use it. And, we were like OK cool, that’s a good number to aim at. But, it’s a completely different profile actually from what we’ve envisaged.    We thought at the start they’ll be a bunch of really big services using it and that will be like where the bulk comes from and then we kind of quickly learned that there was a really really long tail of smaller service teams that, and many we didn’t recognise as being a service, necessarily when we started who are really going to get the most benefit out of it. So the big teams might save money, and they’ll get a better product but they probably would have done something anyway. Whereas the rest of them just maybe wouldn’t enter the space of digital comms in this way - so they benefit massively from Notify.    So the types of teams, you list, you ran through a bunch at the start there. So, we do have nearly as many service teams in local government using it, as we do in central government. And an increasing number in the NHS as well. Obviously events of this year have seen massive surges in uptake from all of those sectors.    For example of things we’re doing a bunch of messaging for the COVID services, all the support and advice the NHS is providing to the extremely vulnerable, that’s all going through Notify. All your test results are going through Notify as well. We’ve got a huge amount of business continuity messaging, so accounts all telling the staff where and when they need to go to do work or changes-changes to opening hours or that sort of thing.  We do passport applications, progress updates, flood alerts, global travel alerts, I mean there are, every service is slightly different and that’s kind of the point. So yeah 2 and half thousand of them, 650 organisations I think across the public sector and there’s still a lot more out there who hopefully one day will be using Notify.   Laura Stevens:  And also was reading on GOV.UK, there was a press release put out which said that Notify is on track to save taxpayers an average of £35 million a year over the next 5 years. When you, it started, did you think you’d be making those sort of savings, yeah, to the taxpayer?    Pete Herlihy:  We were hopeful. We knew that the return on investment for something like Notify was massive because you know, a text message that cost you 1 and a half pence versus a phone call that costs you £5. That doesn’t take many many phone calls to be avoided to make a good case.    And, I remember doing a presentation at GDS Sprint 16, Sprint 16, the orange one. It was very orange. And one of the slides on that was 1 in 4 calls to government is someone just asking for an update. It costs a lot of money to run a contact centre and the government deals with literally tens of millions of phone calls a year. So if we can knock out a quarter of those by investing in a small team doing notifications, then there’s going to be some massive savings.    Laura Stevens:  And I thought as well as hearing from you about, from the sort of product point of view, we also wanted to hear from one of the users. So we interviewed Silvia Grant who’s the Lead User Researcher at the Environment Agency, who works on the flood warning service which uses Notify.    Silvia Grant:  So my name is Silvia Grant, I’m a Senior User Researcher for DEFRA [Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs]. And I work on an Environment Agency project called ‘The Flood Warning System’. We’re replacing that currently and the new project name is called ‘The Next Warning System’, so we’ve deliberately dropped the flood from that.   Laura Stevens: And what, can you explain a bit more about that service? What does it do?    Silvia Grant: Yes, so the Environment Agency has been sending out flood warnings since 1996. It’s a category 1 responder and has the responsibility for issuing these messages to the citizens and people who are at risk of flooding. So what the system does is we send out these texts, these emails, we have this information on GOV.UK, and it’s all about warning people that flooding in the area is likely or is happening.   Laura Stevens: And how does that system use GOV.UK Notify?    Silvia Grant: So at the moment we have over 500,000 user accounts registered to our service, and we use Notify to send letters and texts. And we send them letters to tell them when they’ve first registered that we update their account details, changes to the service, that sort of thing. And obviously also for our texts.     Laura Stevens: And how does that translate into the amount of notifications being sent to the people? And obviously this must change year on year depending on the flooding and depending on the weather and everything.   Silvia Grant: Yeah. Well so since we’ve moved across to Notify in December 2018, we’ve sent over 4 and a half million texts and close to 10,000 letters. So those are big numbers for us.    Laura Stevens:  How does having Notify help you get the information to the people that need to hear it?    Silvia Grant: Well first of all it’s it’s quicker - so it’s simpler and quicker and cheaper for us to use Notify. So we can send, in in terms of letters for instance, we can send them daily rather than weekly. We have much more freedom around content changes, we can test those changes. So it’s it’s saving us a lot of that admin time, and cost as well.    And because it’s a very stressful scenario for our users, it’s quite again, high emotion, high stress, high impact scenario that we send these letters and these texts in, it, it’s, it’s very important for us to get it right and to, you know for the process to be as slick as possible. And I think Notify really helps us do that.   Laura Stevens:  So this is a really important service because there are, there’s 2.6 million properties at risk of flooding. So what sort of information is being sent out through Notify?    Silvia Grant: Yeah, that’s right. So in England the estimate is between 1 in 5, 1 in 6 homes in England are at risk of flooding. And obviously that figure is growing because of climate change and a number of other factors.    So it’s, in some cases when we issue severe flood warnings, those are warnings where there is danger to life. So those can be very serious. But overall the flood warning service aims to save lives and livelihoods. So yes overall quite a high impact service.    Laura Stevens: And how much would this, do you have an estimate on how much it’s saving money-wise for the Environment Agency?    Silvia Grant: Yeah so just got the figure off the team and it’s saved, in the last 2 years that we’ve been using it, approximately saved the taxpayer at least £150,000. So that’s letters, texts, running costs, everything.   Laura Stevens: But as you’re saying you’re working on like a high impact service that has to get out messages quickly and which has a, yeah an impact, a big impact on people’s lives. Does having something like Notify in place sort of allow you to then have the space to do other things? Because you know that that’s there, that’s just gonna work, and you can then focus on other thi-parts of this quite emotional and high impact service.    Silvia Grant: Yeah definitely. So it’s, it’s quite a long, for our users it’s quite a stressful time receiving those alerts or those warnings, and when they pick those up we, we need to make sure that they arrive instantly, that they say the right things and using a central government platform makes sure that we have that extra accountability that we really need for sending these out.    And yes as well that that has given us a lot more space for actually focussing on things like the content of the message.   So it’s been overall a positive under all spheres. So it’s easy to use, it’s intuitive, it’s reliable, it’s transparent. So if ever there is an issue with it, we are notified instantly. And again the Notify Team has been really responsive with feedback, so whenever we have had requests or issues, there’s been a fantastic service on their part.   Laura Stevens: How do you plan to use Notify in the future, in your product?   Silvia Grant: So as our system gets replaced, the Flood Warning System into what we call the ‘Next Warning System’, we anticipate to use Notify even more. So we’re planning to send confirmation codes to users who sign up to the service on their mobiles. So that is, is a step forward in terms of security for us and it’s again, a cheaper journey and for the user, it’s it’s a 2-step journey rather than a 4- or 5-step. We’ve been testing that with the user and it’s, it’s a very positive response.    Laura Stevens:  Yeah, is that, is that how you imagined Notify would be being used?    Pete Herlihy:  I don’t think we clocked Notify being used to protect life necessarily when we started out.    But we did get, or start working with the Environment Agency fairly early on, so, so, which was great, because what that meant was we had this use case that we could point out internally to say that look this is really crucial. This, this isn’t just about getting a passport update quicker or these kinds of things. This, this is literally a life-saving message and that, that allowed us to focus the right kind of energies on our resilience and make sure we got what we needed. Because we can’t not be there right like if we’re sending these-this kind of message. We have been working with them for a while, they’re a great team, they blog a lot about what they’re doing which is fantastic and very cool.   Laura Stevens:  Was there anything else in the clip that particularly stood out to you?   Pete Herlihy:  Yeah I think there’s 2 things. So one is letters. Because I think people think of text messages and emails and forget letters is a thing for Notify. Don’t forget but it’s less well understood. And when we started, back in 2016, when we started out, we were letters is probably a thing just because we need to offer a full palette of comms option and for some people they need a letter, or they prefer a letter, or digitally excluded, whatever it might be, they have legitimate reasons, some of them are legally required for example.    And we only, and we kind of stumbled over letters, well not stumbled over, we confirmed our letters when we were doing our, these tours of the application processing. Tours sounds really grand doesn’t it? But we’d sit with a team and one of the things they would do is they would finish preparing an application receipt or confirmation of decision or whatever it was going to be. And then they’d press print and they’d select the printer and they’d walk over, join a queue and someone would yell out ‘stop printing I need to put in the letterhead paper’ you know and they’d, and we were like oh this must be very expensive, and then goes from a printer, they’re folding it up into an envelope, the envelope goes into a tray, someone comes round in the afternoon with a trolley and picks them all up and we thought ‘woah there’s got to be a better way of doing letters’.   And that was real early confirmation that if we could make it easy for teams to do letters we could save, help them save, huge amounts of money and time. The amount of time people were just standing around waiting for the printers and things like this, so if that could just be a click it’s like great. And they could do lots more good things with their time.    So that was one thing that was really interesting.    The second is around the real time content changes. So one of the problems I guess we were trying to solve was often these things are like hard-coded and you need a developer and you need to pay a change request fee to your external supplier to update a typo even in a letter or change a URL in an email or something like that.    And we really wanted, not only make it easier to do that in real time but also to allow the interface to be used by like a content designer or a comms person, so they could be involved in shaping the messages themselves in real time. Not just preparing it in a word doc that goes round for sign off by committee, and then is handed over to a development team to implement.    So we, we really tried to bring those roles into the team. And you know we were hearing horror stories of people paying tens of thousands just to change a few letters, or including extra things because they couldn’t change a letter saying so please ignore this section, these kind of horror stories you hear about. So that was one of the important bits for us to get real time content changes in an accessible way into Notify and I’m glad to hear they’re using it well as well.    Laura Stevens:  We also have a clip from the Canadian Digital Service which is Canada’s version of GDS. Notify is obviously used across the UK in the public sector but how has Notify also been used around the world?   Pete Herlihy:  So we’ve worked with a number of teams actually around the world - some we’ve shared patterns with, others we’ve shared our open source code with. And we, as of today I think there are 2 Notify’s being used in anger, one in Australia through the DTA, the Digital Transformation Agency, it’s basically the, the Aussie version of GDS. They were the first, they forked the Notify code maybe about a year and a half, 2 years ago now. And they’re now running that for the Australian government. They’ve you know, taken the code, they then iterate on top of it to add things that are unique and special to them.     The Canadian Digital Service are also running a version of Notify. And that’s growing quickly, it’s grown quicker than we did when we started, so yay for them. But those are the 2 that are being used at government level.   Have to say there’s a lot of people who just pick stuff up from blogs or from Twitter or whatever, rather than any kind of formal introductions to the product. Yeah so it’s a great product, very proud that others have picked up the codebase and are running with it, we continue to work with those teams. Speak to teams like Code for America who are doing great stuff in the States. We’ve had a few all team web catch ups with the Canadian Team, and the Americans to show and tell really about what they’re doing, enhancements they’ve made, things they’d like to contribute back. So we’ve got a good little community going on, which is fantastic.    Laura Stevens:  Yeah, a very nice international community. And we’re going to hear from Bryan Willey, who’s a Product Manager of Notify at the Canadian Digital Service.   Bryan Willey: So my name is Bryan Willey, I’m a Product Manager here at CDS, the Canadian Digital Service. And I am the Product Manager for Notify, a piece of software, an open source software, we took from GOV.UK.    Sorry is that my cat or your cat?    Laura Stevens: I don’t have a cat, so it’s not my cat.   Bryan Willey:  She’s miaowing outside the door. Sorry about that.    Laura Stevens: And yeah would it be fair to say for UK listeners, the Canadian Digital Service is Canada’s version or the equivalent of GDS over there?   Bryan Willey: Yes absolutely. I mean it basically has similar initials. Yeah, so the Canadian Digital Service was made with both GDS and the American 18F Group in mind.    Laura Stevens: And could you describe what the product you manage is, Notify?   Bryan Willey: So Notify is a email platform. Well we’re using predominantly as an email platform, it also does SMS. I know that yours does letters but we’re not there yet. We’re predominantly using it for email and it helps the Canadian government sort of send email messages from a centralised location to the public. Something that the Canadian government’s only been able to do with Outlook servers and traditional email servers before.   Notify allows us to have this cloud-at-cost system that can deploy emails very quickly to anyone who wants to use the service, whether that’s an API integration to connect up to automatically reply when somebody submits an application, or if it’s a newsletter that goes out that people sign up for. And it’s been very helpful in sort of building any of those systems because in the past, we’ve had to go procure an individual cloud email vendor for each solution we built.   Notify allows us to centralise all that, procure, secure and say yeah, this one thing is now what we use for email. And so we don’t have to go through the process of procuring it every time, and that’s been exceedingly helpful.   Laura Stevens: And how’s it going? Because I see, I looked on your dashboard and now 22 services are using Notify and more than 740,000 notifications have been sent.   Bryan Willey: Yeah. Well we think it’s going pretty well. The growth has been faster than we had expected. The current crisis has something to do with that. It’s definitely upped our volume more than it would have been.   Out of the 22 live services, it’s a mix of how much they’re getting used; some are small, more prototype-y services that do things like password reset emails. Whereas some of our more recent ones include a subscription newsletter for Health Canada to combat COVID-19 misinformation.    Laura Stevens: So I saw your blog post on the CDS blog from November 2019, and in it you said ‘this, meaning your Notify tool, isn’t something we built entirely from scratch. Using open source code from the hugely successful GOV.UK Notify service, created by the GDS in the UK, our team is adapting it to fit within our context, in English and French - both of Canada’s official languages’.    So I wanted to talk about like, what were the user needs for Canada and how was that similar to the user need over here, and yeah how were you able to adapt, what had been done over here?   Bryan Willey: Yeah. So much in the same way I imagine GDS discovered this problem, we had a lot of government services that were communicating with people by mail and phone and the people would rather just get an email, you know. Then they don’t have to sit around and wait for a phone call. And when we were building services early in CDS, we discovered this and we’d be setting up email for each of these services. So after doing this 2, 3 times, CDS said ‘we should really just make this so we can have it every time’.    Because we’re not, also not the only ones looking for this. The government of Canada is moving towards more cloud-first strategy and as such they’ve identified the needs for email notifications in a bunch of services. So we forked not just GOV.UK Notify, the DTA [Digital Transformation Agency] in Australia also had a copy of Notify that they had modified a bit from yours. And we looked at both of those and evaluated them, and we forked GDS Notify because we wanted to be able to get your upstream security changes and stuff and pull them down into our repo [repository]. And the Australian one was merged into a big mono-repo which gave us less flexibility with the code.   So forking the GDS one was a great idea to sort of prototype it and see what we had to work with because this was already a solution to the problem we’d found. And we then had to, we liked it so we modified it to Canada. Some of the first things we did was of course update SMS to Canadian phone numbers, add timezone support in, so that the logs and stuff functions across more than one timezone. We had to pull apart the whole UI [user interface] and translate it into French because Canada has 2 official languages. And so it’s been a bit of an overhaul for that, and that’s been a lot of our major work.   And we also had to sort of modify the branding system bit. Because again, 2 official languages means 2 official government brands, one in English and one in en français. So we’ve had to sort of modify the templating system. We’re working on that a bit more now to expand it for both official language use cases.   And so it’s, it’s just been a lot of tweaks here and there to the system and and re-you know changing the UI to look more like Canada.ca than GOV.UK.   Laura Stevens: And by having this already in place, what has it allowed you to do? Has it allowed you to move quicker, has it saved you hassle? How has it affected your work and your plan with the product?   Bryan Willey: It definitely saved us hassle because we’d have to set that all up from scratch on our own. The email problem, the notification problem, wasn’t going to go away. And these Canadian departments were going to solve it and were solving it by their own means - they were building up their own Outlooks servers and using email stuff. You know that wasn’t taking advantage of cloud-at-cost like Notify did.    So having the software that you’d spent 3 years building and already putting a lot of the settings and permissions and access and security and tech in place, really saved us the time having to go through that on our own.   Laura Stevens: And also I wanted to ask, so when I’ll be playing this, this edited clip back, I’ll be with Pete. And I wondered if you had anything you wanted to say to him, any questions or any requests as the Lead Product Manager for Notify?   Bryan Willey: Thanks for all your help, I guess. You know. I..it’s working great for us so I don’t know if there’s anything we need or any help specifically from Pete. The software is pretty complete in its solution for email and SMS, and so thanks for all your hard work Pete.    Laura Stevens: So was there anything in there that you were surprised by or that you hadn’t realised?   Pete Herlihy:  So I’d knew, I’d seen actually most of that we’ve shared with the team so. The one that I didn’t clock was the branding, and the dual language branding - I hadn’t even thought about that one. So we, we may, we may steal that back. Obviously there’s more than one official language in the UK as well so.    That’s really great to hear that.   There was an interesting point though around the use of Notify, either by an API or not, so again that was one of our really early reckons when we started Notify, was that not everyone’s got a development team or development capacity or is high enough a priority in their organisation to get the focus. And so we couldn’t just make something that only worked, worked for API and so everything you can do in Notify, you can do via the web interface as well.    And the other bit I guess that is maybe even overlooked a bit, is that you get like 3 years worth of software development or whatever, but you also get 3 years worth of research. And we’ve, we’ve done a lot. You know we’ve always had a dedicated user researcher in the team, we’ve always done a huge amount of user research, which you have to d-, for something you’re aspiring to make completely self-service, you have to do the user research, otherwise it’s just never going to be.    And so we’ve done loads with like developers, with finance people, with product teams - all the different types of people we see wanting to use Notify. I think what you get when you fork code or, or you know even just take the patterns that another team has, has, derived is you just save yourself years of user research. And again, at that point you can then focus on what are the, the like the niche research requirements around working en francais as he says or whatever else it might be. So that, along with kind of the blogging that goes along the way that shows some of the thinking that goes into the product and some of the decisions that are taken, I mean all of it just shows how, how sensible it is to be doing this stuff in the open.    Laura Stevens:  Yeah, for sure. And I think that, talking about doing stuff in the open and blogging, leads me on quite nicely to my next part, because I wanted to talk about Notify’s most recent work on coronavirus, which you referenced at the top of the podcast. And 2 of our colleagues, Miriam Raynes and Mark Buckley wrote a blog post about how Government as a Platform, or GaaP services, as a whole are helping with the COVID-19 response.    But to talk specifically about Notify, they, in the blog post it’s talking about this huge increase in numbers, like 2 million SMS messages were sent using Notify on a single day in March compared to the daily average of 150,000. I’ve also got a figure here of daily messages up as much as 600%, as high as 8.6 million a day.    So what services are using Notify to help with the government’s coronavirus response?   Pete Herlihy:  Yeah, there, so the, the increase in communication is obviously massive and needs to be. And one of the biggest users of Notify is the GOV.UK email service, and they, they do all of the email for people who subscribe to any content that the government publishes - so travel alerts for example, if you want to know can I take a flight to Namibia, here’s the guidance, or if there’s hurricanes coming through the Caribbean and these countries are affected, then I need to like push out information to say don’t go to these places, or whatever it might be. And those alerts are, you know, again potentially protecting people, life and property - they’re like really important. And there’s been a huge amount of travel advice and alerts being given, as, as you can imagine. So that’s been one of the biggest users.    We’ve also seen, I mentioned earlier, like a huge amount of business continuity stuff. And we put a blog post out recently as well, just reminding I guess more than anything, that all of the public sector could use Notify to provide emergency staff updates for changes to working patterns et cetera. as a result of COVID-19. So there’s definitely been a big uptick there.   And then I think, from, from the health perspective there’s, I’ll just say NHS because there’s like various bits of the NHS that are working like ridiculously hard and fast to spin out new services really quickly, and these services are like just incredibly crucial right now.   So the extremely vulnerable service, this is one where the government said if you are you know, in this extreme risk category you should stay at home for 12 weeks, and they’ve been texting this group of people.   There’s all the stuff around testing and results for testing, ordering home test kits, all these sorts of things. So there’s the very specific COVID response type stuff and that is, there is a significant volume of that that’s still ongoing.    There is business as usual to some degree actually still going on. So people are you know, people are still having to renew passports or whatever it might be. Whilst the volumes are down, they’re still happening. So we don’t stop all the other messaging and just focus on this, we’ve, we’ve got all that to do as well, and this is, this is all additional, it’s all on top.    It all came very quickly as well. You know this wasn’t a gradual ramp up over weeks and weeks to 5,6,700%, it was, it was almost overnight. And yeah, it’s been a huge task to, to keep the platform stable. We had one outage as a result of this on St Patrick’s Day. Which obviously we were massively disappointed at, like our resilience is like one of our, you know, one of the things we pride ourselves most on but we just couldn’t prepare for that kind of instantaneous ramp up. So we, we fixed that very quickly and you know Notify itself has been very stable since.   But we’re still continuing on the basis of what we’re seeing now, we’re going to call that the new normal and then we need to add again capacity, 2 or 3 times that again. So there’s still a lot of work to be done, the team still working incredibly hard as they have been ever since, well always, but particularly since, since lock-in began.    Laura Stevens:  And I believe I’m right in saying as well the 1 billionth message was also a coronavirus one - that was for a notification sent by the coronavirus home testing service.   Pete Herlihy:  Yes, it was, that was quite opportune. It’s a good example of the type, the primary type of messaging that’s going on with Notify at the moment.    And you know those levels are still high, I think we had like 7 and a half million again on Friday, so we’re not getting any quieter. We’re, and we have to plan that we’re not going to. And if we do get quieter then ok, that’s fine but we, we can’t sort of take our foot off at the moment.   Laura Stevens:  As you mentioned one of the organisations using Notify a lot at the moment is the NHS and the various teams within the NHS. And we’ve got a clip from Darren Curry, who’s the Chief Digital Officer at the NHS Business Services Authority, about how and why his team are using Notify.    Darren Curry: Hello I’m Darren Curry, the Chief Digital Officer for the NHS Business Services Authority [NHSBSA], which is an organisation which processes a lot of nationwide transactions on behalf of the NHS, so both public-facing and towards other clinical-facing services.    Laura Stevens: And you’re quite a long standing member of NHSBSA, aren’t you?   Darren Curry: Yes, I am. So I’ve been at NHS Business Services Authority for roughly 17 years, 17, 18 years now. Believe it or not, I joined originally as a Data Entry Officer back in the day, whilst I was doing my university degree, for pocket money effectively, or beer money. And it paid for me through, through university and I have enjoyed it so much and progressed in the organisation to now be Chief Digital Officer so it’s, it’s been a good place to work.    Laura Stevens: And I know that the NHS Business Services Authority has been doing lots of things in response to coronavirus but what I’d like to talk to you about today is what you’ve used GOV.UK Notify for.     Darren Curry: Yeah. So we use GOV.UK Notify on a number of our live services as we stand now. So we, we issue exemption certificates, so prepayment certificates for prescription forms, maternity exemptions, which we now issue digitally - so, so we already use Notify for those services in our, our normal processing.    We, we first started around coronavirus with Notify on a, what was a relatively small service, for informing individuals who were returning into the UK or who were being advised to isolate, so to provide advice during the 7 days isolation period.    And since then our support has grown in the services. So we then utilised the Notify service to support provisioning information to patients who were identified as high risk should they contract coronavirus. So there, there’s individuals who have been asked to shield during the outbreak in order to reduce the chances of them contracting the virus. So we, we text messaged all of those individuals over a 7-so we issued them with 7 texts messages, so one per day, providing advice and guidance on, on what to do during their shielding period.    That, that service has grown as, as more people who’ve been identified as being vulnerable, so working with GP practices and NHS England and NHS Digital to identify more individuals who, who may be vulnerable should they contract coronavirus. That, that has grown and we’ve issued more text messages and information to those individuals.    We’ve used Notify to provide test results for coronavirus, working with NHS Digital and other partners. We’ve used Notify to also provide advice and information for individuals who go through the 111 service in providing text messages and also emails for those services.   Adding it all together, over the last 4 weeks, we’ve issued around about 17 million text messages via Notify through the services that we are, we are delivering, so.    It’s, it’s scaling and it’s growing very quickly.    Laura Stevens: And so this is, the, the information you’re getting out there is obviously like, it’s really important it’s right, it’s really important that it gets to the right people, it’s an emotional service like, people are scared, like your users are concerned. So-why did you pick Notify to use this on, on these particular services?    Darren Curry: Yeah. So, So I mean Notify brings a lot of benefits. I, I think should also say that we, we, in terms of building those messages as well, we worked with colleagues in behavioural insights teams within government, Public Health England, NHSX, content designers, on all of those, and getting the content right was, was critical for these services.    But you’re absolutely right, the infrastructure to send those services, those, those messages needed to be kind of stable and dependable. And, Notify does that, so it’s, it is national infrastructure that we can, can leverage all of the benefits of that having already been built as a government platform that we can consume, to, to use as a service really quickly, securely and safely and knowing that, that those messages will, will be passed. There’s lots of benefits that the Notify service has, has brought us.     So if, frankly if we were having to do this without the Notify service, we wouldn’t have been able to do it. So that we, we would have been dependent upon trad-more traditional legacy contact methods, such as post, to individuals to inform them on, on this scale. We would had to build a, a technology solution to meet this need - we clearly didn’t have to do that, we could leverage something that was already built for this purpose.    And, and this is the benefit of government as a platform that we can consume, you know, the first service we set up with Peter was done within an hour. We, we were able to from, from the request to us being then able to actually push text messages, it took less than an hour to, to go from A to B on that. And you know, without Notify we would have been looking at days, and, and in this situation of a, of a national pandemic, then time’s obviously absolutely critical you know, for people to be able to act upon the advice which has been provided - it’s, it’s, it’s genuinely critical.    Yeah, so, so Notify brings all of those benefits - secure, platform, scalable, to be able to deliver those messages. Yeah.    Laura Stevens: Can you tell me about some of the responses to these SMSs?   Darren Curry: Yeah. For the shielded patients list and the text messages we sent the first cohort when we sent those, we enabled individuals to reply. And some, and we did some analysis on the replies to, to those messages and some of, some of the messages indicated, well some of the replies that we received indicated the difference that the service was really having.    So you know the, the replies from people thanking, just saying thank you for informing us and like, they, they would follow the guidance and the maybe hadn't realised that they were in that high risk category beforehand. In this instance you know, we sent it out and we were able to see some of the replies and know that as a result of that action that was taken by sending that message out to an individual, there was an action that that individual was then going to take. And that action potentially, more than potentially, more than likely will result in a reduced risk of that individual being taken ill, and consequences of that.    So yeah, it, it really does bring home that and highlight the importance of some of these services and how they all join together.    Laura Stevens: So, NHS Business Services Authority is obviously doing a lot of work, you’re working also with other organisations across government as well, aren’t you?   Darren Curry: Yeah, so we, we are working alongside our partner organisations including so NHS England, NHS Improvement, NHSX, Department of Health and Social Care directly, Public Health England, the Behavioural Insights Team, GDS also and NHS Digital, have all, we’ve all collaborated and come together across on multiple different services that we are doing. So it’s been a real collaborative effort across the whole of the government family to get these services up and running.   Laura Stevens: And had you, did you find you had to, ‘cause obviously it’s for use in like health services but it’s also used like in central government departments, it’s used by local authorities, it’s used in prison services, used by fire services. Like did you find you had to adapt it at all to the health context or was it all sort of ready to go for you?    Darren Curry: The great, one of the many great things about Notify is it works just out of the box. So from my development teams in the [NHS] Business Service Authority, it’s a, it’s a really easy integration point. So whether we’re integrating using an API to push the, the messaging or whether we're doing batch uploads of CSVs [comma-separated values files] or spreadsheets or whatever, it works for, for all of those things.    I think the, the other thing as well to mention is, is that you know Notify, it’s a trusted service. So we were able to work with the National Cyber Security Centre [NCSC] as well to, to ensure working with the Notify Team and NCSC, to ensure that the messages we were sending were protected numbers. So it was you know again, just adding that, that security to the whole service when you’re doing critical services for people, that we can make sure that they’re trusted and they are known and protected.    Laura Stevens: If I’m playing this clip back to Pete, is there anything you want to ask him or anything you want the team to develop next?    Darren Curry: I, you know what, it’s a, it’s a really tough question because the, the Notify Team, it’s, it’s a fantastic service. And I think rather than asking Pete to develop anything else, I think my encouragement to Pete and the team is to take that time to reflect on the things that this service has enabled in a time of a national crisis and the things that him and the team have been able to enable, are awesome. And it’s easy to forget that. And 17 million messages to people who needed support, that would not have been achieved, will have genuinely saved lives and protected people.   Pete Herlihy:  Wow. That’s awesome. Seeing the value that has to them and understanding that you know, without Notify being in place, that stuff just could not happen or you know wouldn’t have been remotely as effective as, you know I maybe hadn’t quite appreciated the, the extent of that.   So yeah, that’s pretty mind blowing.    Laura Stevens: Yeah. Yeah I think what Darren says well is articulate how this technology tool but how it translates to in people’s lives.   Pete Herhily:  Yeah, makes it, it makes it very real, for sure. I, I think, I think, you know we’ve talked a bit in the past about how we can’t afford not to have these platforms in place, and, and that was before a global pandemic right? But, and it’s not you know, Notify’s not the only platform in town - we’ve got publishing, you know identity, payments - so but we need them, we can’t afford to not have them. Yeah, now more than ever I guess.   I just want my team to hear that.    Laura Stevens:  So thank you so much for Pete for coming on today.    Pete Herlihy:  Welcome.    Laura Stevens:  And you can listen to all the episodes of the Government Digital Service podcast on Apple Music, Spotify and all other major podcast platforms, and the transcript’s available on PodBean.

With the recent reformulation of Nature Oat Bakes, Isagenix is now a 100% gluten-free company. This change comes just in time for Celiac Awareness Month this May. Isagenix Legacy Club member and mom of five Laura Stevens shares her family's journey with celiac disease, the stress of raising children with a serious food allergy, and how Isagenix products have helped lessen the load.

Laura Stevens: Hello and welcome to the Government Digital Service podcast. My name is Laura Stevens and I’m a Creative Content Producer at GDS. And today’s episode is recorded a little bit differently, as we’re all remote now, this will be our first podcast done via hangouts.    We’re going to be talking about GOV.UK’s initial response to the coronavirus. GOV.UK is the online home for the UK government, and it’s where millions of people access government services everyday. Of course COVID-19 does not need an introduction as the pandemic has affected all aspects of our lives.   In the first few weeks since lockdown began, GOV.UK has created products and services to help people understand what to do in these uncertain times. GDS has set up a landing page, built new services and now streams the press conferences live from GOV.UK. All of this work has helped people. It’s helped make sure food parcels are delivered to extremely vulnerable people, it’s helped businesses offer essential support, and it’s helped give people answers to important questions - like how to attend a funeral or manage a payroll.    All this high-profile and important work is being delivered remotely, under intense scrutiny and at pace. To tell me more about this work is Leanne Cummings and Markland Starkie, both of the GOV.UK Team. So welcome both to our first remote podcast. Please can you tell me who you are and what your role on GOV.UK is.   Leanne Cummings: Hello everyone. This is wildly exciting. This is my first ever podcast, so that’s great. I am Leanne Cummings, and I’m the Head of Product for GOV.UK.   Markland Starkie: Hi, hello, hello. My name is Markland Starkie, and I am Head of Content for GOV.UK.    Laura Stevens: And you’ve both been about, at GDS for about one and a half years, is that right?   Markland Starkie: Yeah, that’s right. We both started around the same time roughly. So yeah, about a year and a half now.   Leanne Cummings: And this is my first job in government. So I’ve joined at an, an exceptionally busy time, and I’m loving every minute of it so far.    Markland Starkie: Yeah mine too actually. People, I think they’ve stopped saying that it’s not normally like this now.    Leanne Cummings: Yeah.   Markland Starkie: But I definitely heard that a lot for the first year, maybe up till last week pretty much.    Laura Stevens:  I thought a timeline might be helpful, because things are moving so quickly. So I’m sure by the time this is published, there’ll be lots more things that the GOV.UK Team has done so we’re just going to be focussed on that initial response.    So some dates. GDS started remote working fully on 17 March. The coronavirus landing page on GOV.UK was published Friday 20 March at midday. Three days later, on Monday 23, the extremely vulnerable people service was launched. And that evening Prime Minister Boris Johnson addressed the nation in a special broadcast. And then that Friday, on 27 March, the business support service was launched. And, on Tuesday 31 March, the first press conference was streamed live from GOV.UK.    So that is an intense period of delivery over a fortnight. And there’s lots of firsts in there - first time working with 100% remote workforce, record numbers visiting the site and the first time a broadcast has happened from GOV.UK. And of course this work continues, it’s not just made live, it’s, it’s always being iterated and scaling up happens.    But let's talk about that first product, the coronavirus landing page. So what, what is the coronavirus landing page, perhaps Markland, you’ll be able to answer that.   Markland Starkie: Yeah, yeah sure. So yeah GOV.UK/coronavirus, it is essentially the, the campaign landing page for all the government content for coronavirus support and information.    We first started working on coronavirus information back in probably January actually. As part of our kind of business as usual stuff, we’re monitoring feedback that the public leaves on the website, and we noticed probably from about mid-January onwards, that we were getting an increasing number of comments and questions from the public around specific areas to do with coronavirus. And it was a real trickle at that stage but it was definitely, we could see it increasing.    And we started working with mainly the Department of Health and Social Care [DHSC] and Public Health England [PHE] on kind of how to bring together some of the content that was being written around that time, and it was mainly in the healthcare space then.    What we came up with was a, what we call, a topical events page, which is a kind of out of the box solution that we have. We could quickly see like throughout the beginning of February, as content was being generated across departments in government and Number 10 is thinking about this from a central point of view, and we could see public feedback and response to the content increasing as well. And we knew at a fairly early stage then that as the crisis escalated, it was going to become not just a healthcare issue but actually incorporating much wider things across government.    As the crisis continued to escalate we knew that we would need something more bespoke to pull things together. And that’s where the conversation around a new bespoke landing page that would replace the kind of ‘out the box’ solution came into being. Once we had made that decision things moved very quickly. Obviously the government was responding extremely quickly to, to the escalation of the, of the crisis. And we knew we needed to get something out ahead of any further government announcement and action for, for UK citizens on coronavirus.    Laura Stevens: So for, when I was researching this podcast I spoke to Sam Dub, a former guest of this podcast but also a GOV.UK Product Manager, and he said he was yeah, given the brief on Monday and then it went from zero to live in 4.5 days.    Markland Starkie: And from there like it, we obviously took an MVP [minimal viable product] approach but actually the MVP covered quite a, a large range of user needs to the point where we, we’ve continued to iterate but we haven’t, we haven’t had to drastically change the designs or the functionality of it.   So on that Friday yes, the new landing page went live. We worked with the Department of Health [and Social Care] and Public Health England to take down the original topical event page and redirect that stuff through, and that was then in time for the, the Prime Minister announcements that happened in the following days to the public.    Laura Stevens:  This landing page received heavy traffic, so in the first 24 hours, there were more than 750,000 page views. And, in the first 7 days, there were 18 million page views. And as I was talking about record numbers earlier, there was a huge peak on the 24 March of 9.2 million, which is a record for the biggest ever spike in GOV.UK traffic.    Markland Starkie:  The thing that the landing page I suppose was able to do over and above the standard solution was really to bring together, in a more consolidated fashion, wider signposts to existing and new content across government. It also allows us the flexibility to redesign or extend or iterate on that landing page at pace, which we’ve been able to do in the, in the week since. So that’s based on ongoing research into the landing page and insights to move certain content around, add certain content that was missing in the first instance, and remove content that’s not working, all of those things.   Laura Stevens: And was also, one of the reasons why it’s been able to be built quickly and iterated quickly, is we’re using other GDS tools that already exist, for example the GOV.UK Design System. Is that, was that, has been part of it as well?    Markland Starkie: Oh absolutely, yes. So without those things in place, like the Design System that you’ve mentioned, this would take weeks and weeks. So we’ve been able to take existing patterns, modify them where needed to. So being able to bring in elements whilst using existing patterns to really like kind of push it through at pace.   Laura Stevens: And maybe this is a question more towards Leanne as well. This was the first ‘mobile first’ product is that right to say? Why was that important and why did you decide to do it like that?   Leanne Cummings: Yeah, I believe it is. I believe it is the first one designed specifically on a mobile with the desktop being the alternative. We decided that, 2 reasons really.    One the data showed us that mobile was increasingly the mechanism by which users are picking up government content, advice and services. And what felt more critical in this particular situation was it felt, there’s a reason for that being, that the coverage of mobile phones was much more prolific across a much wider set of people across the country than, than access to a laptop or access to an iPad could be.    So this one felt absolutely critical that we nailed that experience on a mobile first. And I couldn’t be prouder of a team that turned this around in 4 and a half days with that as a new requirement. And honestly it was completely pushing on an open door, the team were really excited to make sure that in people’s hands, would be this critical information.   Markland Starkie: Yeah.   Leanne Cummings: So we did, we did a great job of that. And the data that we got, even immediately afterwards, was just absolutely underlined. I think it was something like, in the early days, it was something like 90% plus people were accessing through that mechanism.   Laura Stevens: OK, shall we talk about these 2 new services? In the first week of launch, the extremely vulnerable service received more than 1.4 million page views. And for the second one, business support service, there were more than 40,000 page views in its first 7 days.    But I think we first want to talk about the extremely vulnerable people service. Perhaps Leanne, could you explain what this service does and how it was set up?   Leanne Cummings: Yeah. It was, it was a request that came from another, other departments actually. They, the NHS teams had acknowledged that there were a group of people that were, that had illnesses, critical illnesses often, that meant they were extremely vulnerable to coronavirus. So that meant that they had needs that had to be met, probably more isolated at home, and that included access to food.   So there was a list compiled of people that were likely impacted here, and that we needed to find a mechanism by which they could, they could let us know, let government know whether they needed help or not. So they were going to be contacted directly by the NHS teams via letter initially, and invited to, to go to a service that we built around answering, answering a series of, of simple questions around what their needs were in this situation. And that is the extremely vulnerable people service.    So again we had some experience of building this kind of triage journey, and so that was kind of a, a pattern that we were familiar with, and again a really simple journey flow of what, finding out from you what the need is and how we could help you and then that feeds into a, a database and is, is actioned.   Laura Stevens: And was this able to be stood up quickly because of other GDS work? We mentioned the Design System already but there’s also the GOV.UK Platform as a Service or PaaS.    Leanne Cummings: Yes for sure. I mean the shoulders of giants right?    We have a lot of experience of, across GDS, of working at this kind of intense pace and response. So we’re prepared for certain spikes in behaviour that could be led by, obvious examples of that could be led by an election or whatever but we have experience of this kind of service deployment and so could forecast a bit what could happen and be very prepared for that.    So there’s some things we won’t compromise on and stability is, stability and security are 2 of them. And again that, both of those things involve working with a wide range of genius teams across GDS, and wider but definitely across GDS.   Markland Starkie: I do think it’s important to say like, while we have these services available to, across GDS. This is an, the unusualness of this particular situation in bringing all teams together across GDS, so not just GOV.UK as a programme like working on this, but as you say Platform as a Ser--like right across GDS, teams are working together has been a really amazing experience for, for me, myself, Leanne and others. To see that we’ve, we’ve all come together to, to sort this out. It, it’s just, yeah it’s great.   Leanne Cummings: I couldn’t agree with Markland more on that. And our team is absolutely not the only team that has been under a significant amount of intensity, I could wax lyrical about all the teams. I don’t think we’ve got enough time for that.    But Pete [Herlihy] and the Notify Team have worked incredibly hard on an intense period of, the thing that we featured on the landing page is around getting people who are overseas back into the UK and lots of emails going out and, and lots of message and and just such an, a massive amount of work across the group that we should definitely spend future podcasts describing in a massive amount of detail.   Laura Stevens: I like that plug in there as well.   Leanne Cummings: I’m really really available for future podcasts everyone.    Laura Stevens: And then can we also talk about the business support service.   Leanne Cummings: Sure.   Laura Stevens: Leanne, are you best to speak to that?   Leanne Cummings: I think, I think we both can but this one is, this one is brilliant for its demonstration of how not only we at GDS are in it together but sort of the country is too. This was stood up to reflect a need for government, and for local authorities and for NHS to, they need a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff ranging from testing equipment, warehousing to keep things and, and lorries and lorry drivers to take things places. And so we stood up a service which allowed businesses to say, ‘yeah I’ve got some time and some people and, and some resources to enable us to pitch in here’. And we stood that up again really quickly, another really dedicated team across GOV.UK and wider GDS.    And within, within I want to say hours but I’ve lost track of time, but within a really short time, 2,000 businesses had offered support across a huge range of, of different services. And honestly we’ve been a little bit emotional some of us across GOV.UK about many things - the, the, the type of work that is going on, the commitment from the teams, the commitment from GDS, the type of work going on across government but this was a real demonstration of, of the commitment of everybody being in this together so we did get a bit emotional, and I can still can so I might take a minute now and have a little moment.   Markland Starkie: And I would also say just that the way we worked, or GDS worked, with departments like the wider Cabinet Office.    Leanne Cummings: Yeah.   Markland Starkie: Crown Commercial Service.    Leanne Cummings: Yeah.   Markland Starkie: The teams right across government who we really needed input on, to make this work at pace. It’s been, it’s been a real, eye, eye opener for me. I think working in government at this time, to see when it comes down to it we really can make a difference quite quickly.   Leanne Cummings: Yeah. And you don’t need to talk anyone into that, and that’s, and, and probably that is what you’d expect but you, you really don’t. It really is just a, a an exercise in everybody working together to try move things forward and get help to people that need it.    Laura Stevens: This is the first time that we’ve done a live broadcast from GOV.UK. So these are the daily press conferences, you can watch them from the coronavirus landing page, which is streaming this. And what was sort of the user need behind that, how did that come about being created?   Markland Starkie: Yeah it, it was a discussion with us and Cabinet Office Comms Hub and Number 10 around really having a central source for the press conference to be broad-broadcast, and obviously it makes sense that GOV.UK is, is the home for that. We, we provide the platform on which they can, we can stream. So that was built into an iterative, an iteration of the landing page.   Leanne Cummings: I feel like and, if we sit as we do between, digitally between government and the user, it kind of makes sense for us to be showing that. And also reinforces that if you’ve got any queries, online queries about anything that is impactful to you around coronavirus, then this is the place to come and see if you can find that. So that just sort of reinforces that message too.    Laura Stevens: I, I also wanted to ask now, now we’ve spoken about the landing page and the 2 new services and the live broadcast that was set up, what sort of challenges did you face, and is there anything that you sort of wish you knew before you’d started this process, that would have helped you? And yeah, how have you, how have you sort of tackled that? ‘Cause obviously you’ve been working at such pace, is there sort of, have you had to reflect on those more challenging aspects of it?   Markland Starkie: I, I think that is, it’s an ongoing conversation that we’re having at the moment. And yes, there have been challenges right throughout that. From, I guess from my point of view as Head of Content, it it’s trying to get ahead of and help departments coordinate having user-centred content, so clearly written, accessible content, going up on GOV.UK by yesterday.   And we, we realise, I certainly realised, that there is an element of we just need to get information out. And as policy is being decided across government, that information needs to get into the hands of citizens and businesses as quickly as possible and that, that means as we’ve been standing up new processes and new teams across government that have not worked with each other before, that it’s not going to be perfect. And it’s trying to kind of try and build in the processes that make the content better over time and more useful, useful over time.   But that’s been a, that’s been a sort of, real thing on my mind over the most couple of weeks is, is how we, we can continue helping government; because this, this is not just a, obviously, this is not just a GDS thing to tackle. There are countless teams across departments right across government who are all working to produce services, who are all working to produce content and define policy as quickly as possible using GOV.UK as the platform to surface these things through. And it’s our job to try and support them as best we can to make sure that those services are accessible, are usable, are clear etc. etc.   Leanne Cummings: I think it’s that, I think it’s exactly as Markland describes. I think this is unique, an unique challenge that we’re all facing. I guess it’s a lived experience as well as well as a worked experience so you, you’re experiencing it as a person as also as someone who’s trying to help navigate through it. So that gives you a little bit of insight into how you can really cut to the nub of what you know people might need to understand.   But the pace of change on that is, is, is, is rapid. So we have to react to that in, in new ways and put in processes whereby we can reflect on the landing page you know, the most recently announced policy or guidance that means that users who are seeing that are getting the most recent and up to date advice and guidance. So that is, it’s just a pace question really here then, then I’ve known it ever in, in government before.   I think there’s something, to answer the question in a slightly different way, there’s some things that I thought would be a bit more challenging; working remotely from teams of people that are used to bouncing ideas off each other, I was a little worried about that initially. When you’re building landing pages or services at pace, then often the best way to do that is get in a room. We’ll probably supply, supply pizza, there’ll definitely be a lot of Haribo. And I thought that was, was gonna be a really big problem. And in some ways it is a problem but not in anywhere near as big as we thought. And the products and services we’ve got out, I think haven't reflected the fact that we’re in 30 different houses across London and the south, it’s reflected a group of people who know what they’re doing, are committed to it, and are used to working in a certain way and they can do that in separate houses. And I think the only thing that I could say is we’re possibly a little bit healthier because of the lack of Haribo.    Markland Starkie: Agree with that.    Laura Stevens: And I also wanted to touch on how this work is tying in with the GOV.UK future strategy. I saw, I watched Jen Allum, the Head of GOV.UK, present her virtual talk at Code for America on Twitter, about how GOV.UK is moving to a place where it helps people with complex interactions by being personalised, low friction and data informed. And how does this work tie into that and, or does it just confirm your initial, your thinking with that?   Leanne Cummings: I think it ties in directly when we’re thinking about - so the landing page collates information together around certain themes but some of our tooling starts to ask a, a, hopefully a simple set of questions but then enables a real doubling down for the user on the thing that impacts them the most in their particular set of circumstances. And that’s definitely a thing that we’re moving towards because that also acknowledges that, that people that are using these products and services aren’t sort of one dimensional, you’re not just a person with a business, you’re a person with a business and a family.    And so it sort of addresses both those complexities in simple ways, and just tries to make that a bit more personalised to you and your set of circumstances where possible. So I think we’re reflecting the strategy in that way and, and is data driven.    Markland Starkie: Yeah, I’d, I’d really agree with that. Obviously, a lot of the work that we were doing around Brexit over the past year and a half, was kind of like moving towards the early explorations of this set of scenarios you were just suggesting around personalised by consent, device agnostic, all of those things. And that, and that worked helped inform the future strategy that Jen was then talking about, and has been talking about recently.    And this is the way that GOV.UK is going. The, the complex user journeys and complex user needs that Leanne was just talking about, they’re not going away. Like the more we understand about our users, the more individual those users become and the more we need to provide solutions that cater for that.   Laura Stevens: And I wanted to talk about something that’s been alluded to throughout this recording, and it’s about the sort of the coping with the stress and the demands of working in this situation. The work being done is under intense scrutiny, it’s high profile and it’s important that it’s right. So how are you both and how are the team, sort of, are there ways of working with this pressure? How, how are you faring with that?   Markland Starkie: I think there’s a lot of swearing.    Leanne Cummings: There is, there is quite a lot of swearing for sure. I think we’re finding some time to do some regular things. I think we all understand the purpose of all this work, and in a funny way you’re in a luxurious position right? So, I’m telling myself this very much late at night and at the weekends, that you’re in a luxurious position where you can really put your shoulder in and help in a crisis. And a lot of people don’t get to say that, a lot of people this is just sort of happening to and so we are quite lucky, and that is felt across the programme. So, at the best of times, that is the best of times right, in terms of OK you get it, you’re on it.    Markland’s right though. We are also finding time to hang out together a bit. And that’s with you know my peer group but the also the, the product teams where you just get to let off a bit of steam.   Markland Starkie: Yeah. The teams on GOV.UK have been just incredible in this regard.   Leanne Cummings: Yeah.   Markland Starkie: The self organisation, just the pragmatic adult approach to this.   Leanne Cummings: Yeah.   Markland Starkie: Everybody recognises the importance of the work that needs to be done, and this is not your normal you know, 9 to 5 whatever situation, and, and people have, where needed, really put in the hours to support the work and get it through. And then worked with each other to, to make sure that they’re getting time off and they can recuperate.   And this, this is obviously happening you know, right across government and beyond. Like all businesses are having to kind of reconfigure their working practices. But just seeing, from a personal point of view, just seeing the, however many people we have on the programme, just seeing them kind of self-organise around this and then allow us as kind of senior managers to try and bolster in support and kind of pull in extra people where necessary and where possible, has just been great to see.   Leanne Cummings: And we’ve kept some of the rigour so we have, Jen does, Jen Allum the Head of GOV.UK does a regular weekly programme check in, which is what it says really. ‘Cause I guess that’s another thing, we’re all in this situation where we’re at home, so you definitely see the thing that you’re working on a lot, but you don’t necessarily get to see in the way that you would in a, in regular working office environment. But it’s another way we’re getting, everybody gets to celebrate the successes and help out when there’s a challenge. So there’s, we’ve, we’ve definitely kept to the rigour of how we work in the office a bit, and maybe just upped some of that because to, to cater for the fact that we’re all online.   Markland Starkie: Definitely quite a lot of cats as well.    Leanne Cummings: Yeah, there’s cats. So there’s themes developing, and we definitely know a little bit more about each other than we did previously too. So that’s helping us cope because there’s quite a lot of teasing.   Laura Stevens: And over these sort of, over the first few weeks where it really sort of ramped up, were there, was there any particular moments that stood out to either of you of being particularly like emotional or important or sad or just anything that just really stuck out to you?   Markland Starkie: The first one to me was where we as the senior management team, got together and were like ‘essentially, right this is a thing. We now need to be pausing existing work, re-prioritising, talking to teams about what they need to do, making new teams out of existing teams and figuring out what’s next’. And, and it was that initial conversation that was like ‘right OK, it is time to, time to get on with it’.   Leanne Cummings: I think for me, emotional about some of the delivery, which there’s usually a compromise, there’s a cost, there’s a compromise to delivering things rapidly. And I don’t think that the products that we have developed necessarily reflect that. I think that they’re the opposite of that, I think they’re brilliant products. The mobile first was an emotional moment for me on the landing page, for sure.    And then, so all of those things definitely but I think the moments that have really got me more than I thought they would, are when people who are really tired, have done really long days, on Slack channels saying ‘well OK I’ve finished my bit, so does anybody need a hand with anything else?’. And I just feel like that’s the stuff that gets me every time. ‘Cause you wanna say ‘no dude, you definitely need to go and get some sleep now’. But they just wanna roll their sleeves up and get you know, good stuff out the door and that for me, is a sight to see.   Laura Stevens: For sure.   So thank you both so much for coming on today, I know you’re both extremely busy so thank you again.    Markland Starkie: Thank you very much.   Leanne Cummings: Thank you.   Laura Stevens: And you can listen to all the episodes of the Government Digital Service podcast on Apple Music, Spotify and all other major podcast platforms. And the transcripts are available on PodBean.    So thank you both again

Laura Stevens: Hello and welcome to the Government Digital Service Podcast. My name is Laura Stevens and I'm a Creative Content Producer here at GDS. And for March's episode, we're going to be celebrating International Women's Day.   In 2020 the theme for International Women's Day is 'each for equal'. The worldwide event’s tagline reads, “an equal world is an enabled world. How will you help forge a gender equal world, celebrate women’s achievement, raise awareness against bias, take action for equality”. So from this theme we wrote 3 questions and asked 9 women from across GDS for their opinion.   Let’s hear what they had to say.    Which woman inspires you in digital government and why?   Charlotte Downs: I’m Charlotte Downs, and I’m a Graphic Designer in the Communications Team.    So I love this question, but I am going to cop out. I think I find it difficult to find a specific female that inspires me because individually everyone has different aspects to who they are that are great. And I learn from each of those different bits.    So I’m inspired by lots of females, our team is mainly female. And I find that each of them, the resilience that they have and just the energy they bring to work, inspires me to be better in my work and in, and personally.    Liz Lutgendorff: I’m Liz Lutgendorff, I’m the Senior Research Analyst for the International Team. And as a side gig, I’m also one of the co-chairs of the Women’s Network at GDS.   I think I’m going to cheat a little bit on this one, because it’s really hard to pick just one. And especially I, I guess I’d focus on GDS because I most you know, that’s my main source of knowledge. But I think if you pick any person at GDS who’s working here, you’re going to find something really inspirational about them.    Even just about you know, trying something that’s really frustrating to them, but might be easy to someone else, but just like putting yourself out there; if you’re scared of public speaking, people are doing speaker training so they can tell their stories about what they’re doing in digital, even though they’re kind of scared to death of it.    So yeah, I’m just going to have a total cop out and say every single woman at GDS, from our HR people, to our Estates people, to our developers, everyone. Everyone is doing amazing things everyday.   Joanna Blackburn: I’m Joanna Blackburn, I’m Deputy Director for Communications and Engagement here in GDS.   There actually, when I was asked this question, there are a lot of women out there who are quite inspirational in terms of breaking barriers, but the first person that really came to mind for me is a lady called Rachel Neaman. Rachael Neaman was, at the time that I met her, the first digital leader in the Department for Health. And at the time I was working at an ALB [arm's length bodies] where I was responsible primarily to move out existing websites onto GOV.UK.    And the reason why Rachel comes to mind for me is because I met her while attending a meeting of very senior people across the Department for Health. And so it was quite an intimidating environment where everybody was of quite senior stature, and here I am in middle management sort of like feeling like an imposter. But I was so inspired by the way she challenged that group of people, and how she said it is their responsibility to drive digital transformation in their work and to role model leadership behaviours so that their teams will do the same.    So for me, she’s one of the, one of those people that I really believe is transformational in digital transformation for government.    Laura Stevens: Can you tell me a story about gender equality in the workplace?   Sanwar Bopari: I’m Sanwar Bopari, and I’m an Executive Assistant.   I’m really interested in the work that the Women’s Network are doing around the gender pay gap. I think it’s really important because it’s never quite transparent and it’s good to make it obvious to everyone.   Jen Allum: I’m Jen Allum, and I’m the Head of GOV.UK.   We have diverse panels for recruitment at GDS. And one moment that really struck me recently was interviewing for a role in the GOV.UK programme. And the person we were interviewing referred throughout the interview only to men. So it was all references to he and him. To such a degree that I needed to ask if all of the people that he’d worked with were men. And of course he hadn’t.    But the thing that really struck me about that was not so much that maybe that had happened, but that the colleagues I had on the panel, who happened to be male, hadn’t noticed it until I’d asked the question.    And of course I’ve heard the argument about you know, when you hear ‘he’ what we mean is everyone, but I don’t buy that and language matters. So it was a really underlying moment for me in why we have diversity in our recruitment panels.   Leena Taha: My name is Leena Taha, and I’m a Senior Content Designer on the Brexit Journeys Team.    One of the people who I used to work with before, he would amplify the voices of other women in the room if they were ever ignored. For example, if we were ever in a meeting then, and somebody made a point that was later ignored, he would circle back to it and, ‘say so and so mentioned this earlier which was a good point’. Which really helped to make everybody's voices heard.   Laura Stevens: What will you do this year to make GDS a better workplace for women?   Laura Flannery: Hello I’m Laura Flannery, I’m a Senior Product Manager, I work on GOV.UK.   So I have the privilege of being the co-chair of the Women’s Network, I lead and co-ordinate the Women’s Network and the working groups within it. And we have a lot of things planned over the next year to make GDS a better place for women but also for everyone, because the knock on effects of what we do make GDS better for everyone. That’s an important point.   We’re working on the gender pay gap. We have a working group and we have an action plan. So we’re using data to understand what interventions are working to make the gender pay gap smaller. We have some training on career progression coming up so we’ll be teaching participants how to define milestones that they need to achieve their goals, helping them to gain clarity and direction and the confidence to pursue their aspirations. We’re also planning some public speaking training so helping people to build confidence, find their voice.    We have a mentoring scheme that we set up a couple of years ago, and we’re going to operationalise that. So we’re handing it over to the People Team, so there is someone who will be looking after it and that is there, that’s part of their job. Because the Women’s Network is a network of volunteers so the fact that we’re able to do that is actually a really great sign and it’s you know, should have good impact across GDS.    We’ve also recently done a survey on period products in the bathrooms. So GDS provides free period products for women, and reviewing that process so we can make it better to meet the needs of women here. And we’re running, we’re going to run lots of campaigns to raise awareness on certain topics, for example the gender pay gap, women's health, lots of other things.    Jennifer Marks: Hi my name is Jennifer Marks and I’m a Digital Delivery Advisor at the Future Relationships and Expert Services Team at GDS.   So I’ve been in GDS coming up to a year, it’ll be my first year anniversary in April, and the one thing I’ve really noticed is the Women’s Network do amazing work but there is one area which I think should really be on the agenda. And that is about women returners; that’s women who have for some reason or other, it’s usually motherhood, sometimes it could be care of relative, have taken career breaks. And they struggle to get back into the workplace, and these are women who, they have immense skill sets and yet because they’ve taken 2 maybe 3 years out of the workplace, or more, the workplace is suddenly closed to them.    And it’s something I really would like to put on the agenda. I think it’s important. These are women who could have so much to offer, they have the skills, the ability and I think that they would be a great addition to GDS, and I’d like to look at how we can bring these women back into the workplace, what we can offer them. And I have had the benefit of working and volunteering with the Women’s Returner Network. Because I was one of those women, and I think it’s important to help promote other women, help other women make sure they have access to work and what they need to really shine through.    Eliška Copland: My name is Eliška Copland and I work as a Cyber Security Analyst.    So I think that we all know that there is a shortage of women in technology. And it’s one thing to kind of hire more women, and there’s a big push to high more women in technology, but it’s also a completely different method to make them feel like they’re included and a valued addition to the team, and motivate them and drive them to their best. And I think that there are ways that this can be improved. And I think that some teams and some managers do it better than others, and I would like to just understand and learn more about how that, how that can be done. And again I would like to find male allies in this.   So that was, that, that’s one thing. I suppose then I also, just because one of the mottos of GDS is to be kind and be generous, I think generally us women in this male dominated field kind of need to be more generously speaking up when some kind of injustice is happening, either to ourselves or to others, but should do it in a kind way.    But I think GDS is a wonderful place to, to work and I can’t stress enough that there isn’t that much injustice happening, and most of the time it’s, you meet absolutely wonderful people in this sector.    Laura Stevens: So thank you to everybody from across GDS who came in to talk today about International Women’s Day.    And you can listen to all the episodes of the Government Digital Service Podcast on Apple Music, Spotify and all other major podcast platforms. And you can read a transcript on PodBean.    So thank you once again to everyone and goodbye.

Laura Stevens:  Hello, and welcome to the Government Digital Service Podcast. My name is Laura Stevens and I’m a Creative Content Producer here at GDS. And today’s podcast is going to be on the GOV.UK Design System.    The GOV.UK Design System is a collection of tools and resources for designing and building products and services. It provides styles, components and patterns that are accessible. This helps hundreds of teams across the public sector design and build services that are of high quality and can be used by anyone.    The impact of the design system, created and managed by a team of 10 here at GDS, is significant. It’s used in central government, local government and has also been used by the NHS and international governments to develop their own design systems. It saves teams time and money and helps give people a consistent and accessible experience when interacting with government.    To tell us more is Tim Paul, who is on the team who launched the GOV.UK Design System. Tim has also been at GDS for a long time, he was on the team that launched GOV.UK in fact as well. We’re also going to be hearing from people from central and local government about how the GOV.UK Design System has helped their work.   So yeah, welcome Tim to the podcast.    Tim Paul:  Hi there, how are you doing?   Laura Stevens: Thanks for coming on today. And could you tell us what your job is here at GDS and how you work with the GOV.UK Design System?   Tim Paul:  Yeah so I guess my official job title is Head of Interaction Design. But for the last couple of years, I’ve mainly been kind of doing that as a Product Manager really for the Design System. So that’s a thing that we kind of kicked off a couple of years ago and we’ve managed to build a team around that, and develop a suite of products. We launched those back in summer of 2018 and yeah, I’ve been product managing that and working with the team closely ever since.   Laura Stevens:  So the Design System was launched back in July 2018. But what is the Design System made up of?   Tim Paul:  So it’s essentially a suite of 3 different products. So you’ve got the Design System itself, which is basically a website with guidance and coded examples for designers and frontend developers to use to design and prototype and build public services. So that’s the first thing.   And then there’s a thing we call the GOV.UK Prototype Kit, and that’s a piece of software that designers in particular can download and install, and they can use it to rapidly create very high fidelity prototypes that they can take into user research. And they can test out ideas before their, their team commits to building anything. So they can find out what the right thing to build is.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Tim Paul:  And then the third thing, which underpins both of those, is a thing we call GOV.UK Frontend. And that’s essentially a frontend framework, so it’s all the Javascript and the CSS [Cascading Style Sheets] wrapped up into a nice package that developers can install into their projects. And so the Prototype Kit and the Design System both use GOV.UK Frontend and that means that designers and developers are both drawing from the same kind of library of components and patterns.    Laura Stevens:  I heard you say before that you think of the Design System also as a service as well, what do you mean by that?   Tim Paul:  Yes. So as well as the 3 products that we provide, we also offer support and training. We’ve helped facilitate contributions to the design system and we’ve run community events and we have regular hangouts with our community of users and contributors. So we really think of the whole thing together as being an actual service, and we have you know, a multidisciplinary team to support both the products and that service.    Laura Stevens:  And when you were talking about the different parts of the GOV.UK Design System, for people who are listening and don’t know what a component is or a pattern or a style. Could you explain what those things are please?    Tim Paul:  Yeah, ok, I’ll have a go.   So when we first started out - figuring out how to make this thing, we did a lot of thinking about what were the things that were going to be inside the Design System. There’s no really established language for talking about this stuff. Although design systems as an idea are fairly well established now.    So in the end we settled on 3 definitions. And so we have what we call styles. And they’re the really low level building blocks that everything else is made out of. So it’s things like colour palettes and how your typography works and how your page layouts work and your grid system and so on. So those are the styles.    And then one level up from that if you like, we have things that we call components. And so components are chunks of user interface, UI. So they’re visible things that you can compose onto a webpage and that, and, and that makes your service. So it’s things like drop-down lists and tables and navigation and headers and footers. And all our components are built using code, the code that we provide in GOV.UK Frontend. And so that’s what a component is.   And finally one level up from that we have things that we call patterns, and patterns are a little bit more abstract. They’re centred around common needs that users of public services have. So for example, lots of public services require that people enter information about themselves like their name or their address and so on, and so we have design patterns which explain the best most usable way that we’ve found, to ask users for that kind of information.    And, we have even higher level design patterns so for example, it’s quite common that a public service has eligibility requirements that, that, that users must meet if they are able to use that service. And so we have a pattern for example, which explains how best to help users understand whether or not they can use your service, so that they don’t waste time trying to apply for a benefit or something that they don’t actually meet the requirements for.   Laura Stevens: And so now I feel like I, I know what it’s made up of, I know what those words mean. But why are design systems good for government? And in a previous presentation I found in the Google Drive in my research, you said the national motto of design system teams is ‘efficiency, consistency and usability’   Tim Paul: Oh yeah, I did say that didn’t I?   Laura Stevens: Would, is that why they’re good or have you changed your mind?    Tim Paul: I guess, no that’s almost been one of the most stable beliefs that we’ve held throughout the whole kind of time we’ve been developing these resources. There, there do seem to be 3 pretty stable fundamental user needs that things like design systems are good at meeting. And, and that’s that public services needs to be efficiently built, we don’t want our tax payers’ money to be wasted in people like reinventing the wheel up and down the country in different teams.   They need to be of a high quality. So they need to be really accessible and usable. And they need to be consistent with each other. So one of the big reasons that we made GOV.UK in the first place was to try and create a single unified consistent user experience for all government services because that helps people to be familiar with those services, which means that it makes them more usable. But it also kind of fosters trust because it’s much easier to recognise when you’re using a legitimate government service if they all look the same.    And the way that design systems help with those things is that you have this common suite of components and patterns that are ready made, pre-built, they’ve already been tested for things like usability and accessibility. And so that lifts up the quality because people are re-using existing things, it means that they’re not developing them themselves so that makes teams more efficient and productive. And again because they’re re-using the same suite of components and patterns, it means that different services made by different teams in different parts of the country in different departments, are all consistent with each other.   Laura Stevens: And I think that’s a point that I wanted to pick up on, is because I think as a user coming to GOV.UK, it looks like it’s just one big website.   Tim Paul: Yeah.   Laura Stevens: But it’s actually being managed, and being delivered simultaneously, by different teams up and down the UK.    Tim Paul: Yes. So like you say GOV.UK presents as this single, quite large website that’s full of different services and information and that’s entirely intentional, that was always the vision for GOV.UK. But we, anybody who’s worked on it knows that under the hood, it’s hundreds and hundreds of separate websites and they're owned and managed by different teams in different departments up and down the country. There is no single tech stack for the public sector or for government, there’s hundreds and hundreds of different ones and we don’t try to control what that stack should be.    And so the challenge that we’ve always faced is like how do we let all of those teams work pretty much independently of each other, but deliver something which is coherent and consistent and feels like a single user experience. And this is, this is what design systems are really good at because they, they provide this centralised resource that all teams can draw upon and contribute back to.    So not every organisation, or large organisation, requires a design system necessarily but I think government is maybe almost the best example of an organisation that can benefit from, from a tool and a service like this.   Laura Stevens: So yeah, we’ve got GOV.UK as this, appearing as one site but actually being operated by lots and lots of different teams up and down the country. So is that who’s using the Design System, all these different service teams?   Tim Paul: Yeah, so we think that most users of the Design System are probably designers or developers working in, on, in services teams in different departments up and down the country. And we’ve tried lots of different ways to measure usage, it’s important that we know who’s using our service and how and what problems they might be facing, so that we can improve the service for them.   So one thing we have looked at in the past is, is web traffic. That’s just visitors to the Design System website. And that’s quite useful for showing month on month growth. I think since we launched, we’ve grown the number of visitors to the site by about 250%.    Laura Stevens: So impressive figures.   Tim Paul: Yeah, yeah! It’s, we’re happy with that.   Laura Stevens: I wanted to ask about the community element of the Design System. So people are able to contribute their own patterns and how, so in terms of the number of patterns or number of components now, are most of them done in GDS or do, are they generally done from people who have contributed? How does that work?    Tim Paul: Yeah. So from the outset really, we wanted to make sure that what we built was owned by the community of designers and developers in government, and was easy to contribute back to. And there’s a couple of reasons for that. One is that we’re, GDS is at the centre of government and that’s really helpful as a way to kind of propagate out best practice and so on, but it does mean that we’re kind of one step removed from the actual end users of citizen facing services and staff systems and so on. It’s really the teams in the other departments that are closest to those users. And so we really rely on them to feedback into the Design System about, about whether components or patterns are working or not. Maybe they’ve found ways to improve upon them, maybe they have ideas for brand new components and patterns that, that we don’t realise are needed. And so like I say, from the very beginning we were trying to figure out ways to, to kind of foster a community of collaboration and contributors.    And so we initially populated the Design System with maybe about 30 or 40 components and patterns that we already knew were needed by government. Some of those we brought in from our previous design tools.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Tim Paul: But since then we’ve had about 18 new components and patterns published over the last year and a bit. And I think of those 18, about 13 of them have been external contributions. So things that have been built by people in service teams somewhere else in government, from MoJ [Ministry of Justice] or DWP [Department for Work and Pensions] or HMRC [HM Revenue and Customs] and so on, and then contributed back to the Design System.    And so we from kind of experience with our previous tools, our legacy products, that contribution is difficult and it certainly doesn't happen for free and it doesn't happen at all unless you do a lot of work to facilitate it and so on. So we put a lot of effort into developing the necessary processes and the governance and the assurance so that when people made a contribution, they knew what to expect and they knew the criteria that they needed to meet and that there were people available to support that contribution. And then other people who are available to kind of assure the quality.    So what we’re hoping is this, by this, by making this process really open, it kind of encourages trust in what we’re doing, and it means that the work that we’re publishing isn’t biased, in favour of any one department and so on. And that it, and that it actually reflects the needs of teams in government.   Laura Stevens: So how does it make you feel having so many patterns and contr-and components now being able to be contributed? Because, this, this hard work of making it decentralised, making it open is working.   Tim Paul: It, I think it is working, I think we’ve learnt a lot along the way. We’ve certainly learned that it’s harder than we thought it would be. I mean we thought it would be hard, but it’s even harder than we thought it would be. I think perhaps we were tempted to think in the early days that contribution was like a shortcut to scaling.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Tim Paul: That like by opening our doors and letting people contribute, we could grow rapidly and it would like solve all our problems that way. And actually over the last year or so, I think what we’ve realised is that facilitating and assuring contributions is often as much work as doing the work yourself. We should probably have realised that at the time. And so I think it does let us scale but not to the extent that perhaps we thought it would.   So yeah, we think that aside from scaling, there are other real concrete benefits to, and I’m encouraging contribution on one of those, is that when people make successful contributions to the Design System, they tend to be pretty strong advocates so they almost act as like people doing engagement in departments on our behalf.   But also, and perhaps more importantly, the more people from service teams in other departments make contributions to the Design System, the more representative the Design System is of what those teams need. And so it just really helps us make sure that our product is actually genuinely meeting the needs of our users.    If we were doing all the work ourselves in the centre, then, then there’d be a really strong risk that what we were producing was only really meeting the needs of the teams that we were closest to.    Laura Stevens: And I think that leads very nicely on. Because we’re now going to hear a clip from somebody who uses the Design System who isn’t from GDS.   Tim Paul: Ah.   Laura Stevens: It’s from Adam Silver, who previously worked at the Ministry for Justice, or MoJ Digital. So yeah and MoJ is the second largest of the 24 ministerial departments, so it’s a big department.   Tim Paul: Yeah.   Laura Stevens: And yeah, he’s going to talk about using the GOV.UK Design System and also about the MoJ specific Design System as well.    Adam Silver: I’m Adam Silver, I’m an Interaction Designer working at the Department for Education, and previously I’ve worked at MoJ Digital and HMCTS [HM Courts & Tribunals Service] as well.   Laura Stevens: Could I talk to you about your work with the GOV.UK Design System on the service claim for the cost of a child’s funeral, which is a highly emotional service and also one that had to be delivered at pace in 6 weeks in fact. So how did having this centralised system help you in that?   Adam Silver: Yeah so we used the MoJ form builder, which is a tool that lets you create and deploy digital forms live, live to a URL without spinning up your own dev team. And under the hood, that form builder uses all of the components and patterns of from the GOV.UK design system. So that meant we didn’t have to spend a whole load of time thinking about text boxes, radio buttons and all of, all of the good stuff that’s already been solved brilliantly. And we could just focus on the specific needs of our service, and filling in the gaps where the GOV.UK Design System didn’t have a solution for that.   Laura Stevens:  And so in that way, was it saving you time, was it saving you hours of work, what was it helping you with?   Adam Silver: Yeah, it saved, saved a lot of time. Because instead of focusing on all those things we could focus on just the needs of our service. So for example, we needed to think about how to ask users for their bank details because we needed to make a payment for them for their claim. And we also focused on things like how to upload files because they had to provide evidence for their claim by uploading copies of their receipts. And those, those 2 particular components and patterns aren’t covered really in the GOV.UK Design System. So that’s where we could really focus our attention.   And the other thing was that when we were doing an accessibility audit before we launched, we could focus most of our attention on the new patterns that we knew might not be up to the level of quality, or level of accessibility, that all of the other components that, like the text boxes and radio buttons in the GOV.UK Design System.    Just that it’s so, so real, it’s just so good. Just the quality of the guidance, the quality of the patterns, the components themselves is excellent. It plays really nicely into the prototype kit. And when I have worked on department specific design systems, it plays nicely with those ‘cause. So we’ve, we’ve... At HMCTS and MoJ Digital, we had our own department design systems and we had to extend and build on top of the GOV.UK Design System. So that was, that was another really good thing.    Laura Stevens:  Could you sort of speak then to how important having this centralised GOV.UK design system is to different departments across government?   Adam Silver:  Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean we have several services at MoJ that were asking people for their bank details. And during our research there are many many government departments that have many many services of their own that are also asking for their bank details. So there is a lot of duplication of effort there and a lot of inconsistency between them. Not, not major inconsistency but little inconsistencies and those can, those things can, can add up to creating a less than ideal, tricky user experience.    So having that centralised and standardised in GOV.UK Design System adds a tremendous amount of value along with everything else that is centralised in, in the system.   Laura Stevens: How does the community behind the design system help you in your work?   Adam Silver: Yeah, so well, that’s, it’s majorly helpful. It’s one of my favourite things about working in gov [government] actually, is, is the huge design community who are just willing to, to help. On, on Slack, there’s like thousands of people on there and they’ve, there’s always somebody that’s either come across your exact problem or they’ve come across something similar and can help out.   And then the backlog itself, or, or the more specific help around the design system, I mean the team are real-super friendly. You get to know them individually, they’re always there to, to help. And having someone dedicated on support each, each day on Slack is, is massively massively helpful, knowing that you can go to one place to get help is, yeah, I can’t, I can’t just, I can’t commend it enough really. It’s super valuable to me and it’s, I know that it’s been super valuable to other people I’ve worked with as well.    The community backlog is really good because if there isn’t something in the design system then you know that there’s going to be...well there’s a very very good chance that somebody has put their own designs into the backlog. Just some screenshots, just some explanation and then some discussion. And that, that will get you going so you don’t have to start, you’re never, you’re never really starting something from scratch because somebody has always done something. And somebody, sorry. Sometimes somebody has done more than something. There’s, there's a lot of contributions on some of the backlog tickets as well.   Laura Stevens:  So Kellie Matheson, who works at MoJ Digital, also spoke at Services Week 2020 about having two Design Systems and working with that. How do you, how, what’s been your experience of using two design systems at once?   Adam Silver: So it’s not, it’s not the ideal situation. It’s because, the reason why I think design systems appear in departments is, is because, well for 2 reasons. One is that GOV.UK Design System just can’t go fast enough in accepting contributions which is kind of what I was talking about earlier. They’re just not resourced enough I don’t think. It takes a lot of effort to build out a component.   Laura Stevens:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.   Adam Silver:  So that, that’s one reason where a department could move a little bit faster. Quality might be a tad lower but they can move a bit faster. Because they’re not worrying about the needs of the whole of government, they’re just worrying about the needs of their department of the needs of a programme within a department, sometimes that’s the case. And the other reason is because there are literally department specific patterns. But I see it as a temporary solution while, until the GOV.UK Design System can pull those patterns in.    Laura Stevens: And you, on your blog post, you also contributed a pattern along with your colleagues Amanda Kerry and Gemma Hutley, what was that pattern?   Adam Silver:  That was how to ask users for their bank details. So as part of the, as part of the Child Funeral Fund service that we were designing, the main, the main point was that the user is claiming back the costs. So to do that they need to provide their bank details and that way we can, during the claims process, make that payment to them.    Laura Stevens: And what was it like to contribute your own pattern to that, or your team's pattern to that?   Adam Silver: The reason why I wanted to contribute the bank details pattern was because while we were designing the service, there was no actual pattern existing for the bank details. And we looked in the backlog and we talked to people across government and in our own department as well, and there was no, there was no solid example of how to, how to ask for it. There was lots of different good examples but there was no one way. So that’s something that we had to tackle during the 6 week period.    And so it would have been a real, it would have saved us a lot of time if that did, if that pattern was part of the GOV.UK Design System. So we thought ok well look, we’ve learnt quite a bit about it by searching around what other people have done, and we made a decision ourselves for our service. So why don’t we use what we’ve learnt, work a little bit harder and contribute it back.    Laura Stevens: So I’m sitting here with Tim Paul...And so you can ask him anything, what do you ask him?   Adam Silver: Hi Tim, I would ask you how to quantify the value of a design system?   Laura Stevens: So a nice easy question there.    Tim Paul: Yeah, thanks Adam!    Laura Stevens: But I did actually hear there was, I did actually see this was, this was your talk in Services Week 2020, wasn’t it?   Tim Paul: Yeah. Yeah. So first of all, that was really good to hear from him. And yeah. One of the things we’ve always known that we need to do, and any team will need to do, is to somehow quantify the benefits of the thing that you’re delivering. Design systems are no exception. But it is quite hard to do that because of the nature of the service and the products I think. They’re not transactional services, you can’t watch people kind of go through them, people aren’t signed in when they use it and so measuring how many people are using your service and product is tricky enough.   And then quantifying the actual material benefits is also not that easy. It’s all about productivity and that’s quite a hard thing to measure. These aren’t small tasks that can be done in a few minutes where you can, can easily measure how much faster people get. These are tools which help people over the course of days and weeks and months in quite unpredictable and subtle ways.    So we’ve always struggled a little bit. Although I think this quarter we’ve gotten a little bit better at this stuff. And so we were joined by Roxy, who’s a Product Manager in GDS, and she’s really helped us deliver a kind of economic model and, and a business case for how, how much benefit the Design System is, is giving people. And so we did a fair amount of research, we did lots of analysis of things like repos on Github.    And we fed all of this information into an economic model, we worked with an economist called Parri. We, we, we had lots of other data points. Our user researcher Rosie did, at quite short notice, did some really good research where we interviewed around 10 designers and dev-developers from different departments, and we got them to talk about their experience of using our tools. We got them to do the very uncomfortable thing of like trying to, trying to tell us how much more or less productive they were using our tools and not using our tools.   Laura Stevens:Yeah.   Tim Paul: Which is a, it’s a really tough ask. But people did tell us and we got enough data points that we figured taking an average and going with a conservative version of that average was sufficient. And so feeding all of this stuff together, and thinking about how many teams are actually using our products and for how long and so on, we got to a kind of round figure of, we think we’re probably saving the government about £17 million pounds a year right now    And that’s based on the assumption that without the Design System, government would need to spend about that much money to deliver the same services of a similar quality. So yeah.   Laura Stevens: And were you, did you think the figure would be about £17 million or did you...   Tim Paul: Yeah..I don’t know. I guess it was higher than maybe I was expecting.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.    Tim Paul: Yeah. Yeah. But one of the things we’re really keen to do is focus as much as we possibly can on, on the more qualitative benefits of Design Systems.   Laura Stevens: Sure.   Tim Paul: Rather than treating them as a kind of efficiency tool. They definitely do help teams work more productively but what we’re really hoping is those teams use their excess capacity to deliver better services. And so Adam kind of touched on that. Because they don’t have to worry about checkboxes, and radio buttons and headers and footers and making those all accessible and usable, they can spend that time that they’ve saved focusing on the actual service itself, and the content design, and the service design and the policy design and so on. And that’s really where the gains are to be had for individual service teams.   Laura Stevens: Adam also referenced about how there are other individual organisations using their own design systems, they’ve made up their own design systems. Why do you think places have created their own versions?   Tim Paul: There have always been other design resources made by other teams and departments in government, and that should come as no surprise. For the most part these are people with quite similar missions and goals to ourselves.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Tim Paul: They’re trying to solve the same problems but at the level of their individual programme or department. And so a couple of years ago when we were initiating this work, we made a conscious decision to, to not treat them as rivals or competitors or in some way a symptom of failure. They’re really just people who are trying to solve the same problem.   And so we, r-rather than go around and try and s-shut them down or anything like that, we made friends with these people, these people are now contributors and we try and work closely together with them    Laura Stevens: And not only is the GOV.UK Design System helping in central government, but it’s also being, helping across the public sector in local government and the NHS. And we’re now going to hear from Emma Lewis, from Hackney, about her experience of using the Design System in a local authority.    Emma Lewis: I’m Emma Lewis, I am the Lead Frontend Developer at the London Borough of Hackney.    Laura Stevens:  What is the London Borough of Hackney doing with design systems?   Emma Lewis:  So we have our own Hackney Design System and Hackney Pattern Library, and both of those are based on top of GOV.UK Design System and GOV.UK frontend respoistry. So we have our pattern library is called LHB Frontend. Which is essentially a copy of GOV.UK frontend which also imports GOV.UK frontend and we build on top of that.    So we have a bunch of different components, some of which are basically identical to the GOV.UK components but they have sort Hackney, ‘Hacknified’ styles or small colour changes, spacing tweaks, things like that. We have some components that are actually identical to GOV.UK and some components that are completely new to Hackney because they're more local government focused.   Laura Stevens:  What have been the benefits to you working in local government, for using a central government design system?   Emma Lewis:  I mean it’s been huge. So having all of these things just out of the box sort of we can use, it’s such an enormous time saver. But also having things like we, you know, we know they are accessible. So it means the services that we’re providing to residents and staff are so much better than they would have been otherwise.    Laura Stevens:  And I think a lot of people respond to with the GOV.UK Design System is also that community element of it. Has that helped you as well at the council?   Emma Lewis:  Enormously. There’s no-one else really experienced at frontend development that I work with, and having that community of people who I can ask questions to, is such a positive thing. And likewise I am so grateful for the GOV.UK Design System that it means I want to contribute and I think other people feel like that.    So I’ve contributed a couple of pull requests that are like really really tiny minor changes but feels good to do that. And it’s something that I want to do. And I think you see that with other people in the community who aren’t necessarily working centrally at GDS but have benefited from it so want to contribute something.   Laura Stevens:  Why is having a design system a good thing for local government?   Emma Lewis:  It’s...there are lots of different reasons. The main, the first reason is consistency. So it means that you know, any of our products that use that design system are going to look the same and that means, that’s really good for lots of different reasons. It means we’re not duplicating code in lots of different places. So you know, if something changes we don’t need to update it in loads of different places, there’s just a central place where all of that stuff comes from. And that’s something that developers love.   Laura Stevens:  Yeah.   Emma Lewis:  But also I think accessibility is a huge thing. The time and resourcing that goes into making a design system like GOV.UK, like I’ve never seen the amount of effort that goes into a component be put into that kind of thing outside of a design system.    Laura Stevens:  Yeah.   Emma Lewis:  And so making sure that it is accessible means that it’s usable by all of our residents and that’s really important. And we, one of our missions at Hackney is to create digital services that are so good that people prefer to use them.   Laura Stevens:  Yeah.   Emma Lewis:  And in order to do that, they need to be available to work for everyone and that’s like incredibly important.   Laura Stevens:  So this is a bit of a, like a retrospective question. What do you wish you knew, or to anybody who is listening from a local authority, from a local borough, before you started creating the Hackney Pattern Library?   Emma Lewis:  I think 2 things that spring to mind. One of which is how important your decisions are when you start doing something like that. So I think I hadn’t appreciated how difficult it can be to change things down the line. And this is something that...so Nick [Colley] and Hanna [Laasko] who work on GOV.UK frontend actually we’re really kind and came into Hackney to talk to us about the design system. And they were talking about how hard it is, or how bad it is to make breaking changes.   Laura Stevens:  Yeah.   Emma Lewis:  So you know, changes to the design system or pattern library that are going to break things for users of the older versions. And that’s something that I wasn't, I hadn’t really thought about much until that conversation. And now, we’re sort of 6 months into our first version of our pattern library, and I’m starting to see, ‘oh I wish I’d done that differently’. And you know really feeling empowered to take the time at the beginning and think about those considerations about how you’re doing something and whether it is the right thing and what possible use cases there might be down the line, can be really helpful.   Laura Stevens:  So how, what are people using it, what sort of stage are you at?   Emma Lewis:  So I’m doing some work at the moment with our mapping team, who create all sorts of maps for residents and for staff to look at, from things like where water fountains are, are in the borough to planning applications and all sorts of different things. And we’re coming up with, I suppose sort, it’s sort of similar to a design system in a way, we’re trying to come up with this sort of map template that we can use to show all different kinds of data. And I was just showing them really quickly yesterday how to use the design system to put a header and footer on the page, and their faces were just like lit up. It was so exciting that this was suddenly all available to them.    Like using the GOV.UK design system has been an incredible time saver. Like I can’t, we wouldn’t have a pattern library now if we’d had to build everything from scratch. It just. We have so many different projects on and we don’t have the people to build something like that, and by having that, it’s mean that, not only that we can use it on projects going forward, but we’re also massively reducing the amount of time it takes to build all those individual projects as well. So it’s been, it’s just been enormous in terms of the time it saved and like I said, the community around it.    Laura Stevens:  Yeah.   Emma Lewis:  The support that’s been provided with it.    Tim Paul: That was really really nice to hear that. It’s so, so gratifying I think to all of us on the team when other people reuse our work.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Tim Paul: It’s one of the best things about working in government and in the public sector is that we can be happy about the fact that people are stealing our work. In fact we kind of strongly encourage it. So yeah, that’s, that’s great. It’s, it’s doing exactly what we hoped it would do.    So we’ve known for quite a while there’s huge potential beyond central government for, for the work that we’re doing, not just ourselves but alongside our contributors, to, to benefit local government and even as far as international governments. We’ve, we’ve got I think we know about 5 different local authorities which are in some way using GOV.UK Frontend, and we’ve got a couple of other governments from other countries who are using our work as well. So this is really really good.   Laura Stevens: And in both those clips, both Emma and Adam, they both spoke about accessibility and how having it tested to the level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines or WCAG.    Tim Paul: Yes.   Laura Stevens: Is that right?   Tim Paul: That’s correct, yeah.    So this is, this has turned out to be a huge driver I think for adoption of the Design System because there this standard called the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, it’s been around for a while, it’s in version 2.1 now. But the thing that has changed recently is that meeting level double A of that standard has now become an actual requirement, not just of central government services but the whole of the public sector by this September.    And so suddenly there’s a real strong need by teams everywhere to make their services fully accessible. And that’s pretty difficult. There’s lots you can do it make it easier like building in accessibility from the very beginning is probably the best way you can make your life easier here. Retrofitting accessibility is, is always a terrible experience for everybody.    But it turns out that making even simple things like buttons fully accessible across the full range of assistive technologies, devices and browsers, is actually pretty involved, difficult work. You’ve got lots of testing to do, you’ve got, the state of assistive technologies at the moment is still probably not as mature as it could be, which means there are lots of weird little bugs and kinks.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Tim Paul: Funny little idiosyncrasies across all the different technology stacks. And so the work that we do in the centre is to do all of that testing and iron out all of those bugs and figure out how to make these things work across all of the assistive techs that we know that people use. And that level of work, that depth of work is probably not a thing that an individual service team could or should be spending its time doing. They’ve got the full service to worry about and they really shouldn’t be spending the amount of time that we can spend on, on making low level components fully accessible.    So it’s one of the things I’m happiest about because it’s something that we can really contribute to.   Laura Stevens: And in, you mentioned as well that we’re not only helping central government, local, NHS but we’re also going abroad as well. And in March 2019, the New Zealand Digital Service published a blog about how they used the GOV.UK Design System to help create their own. So, and they had a quote in there saying: “We decided not to reinvent the wheel so we’re building on the GOV.UK Design System, a system with years of development. It’s a mature and proven Design System with full rigour and accessibility and testing”. So what does having that sort of reach and international impact feel like for you and the team here at GDS?   Tim Paul: It’s really nice, it’s kind of flattering. Yeah it also feels a little bit scary.   I think Emma alluded to the issue of having dependencies and breaking changes and things like design systems. And that’s a thing that we’ve experienced as well. So if you’re working on a service team in an agile environment, then the idea that you can iterate rapidly and fail fast and all of that, it’s great, it works really well. It doesn’t quite translate when you’re building a central code resource because if you’re iterating rapidly, if you’re failing fast, if you’re making lots of breaking changes, then you’re disrupting the work of everybody who’s relying on your code base. And so we end up being a lot more conservative, we end up moving slower and at a much measured kind of careful pace. And that’s because we are intensely aware that everybody using our tools is going to be disrupted by any breaking changes we make.   And so when we hear that you know, another country or local government authority is using our service, it’s really really good but it really hammers home to us how careful we have to be not to break things for them as well.   Laura Stevens: Do you think there’s a way of fixing that? Or is that just an inherent problem with having a central design system?   Tim Paul: I think probably the way to address that challenge is to not try to create some uber design system for the world, which would be the egotistical response to that challenge.    You know the internet is supposed to be made up of many parts loosely coupled, and that’s what we should be trying to do here. So making sure that people can use our tools as the foundation for the things they need, and that we have nice productive feedback mechanisms between, between those. That’s probably the right way to approach this.   Laura Stevens: Is there anything where you’ve seen the Design System used in a way that you just never expected it to be used, or it popped up somewhere that you...   Tim Paul:  We’re, we’re sometimes asked about doesn’t, don’t, don’t these products make it really easy to make fake versions of GOV.UK, which is a really valid question. And the answer is yes, they do. They make it easy for anybody to make things look like GOV.UK. But to be honest if your motivations are to trick people, then it’s always been pretty easy to make fake versions of a website.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Tim Paul: So we’re not making it that much easier for the scammers, but we’re making it a lot easier for the service teams who are building legitimate services. But yes, every now and then we see, we see a dodgy looking GOV.UK site and we see our own code in there, and that’s kind of weird but you know there’s a whole bit of GDS which is dedicated to spotting that stuff and getting it taken down so.   Laura Stevens: So thank you so much to Tim to coming on today and also to Emma and to Adam for talking about the GOV.UK Design System. And you can listen to all the episodes of the Government Digital Service Podcast on Apple Music, Spotify and all other major podcast platforms. And you can read the transcript of Podbean.  So thank you again and goodbye.   Tim Paul: Thank you.

  Laura Stevens: Hello, and welcome to the Government Digital Service podcast, and the first one of the decade. My name is Laura Stevens and for regular listeners of the podcast, I now have a new job title as Creative Content Producer here at GDS.   And for the first podcast of 2020 we’re going to be speaking about accessibility. Everybody has to interact with government, people cannot shop around and go to different providers so there’s an obligation for government to make its services as accessible as possible. At GDS accessibility is considered in everything we do. It’s one of our design principles, we publish accessibility guidance on GOV.UK and we want to make sure there are no barriers preventing someone from using something.   And to tell us more about accessibility at GDS, I have Rianna Fry and Chris Heathcote. Please can you both introduce yourselves and what you do here at GDS. So Rianna first.   Rianna Fry:  Yeah, so I’m Rianna and I am a Senior Campaign Manager here at GDS. So my job is helping to tell more people about all the great stuff that GDS does. And one of the main things at the moment is accessibility.    Laura Stevens:  And Chris?   Chris Heathcote:  Hi, I’m Chris Heathcote, I’m a Product Manager and Designer at GDS. So I’m running the team that will be monitoring websites for accessibility going forward.   Laura Stevens:  Yes, and there’ll be more on that later in the podcast.   So I just thought a good place to start, because as I mentioned GDS has to design for everyone, so to give a sort of sense of the needs of the population we’re designing for I have a few statements for you both. And I’m going to ask you whether they’re true or false.    So true or false, 12 million people in the UK have some kind of hearing loss.   Rianna Fry:  True.   Chris Heathcote:  That sounds true.   Laura Stevens:  It is true. Second statement. 6.4 million people in the UK have dyslexia.    Chris Heathcote:  That sounds true as well.   Rianna Fry:  Yeah, it does.   Laura Stevens:  It is true as well. And thirdly, 2 million people in the UK have significant sight loss.    Rianna Fry: True.    Chris Heathcote: At least 2 million I would have thought, yes.   Laura Stevens: Yes. You are correct, they’re all true.   Rianna Fry: Do we, do we win something?   Laura Stevens: I’m afraid I didn’t bring a prize and now I’m being shamed, I’m sorry.    Rianna Fry:  Right, OK. Sorry.   Laura Stevens:  But all these stats are from the GDS accessibility empathy lab. And this is a space at GDS which helps raise awareness about accessibility, and also is an assistive technology testing space. And there’s another poster in the lab that says when you design services, you need to think about permanent, temporary and situational accessibility needs.    What does that mean?   Rianna Fry:  So I think I’ll touch on situational accessibility needs. So for me that was one of the most sort of light bulb moments when I came to work on this project with Chris and the rest of the team. So often when we talk about accessibility, I think a lot people naturally think about disabilities that people might have, like motor disabilities or sight impairments for example.    But obviously at some point, they’re, we’re in situations that prevent us from being able to use digital services, perhaps in the way that they’re initially intended. So if you just think about social media. So my background is in digital marketing so thinking about videos. Obviously captions are massive and subtitles for videos because when you’re on the tube, you can’t always hear what you’re listening to.   Laura Stevens:  Yeah.   Rianna Fry:  So thinking about those kind of things was really sort of key for me, you know. When we build things or create content, we want as many people to see and use these things as possible. So considering all the factors that may prevent people from using something in one way, I think that’s what it’s about.   Chris Heathcote:  Yeah, I mean at GDS we’ve always considered that wherever there is a web browser people will try and use that to interact with government.   Laura Stevens:  Yeah.   Chris Heathcote:  So right from the start, we saw people doing passport applications on their PlayStations. And we’ve seen…   Laura Stevens: Really?   Chris Heathcote:  Yeah. So we’ve seen mobiles, you know are now more than 50% of traffic often. And so we, what we, you know accessibility is just one way to make sure that people can always use the services and the content that we provide.    Laura Stevens:  Yeah I think definitely what you’re saying about mobiles as well. Because I looked up Matt Hobbs, who’s the Head of Frontend Development at GDS, tweeted about the November 2019 GOV.UK stats, and mobile was over 50%. It was 52.86%.    Rianna Fry: Absolutely, yeah.   Laura Stevens: And I guess part of this is also thinking like why is it particularly important that government is a leader in accessible services. Like what, why is that so important?   Chris Heathcote:  I mean as you said at the beginning, you know you don’t choose to use government, you have to use government. So you can’t go anywhere else. So it’s, it’s our obligation to make sure that, that everything is accessible to everyone. And it does have to be everyone, and especially those with disabilities, or needing to use assistive technology, tend to have to interact with government more.    So we do have an obligation for that.   Rianna Fry:  And I think if you think about it, these are public services. They’re online public services so they need to be able to use, be used by the public not exclusive groups. And I think that’s what it's all about.    Laura Stevens:  And sort of on that, or leading on from that, I wanted us to talk about GDS as leaders in digital accessibility. So at GDS, we’ve, we set up the cross-government accessibility community, the Head of Accessibility for government sits at GDS and as mentioned, it’s one of our design principles. So we want to design for everyone.    And from your work here at GDS, do you have any sort of examples of where GDS has led in accessibility? So for instance you were talking there about assistive technology, and I know that GOV.UK, there’s a lot of work done on GOV.UK to make sure that it works with assistive technology.   Chris Heathcote:  Yes, I mean especially as sort of the standards for accessibility have changed over the last 7, 8 years that GDS has existed. We’ve always made sure that our code works on everything and for all assistive technology. And also we’ve made you know, now with the [GOV.UK] Design System made it possible for the, all services in government to take that and so they don’t have to do the work as well.    Laura Stevens:  So how can people use the Design System, if they’re listening and they don’t quite know what the Design System is. Can you explain it a bit please?   Chris Heathcote:  Yes. So I mean if you go to the GOV.UK Design System site, it provides basically all the code you need to make something look and feel like GOV.UK. You know we’ve always said that GOV.UK is a single domain for government, and that services in central government should look and feel like GOV.UK and be linked from GOV.UK.   And if you use our code, it means you get all the usability and accessibility benefits that we’ve spent a lot of time and effort to make sure work really well. And you get that basically for free.    Laura Stevens:  Yeah, and it’s also I guess you’re sharing the, as you were just talking about, you’re sharing the hard work. So if you’re a smaller organisation or you don’t have that sort of technical capability, you’re saying it’s already there. We can, you can just go to the...   Chris Heathcote:  Yes, we saw that every, basically every service in government was spending 6 months or more, you know writing code that’s basically the same.   Laura Stevens:  Yeah.   Chris Heathcote:  That’s why the Design System exists, and is so popular.    Laura Stevens:  And have you seen any sort of examples of…   Rianna Fry:  Well I think, I think you mentioned this near the beginning as well, the accessibility empathy lab.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Rianna Fry:  So that’s sort of a space for people to really experience some of the impairments that people may have, and really put them in that space. And I think that really helps to bring things to life. Because it’s really easy to forget or not consider what some needs might be. And I’ve been along to some of the tours there and it’s, it’s great to see people in all different roles coming from all different kinds of organisations sort of using the different personas that are in that lab, to think differently about how web pages should be built.   And also even you know, the words that we use. And I think that sort of in line with what Chris was saying, there’s also the, the style guide. Because we often forget as a communicator, plain English is really important, that’s like a basic thing.   Laura Stevens:  Yes.   Rianna Fry:  That most people know about and practice, but don’t necessarily consider as part of accessibility. And I know when I worked at the council we used the GOV.UK Style Guide as like the basis because we knew that there was a lot of research and it’s ongoing.   And also like as Chris said, you know it’s not just people within GDS that inform this work. It’s across government and also some of the wider public sector. There’s great communities that are sharing really great work in this space, and that all feeds in.    Laura Stevens: No I think that’s really interesting as well what you’re saying because you came from a local government background into central government.    Rianna Fry:  Yeah.   Laura Stevens:  And you were able to use some of those sort of GDS or cross-government tools, and you were able to pick them up and use them. That’s really good.   Rianna Fry: Yeah, absolutely yeah.    Laura Stevens:  And, and you mentioned there that a lot of the work in accessibility it’s not, it’s not, even though a lot of it sits at GDS, it’s contributed to by people across the accessibility community across government.    We’ve got a cross-government accessibility community, which has more than 1,200 people in the Google group. And are you involved in the community Chris or?   Chris Heathcote:  Well I’m on the email..   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Chris Heathcote:  And I will, and I respond to questions about the accessibility monitoring. Yeah, I mean it’s I think, because accessibility cuts across so many different jobs in government, so it isn’t just the people that, that do accessibility auditing day in and day out and,but we now have those across government.    But you know, all frontend developers, all designers, all user researchers tend to need to know something about accessibility, and have questions and even though they’re not you know, full time professionals in this, the community’s there to help everyone understand what we’re looking for and how to consider accessibility in everything they do.   Laura Stevens:  And do you think that’s sort of been a shift because Rianna was mentioning like how in the lab, you get people of all different job titles in, and that’s sort of shift in making accessibility part of everyone’s job, not just people who have accessibility in their job title. Like neither of you 2 have accessibility in job title for instance.   Chris Heathcote:  Yeah. I mean I think that’s been a big change like it was with design before and user research. It isn’t just a separate specialist, even though we need the specialists to you know, do the work.   Laura Stevens:  Yeah yeah, of course.   Chris Heathcote:  It’s something that everyone has to consider as they do their job. So especially like frontend developers, we expect them to be testing their code for accessibility at, just as they are doing it. Which means that when they do do an audit and a specialist comes in and looks at the site, there shouldn’t be any surprises.   Rianna Fry:  And I think that’s one of the, so Richard Morton, who’s the Interim Head of Accessibility across government, that’s one of the things that he says, is that actually the ambition for his role is that there won’t, in the future, need to be specialists necessarily because everybody has a, a level of understanding about it.    Obviously that’s a long way off.     Laura Stevens:  And also I guess he doesn’t want to talk himself out of a job.   Rianna Fry:  Yeah! Exact--and that I mean, he does follow it up with that.   But I think, I think that’s what’s really nice about the community is that you have got people, so for example the designer that I’ve worked on, Charlotte, with the campaign for accessibility.    Laura Stevens:  Is this Charlotte Downs?   Rianna Fry:  Charlotte Downs, yeah. So since she’s been working that, she’s just sort of, her mind has been blown by all this information that’s out there.    Laura Stevens:  Yeah.   Rianna Fry:  And she’s now a go to person with GDS for design - accessible design - particularly around PDFs. And I think that’s the thing, sort of as you sort of get into it, it’s really easy to become really passionate about accessibility because it’s all about doing the right thing. And I think particularly within GDS, and actually most digital based roles I would say, it’s all about users. And accessibility, that’s what it’s all about.    Laura Stevens:  I’ve heard people refer to the PDF mountain in government. What does that mean and why is that related to accessibility?   Chris Heathcote:  I mean right from the start of GOV.UK, we saw that central government alone was publishing pretty much everything as PDFs. And PDFs vary in quality and vary in accessibility as well. It is possible to make more accessible PDFs. But generally we’ve always said things should be webpages, content should be on webpages and in HTML. But, and in central government we’ve been moderately successful in that. There’s still a lot of PDFs being published but we’ve reduced that, and especially in services, they tend not to use PDFs anymore.   So I think legislation is a good time for, for all public sector organisations to reflect on that and see how they can change some of their processes and how they publish information.   Laura Stevens:  So changing a mountain into a molehill.   Chris Heathcote:  Yes. I mean we, I think you know there will always be some PDFs for certain reasons but the number of PDFs being published should go down.   Rianna Fry:  So just thinking about stuff like that, as Chris says, changing processes. Is there a reason why we have to have this as a PDF format, why can’t it be HTML? I mean it, the campaign, it, it was the same you know.    How do we make the supporter pack in HTML, it doesn’t look as pretty, which for creative people might be something, like a bone of contention, but ultimately we want people to be able to use it. So creating things and making things available in different formats if you have to have a PDF, is the right thing to do.    Laura Stevens:  Yeah and I think that’s sort of interesting as well with the creative side of things. Because obviously as government though you need to make it’s as accessible as possible and I think GOV.UK has won design awards so it shows that like, accessibility doesn’t mean that like design goes out the window, not at all. Like I think it was Fast Company put us at the top 10 designs of the decades in the 2010s. So..   Chris Heathcote:  Yeah I mean even when we won the Design Museum's Design of the Year award.   Laura Stevens:  Yeah.   Chris Heathcote:  You know we were on, we were called boring.com the next day. But you know we have a lot of designers working here in GDS, and there is an awful lot of design built into it even though it may look a bit plainer than other websites. But that’s because we’re totally focussed on usability and accessibility.   Rianna Fry:  There’s no point having a beautiful website if no-one can use it   Laura Stevens:  I would just sort of, what I would like to sort of talk about is how accessible services help everyone.    For instance we have GOV.UK content that’s now accessible via voice assistance. So I think there’s now more than 13,000 pieces of GOV.UK content that’s available via Google Home or Amazon Alexa. And why is that good for people, like why, why is that good having these sort of pieces anyone can access via voice?   Chris Heathcote:  I mean there’s a lot of people that can’t use a standard computer and a standard web browser. I mean and that, that ranges from having disabilities through to just not understanding how a computer works and not wanting to understand how a computer works.   So being able to access government information if not services yet, just through voice I think is, is really important.   Rianna Fry:  I was just going to say, personally as well, so a, a relative of mine recently was unwell and lost his sight. And he has an Alexa and so although it was still a difficult transition for him, him still being able to access things as soon as he got home really helped.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Rianna Fry: And I think you know like Chris said, not everyone wants to use a computer as well.   Laura Stevens:  Yeah, yeah.   Rianna Fry:  Or if you’re sort of busy and out and about, sort of that situational side of things, it just makes things more accessible and more available for people, which is great. It’s easier right?   Laura Stevens:  Chris, you alluded to this earlier that the sort of regulations have changed since GDS begun. And while accessibility has always been part of GDS’ work, there are new regulations that have come in quite recently, and these regulations mean public sector organisations have a legal duty to make sure their websites and apps meet accessibility requirements.    And can you tell me a bit about them and sort of, what the key dates are with that and…   Chris Heathcote:  Yes. So this is a European-wide initiative that started in 2016. It’s now UK law. And any new websites that a public sector body makes, that's certainly in public, needs to be accessible now. And they should also publish something called an accessibility statement on their website that says how accessible they are and how to get in contact with them if you find any issues with them.   But then the big deadline is 23 September 2020, when all public sector websites, old and new, need to be accessible.   Laura Stevens:  And how is this related to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which I called WCAG, but is that the correct way of pronouncing…   Chris Heathcote:  Yeah.   Laura Stevens:  ...that acronym? So yeah, the web--oh sorry.   Chris Heathcote:  So WCAG is a W3C [World Wide Web Consortium] standard about web content accessibility. And it’s been updated pretty recently to version 2.1. And the standard that the legislation and we require is something called double A. So there are 3, 3 levels of accessibility mentioned in the guidelines - A, double A and triple A.    And double A means that there should not be any major blockers to anyone being able to use the website.    Laura Stevens:  Will the regulations apply differently to different parts of the public sector, for instance central government or to schools or to healthcare?    Chris Heathcote:  There are some differences. The legislation makes some exemptions especially, there is partial exemptions for schools and nurseries.    Laura Stevens:  Yeah.   Chris Heathcote:  Although the way it’s written, actually they’re not quite as exempt as you might think.   Laura Stevens:    Chris Heathcote:  Because a lot of people are doing stuff online, and if the online is the only route to them that has to be accessible.    Laura Stevens: Yes.    Chris Heathcote:  But generally the exemptions are, are quite small.    Rianna Fry:  I think what’s really important as well is that, I mean it’s this is sort of easy, easier for me to say I guess because I work in an organisation that really cares about accessibility and already has accessibility built in to a lot of the ways of working. But I think for me it’s sort of helpful to think about this as an opportunity. So I think this creates a really good excuse to educate people about why that’s important and also now that there’s law behind this...   Laura Stevens:  Yeah.   Rianna Fry: that feeds into the Equality Act, and I mean that’s really important. If you’re going to pay to build a website, or spend a load of your time creating content, then you want to make sure that people can access that content or access that, access that service.   Why, why would you want to try and get around that? Because all you’re doing is reducing the amount of people that can access it. So I think you know, although I understand that sometimes there are reasons for that like time. I think this is about behaviour change, and also education, helping people to understand that. If you’re, if you’re opening your service up, you’re reducing costs that may be elsewhere because you’re making your website more efficient and work for people so that they can self-serve.   Laura Stevens:  And so do you think that’s why having an accessibility statement is a really good thing? Because you know how you’re saying this is a way of creating behaviour change. By the process of going through and creating accessibility statement, which is this statement on the website that says, this is why our service is accessible. And it also has to say, if I’m right, this isn’t accessible but this is how we’re working.   Rianna Fry:  Absolutely.   Laura Stevens:  Yeah because GOV.UK has an accessibility statement, doesn’t it?   Chris Heathcote:  Yeah. What we are trying to do is make sites accessible so pub--, so you know getting the information together and publishing an accessibility statement is a really good start to making sure that the website is accessible and remains as accessible as it changes.    Rianna Fry:  I was just going to say you know, I think that shows a commitment to making a change.    Laura Stevens:  Yeah.   Rianna Fry:  I think it’s unrealistic to expect all websites overnight to be completely accessible, because some of this stuff involves a lot of legacy things.   Laura Stevens:  Yes.   Rianna Fry:  And also PDFs, a lot of PDFs. But this, I, as I understand it, and I’m not an expert so Chris you might correct me on this, but that’s statements about saying you know, these areas aren’t right but this is our plan to fix them. And if you can’t access information here’s who you need to contact to get that.    Laura Stevens:  Yes. And that's an important part, you have that contact.   Rianna Fry:  Absolutely, yeah.    Laura Stevens:  A name or an email address that you can go forward to.   And this actually leads me nicely on, because this was, we chose accessibility in January because there was a loose news hook for the podcast that January is when enforcement and reporting will begin. And this is quite a big job to undertake so Chris could you kind of talk to me about this next bit of your role?   Chris Heathcote:  Yeah so to make sure that people are taking the legislation seriously, in each country in Europe, so it’s not just the UK, there is a monitoring body set up. In the UK it was decided that GDS would host that. And that’s the team I’m setting up at the moment.    So we have an obligation in, in the legislation as well. So we will be monitoring a number of public sector websites. It’s about...by 2023, it’ll be about 2,000 websites a year.   And what we do is most of that will be automated checking using automated accessibility checkers. But we know that that only covers 30 to 40% of accessibility issues and WCAG points. So we’ll be doing a bit of manual checking as well and, and for a certain amount of websites, we have to do a sort of fuller audit that’s more like a traditional accessibility audit.   Laura Stevens:  And this is done on behalf of the Minister for Cabinet Office isn’t it?   Chris Heathcote:  Yes. So yeah, they’re the person that's mentioned in the legislation. And yes, we’ll be reporting to them about what we find.   Laura Stevens:  And when you go through these websites, how do you get back in touch with them, do you create an accessibility report, how does that work?   Chris Heathcote:  So, so what we’re going to do is from the testing that we do, we’ll write a report. We’ll send that to the public sector organisation and start a conversation with them really about do they understand the report, do they see the same issues that we’re seeing, and what they’re going to do to fix them.   And hopefully that’s a constructive conversation and we can provide technical support where needed.   Laura Stevens:  Yeah, and would you also I guess point to some of the stuff on GOV.UK? There’s accessibility guidance there as well. Would you be using that?   Chris Heathcote:  Yeah absolutely. I mean, I mean both, both the stuff that we publish for central government like the Design System and the Service Manual. But also you know we are looking also for resources around the W3C publish and things like training that, that are starting to happen that we can point people to so that you know, they, they can fix the issues as quickly as possible.   Laura Stevens:  Say if a website has been found with accessibility issues, what would be a way of enforcing the findings of a report?   Chris Heathcote:  So we’re working with the Equality and Human Rights Commission in England, Wales and Scotland, and for Northern Ireland it’s the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland. They are actually doing the enforcing on accessibility because it, it, falls under the Equality Act, so they’ve been enforcing accessibility for, for a while. And so that’s their role.   However we will be enforcing whether they, the sites have accessibility statements or not because that’s an additional thing on top of the Equality Act.   Laura Stevens:  So you’re gonna be very busy over the next year and onwards from there.   Chris Heathcote:  Yes. I mean it’s never ending. Yes we’re recruiting at the moment - the Audit Team.    Laura Stevens:  Are you giving a plug on the podcast if anyone’s listening and they want to apply?   Chris Heathcote:  Well we will, we, we’ll certainly have some roles opening over the next year.   Laura Stevens:  And how will you find this sample of websites, or do we not know this yet?   Chris Heathcote:  We’ve spent quite a while coming up with a list of what is the public sector and what isn’t.    Laura Stevens: Yes.   Chris Heathcote:  And also what websites they have. There’s another team in GDS called the Domain Management Team, who have also been trying to look at what websites government runs, and what the public sector runs. And they’re more tasked with making sure that the domains remain secure and are being used properly.    But you know this list hasn’t existed before. So we’ve also approached it, we’ve crea--we’ve gathered lots of open data that government publishes around public sector organisations. And we’re using that to create a sort of master list of the public sector that we will then sample against.    Laura Stevens: Rianna you actually mentioned this earlier, and I know you’ve joined GDS relatively recently in the summer of last year. And sometimes I think accessibility can be landed on a person, one person in an organisation, and that it can feel quite overwhelming when suddenly there are regulations that people need to, and they need to learn a lot of knowledge quite quickly, how did you find that when you joined and you were given the accessibility campaign to manage? When you had to learn all this information, what did you find that was helpful or how did you find that process?   Rianna Fry:  Well I think I’ve been really lucky in that I was surrounded by experts at GDS.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Rianna Fry:  And also there is so much information on GOV.UK. And I mean, that’s not a plug, it’s true. And so like I said before, Charlotte Downs for example, she, when she, when we started working on this together she did a load of research on different things.   Because I mean, even once you know it, even once you’ve been through some training on how to create an accessible document. When you’re knocking together a document, it’s really easy to forget. Like I said, it’s behaviour change. So I think it’s about checking in with other people and asking other people to just check over content.   You know I remember when I first started working on this project and I sent out a survey and I made an assumption that it was accessible and it wasn’t. And that was..   Laura Stevens:  And it was a survey about accessibility?   Rianna Fry: It was, yeah.    Laura Stevens:  Oh, yeah.   Rianna Fry: I mean it was a steep learning curve. Thankfully it was only live for about 2 minutes before I noticed.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Rianna Fry:  And me and Richard [Morton] then worked together on some stuff, but I think that’s what it’s about, it’s about asking people to check in. And you know things aren’t always going to be perfect but that’s why it helps to be part of communities so that you’ve kind of got constructive friends   Laura Stevens: Yes.   Rianna Fry:  that can give you constructive feedback on how you can improve what you're doing. So I think, yeah it’s about seeing what’s out there and speaking to people and asking people to, for feedback on what you’re doing.    Laura Stevens:  And I know we mentioned before the communities are very active, the blog posts are very active, but also so you’re running the campaign for accessibility, we’ve had 75,000 visits to the GOV.UK guidance since August 2019. And you’ve also created a campaigns pack, and is that for people, who who’s that for?   Rianna Fry:  So that’s for supporters. So for us, as Chris said this is a massive job, there are so many organisations that need to know about this. And the people that are potentially responsible for managing a public sector website aren’t necessarily in digital roles. They’re not necessarily people that GDS are talking to or aware of.    So if you think about things like GP surgeries for example, they fall into the remit of public sector. Now my GP surgery definitely doesn’t have a digital team. So the, the point of the supporter pack is to try and get especially central government teams onboard, their engagement and communications teams on board and talking to people about the regulations.   So we’re trying to make it easier by bringing that information into one place, which is all the point of the campaign page. So we’ve tried to break it down into 4 steps. So signposting people to guidance that will help them to understand whether or not they’re going to be impacted. Believe it or not, some people aren’t sure whether or not they’re classed as a public sector organisation.   Then secondly deciding how to check the accessibility of their websites. Then making a plan to fix any problems and lastly publishing an accessibility statement, which really summarises the findings and the plans to fix any issues.    Laura Stevens:  And you’re saying there that this is all in one place, where is that place?   Rianna Fry:  So it’s on GOV.UK/accessibility-regulations.   Laura Stevens:  So if, so if I’m from the public sector I can go there and just…   Rianna Fry: Absolutely. Yeah, it’s an open web...   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Rianna Fry:  ...webpage. And I’m, I mean my information’s on the supporter pack so if there are any campaign people out there that want to talk to me, then I’m more than happy to share any additional resources that we’ve got, that we’re using internally and whatever else.   Laura Stevens:  And do you have any sort of top tips, or from your work you’ve done in sort of starting this work on accessibility. Are there any sort of things where you’ve spoken to other organisations, you’ve been like oh that’s a good thing to share. Any best practice or anything like that?   Chris Heathcote:  I mean I think that, that it isn’t just all..it isn’t just a single thing that people need to do. You know we understand that people have websites and they might need to retrofit some accessibility onto that but it is really about changing processes.    So especially when we talk to people like local authorities, the number of people that publish on the website is quite large and it’s educating them to know how to make good PDFs, how to write well, how to, how generally how accessibility of content works. And making sure there’s a process to make sure that that happens. That needs to be in place as much as actually fixing the website and the technical aspects of accessibility.   Rianna Fry:  And I think education is really important. So I think what helps is to tell, help colleagues across organisations to understand why they need to do certain things.    And I think it helps that people, people have an awareness of the Equality Act, and understand when something is law. So I think that helps and I would say to try and use that to, yeah really educate people and try and get people on board internally.   Laura Stevens:  So as a closing segment I thought it might be nice to ask both of you if there’s something in particular that motivates you to work in accessibility, or if there’s something you’ve come across in your work that’s made a real impact on you, and sort of galvanised you to keep going on this.   Chris Heathcote:  I mean I think we, what we see is when we talk to users, and we talk to users all the time, is it gives people independence. People can do things for themselves, they can self-serve, they can see the content on GOV.UK. And it’s, it’s something that they’ve you know, moving digitally has actually changed people’s lives.    Rianna Fry:  Yeah, I think I’d echo that you know. And it’s important that organisations know about the regulations. So supporting those really hard working digital colleagues that spend a load of time researching what, what works for users, and a load of time trying to tell other people how to, you know why PDFs shouldn’t be used.    So I think for me, that’s really important. And also just you know that lightbulb, seeing that lightbulb moment of people going ‘oh god, yeah we really should be doing this and being able to signpost them to the tools to be able to kind of put it into action.   Laura Stevens:  So thank you to Rianna and thank you to Chris for coming on the podcast today. I hope you’ve enjoyed being on the GDS podcast, a first for both of you.   Chris Heathcote: Yeah. Thanks for having us.    Rianna Fry: Yeah. Thanks for having us. And thank you for choosing accessibility to be your first podcast of the decade.    Laura Stevens:  Well I do.   Rianna Fry:  Not just the year, the decade! I mean it feels like it’s really significant. This is going to be a podcast that people remember.    Laura Stevens:  And so yeah, you can listen to all the episodes of the Government Digital Service podcast on Apple Music, Spotify and all other major podcast platforms. And the transcripts are available on Podbean.    So thank you both again, and goodbye!   Chris Heathcote:  Bye.   Rianna Fry:  Thanks!

Sarah Stewart: Hello and welcome to the GDS Podcast. I’m Sarah Stewart. Today’s podcast, the final one of 2019, is a special one, it’s GDS’s Year in Review. Last year, Angus and I went through the year very methodically picking out our highlights. It was quite fun. It’s my last podcast, so I wanted to do something better than quite fun. And what’s better than quite fun? A quiz! I’m going to host a quiz!   So I’m going to be asking 24 questions about GDS, 2 for each month. Obviously, the person with the most points will win. Producer Emily is going to keep score. So let’s meet our contestants.   Contestant number one, what’s your name, what do you do and where are you from?   Laura Stevens: So my name is Laura Stevens. I’m a writer here at GDS. And I’m from a small village in Surrey called Tadworth.   Sarah Stewart: What’s Tadworth known for?   Laura Stevens: So it’s not known for very much, so I had to look this up before I came on the podcast. But it was referenced in the ‘Doomsday Book’ so it’s very old. In the ‘Doomsday Book’ it was known as having woodland worth 4 hogs. So you know, I don’t really know like what --   Sarah Stewart: What a sum!    Laura Stevens: Yeah, like I don’t really know what that equates to but I thought it was quite a fun fact.   Sarah Stewart: You don’t see hogs very much anymore.   Angus Montgomery: How many trees per hog?   Sarah Stewart: And what kind of tree?   Laura Stevens: Yeah, and what kind of hog? I mean...   Angus Montgomery: All good questions.   Sarah Stewart: And Laura, what is your specialist subject at GDS would you say?   Laura Stevens: So I would say my specialist subject would be design here at GDS. But I am wary of saying that because I know that Angus is also very into design and I feel like he may you know, show me up in this quiz and take all the design answers.    Sarah Stewart: Which is a good segue into asking contestant number two, what’s your name and where do you come from?   Angus Montgomery: Hello. I’m Angus Montgomery. I’m a Strategy Advisor and I live in Woodbridge in Suffolk.    Sarah Stewart: Woodbridge. Isn’t that where the celebrities live?    Angus Montgomery: Yeah. Well, it depends on your definition of celebrity, I suppose. So Woodbridge’s most famous son was Thomas Seckford, who was an advisor to Elizabeth I. More contemporary famous sons include Brian Eno and Charlie from Busted.   Sarah Stewart: Oh my gosh.    Laura Stevens: Is Charlie the one with the eyebrows?   Angus Montgomery: I think so, yeah. The handsome one. He did a solo career.   Sarah Stewart: Yes. Fightstar.   Angus Montgomery: That’s it, yeah.    Laura Stevens: That’s excellent Busted knowledge.   Sarah Stewart: So Angus, what’s your specialist subject at GDS?   Angus Montgomery: I don’t know, it sounds a bit creepy if I’m going to say it out loud but the people at GDS. Like I think that’s the thing that I’m most interested in, is all the people who work here and the things that they do.   Sarah Stewart: So it’s good to meet you contestants.    Angus Montgomery: Good to be here.   Sarah Stewart: I need you to press the buzzer when you have the correct answer.    Cue the tense intro music Emily, Producer Emily. Let’s do this.    In January, we recorded a podcast with the Global Digital Marketplace team. They are helping to tackle corruption – a $2.6 trillion problem. The team visited 5 countries, talking to people at state and local level. Can you name all 5 countries? Laura.   Laura Stevens: Okay. I think I’ve got this: South Africa, Malaysia, Colombia, Indonesia… I’m going to fall down on the last one!   Angus Montgomery: I think I know the last one.   Laura Stevens: What’s the last one?    Sarah Stewart: No no no no, we can’t do that.    Angus Montgomery: Oh.    Laura Stevens: Oh so do I just..?   Sarah Stewart: You’re compromising the integrity of the quiz.    Laura Stevens: Do I get a hint or do I just…?   Sarah Stewart: Here’s your clue. Its name also features in the name of its capital city. Massive clue...   The answer was Mexico.   Laura Stevens: That’s really annoying.   Sarah Stewart: Mexico City. Okay. So, I’m afraid no one can take a point from that.    Okay, next question. The first ever Services Week took place from 28th January to 1st February. It was a nationwide, cross-government event that explored how people could work together to deliver end-to-end user-focused services. Now, one of the workshops during Services Week was designed to improve online forms. It was a sell-out workshop but what was the name of that workshop? Angus.   Angus Montgomery: Was it called Formapalooza?    Sarah Stewart: Correct! One point to Angus.    Angus Montgomery: Boom.   Laura Stevens: First one on the scoreboard, you know.    Angus Montgomery: Yeah.   Sarah Stewart: Okay, moving onto February now. In February, the GDS Academy turned 5 and launched a new course – Introduction to Artificial Intelligence [AI] in Government. Can you name an example of where AI is already being used in government? Laura.   Laura Stevens: Aren’t we using it here at GDS to do supervised machine learning on GOV.UK?   Sarah Stewart: Excellent, Laura. One point.   Laura Stevens: Yes! Back in the game.   Sarah Stewart: Next question. GovWifi is a common component that we all know and love. It provides free, secure wifi in public sector buildings. It’s used 2 million times a month. We noticed that it was also being accessed through which surprising device?   Laura Stevens: Is it a device you would find in a home?   Sarah Stewart: Yes, perhaps in the home of a teenager.   Laura Stevens: PlayStation.   Sarah Stewart: Correct answer. And actually, there were 6 PlayStations that were recorded.   Angus Montgomery: Who’s brought a PlayStation in?   Sarah Stewart: I don’t know. It could be in any public sector building.    Next question. The 11th competition for the GovTech Catalyst opened in March. Technology firms were invited to apply to develop innovative solutions for a challenge submitted by Oxfordshire County Council but what was that challenge?   Laura Stevens: Was it something to do with the traffic system?    Sarah Stewart: Yes.   Laura Stevens: And driverless cars..?   Sarah Stewart: Yes! Yes! Well done. Next question.   A team, a new team was created for GOV.UK to maintain and operate the GOV.UK platform. What was the new team called? Laura.   Laura Stevens: Is it the Platform Health team?    Sarah Stewart: Correct.   Sprint is GDS’s flagship conference. In April, we announced the agenda and that we would travel to 5 locations across the UK to discuss the impact of digital transformation on public services. Name those cities. Angus.   Angus Montgomery: In order: Edinburgh, Cardiff, Leeds, Belfast and London.    Sarah Stewart: One point to Angus. I almost said Laura then.   Laura Stevens: Give me all the points.    Angus Montgomery: Shall we have a check in on the scores?   Sarah Stewart: Yeah, let’s check in on the scores. Wow. Okay. Laura’s ahead.    In April, there was an Unconference at GDS. People were invited to pitch and present on topics of their choosing. Richard Towers held a discussion on making coding more accessible to people at GDS. Which of the following is a programming language that we do not use at GDS? Ruby, Python, Node.js, Go, Java, C#, Scala. Angus.    Angus Montgomery: C#?   Sarah Stewart: Correct!   Laura Stevens: Did you know that?   Angus Montgomery: I don’t know that much about programming languages. But I’ve heard people talking about the other ones.   Sarah Stewart: Okay. Well just to say, there was a trick answer in there as well. So for those people who really know their programming, we don’t use Scala anymore but there is an old project that’s still is in Scala but it’s not maintained.    Laura Stevens: Ooh I like that, a trick question.   Sarah Stewart: Okay so this is May. GOV.UK Pay – a free and secure online payment service for government and public sector organisations – took its first payment for a service in a language other than English. For half a point, what was that language? And, for the full point, how do you say seamless integration in that language? Laura.   Laura Stevens: Welsh. I’m just going for the half point. I don’t, I don’t have the other half of it.    Angus Montgomery: Not confident?   Laura Stevens: I’m not confident. I’ve never spoken Welsh so I wouldn’t want to offend anybody. Do you have, do you know it?   Angus Montgomery: No.   Laura Stevens: I don’t know. You knew about programming languages, so I thought you might also have-   Angus Montgomery: Welsh knowledge?    Laura: Yeah, Welsh knowledge..   Angus Montgomery: The two don’t always go together.    Sarah Stewart: Okay. Well, I’ve got it written down here and I don’t want to offend anyone either. It’s been quite a good year for common components, has it not?   Angus Montgomery: It has. So, I mean, as well as GOV.UK Pay, you’ve got GOV.UK Notify, which is a great success and is used by more than half the local authorities across the UK.   Laura Stevens: Yeah. It helps them do things like sending letters, which can be really time-consuming and where mistakes can be made.   Sarah Stewart: Okay. With changing regulations affecting public sector accessibility requirements, we advised how to publish an accessibility statement but where can you find that? Angus.   Angus Montgomery: GOV.UK.   Sarah Stewart: Yes! In June, we’re halfway through.   Laura Stevens: Yeah!   Sarah Stewart: How fun.    In June, a strategy and a guide were published. What was the name of that strategy and what was the name of the guide? I need the official names, please.    Laura Stevens: I think the first one is the Government Technology Innovation Strategy then it’s ‘A Guide to Using AI in the Public Sector’?   Sarah Stewart: Correct. Laura has got the full point.    In June, Kevin Cunnington, GDS’s Director General stepped down after 3 years leading the organisation. He took a new role on, at the International Government Service, and Alison Pritchard was named as Interim DG [Director General]. Can you tell me where in the world she was when she was offered the job? Angus.   Angus Montgomery: I think she was near Madagascar, wasn’t she, in the Indian Ocean?   Sarah Stewart: I...I don’t think I can accept that.   Angus Montgomery: Oh. She was on a boat in in, at sea.    Sarah Stewart: And well it...I’m going to accept Indian Ocean because she was sailing on a boat somewhere between Darwin and Christmas Island. So I would have accepted Timor Sea or the Indian Ocean.    Okay, so technically this happened in June, July was a little bit quiet.    So GDS’s step by step work on GOV.UK won a D&AD Award for Service Design. Please can you name my favourite step by step journey on GOV.UK? Angus.   Angus Montgomery: Is it Reporting Found Treasure?   Sarah Stewart: Correct!   Laura Stevens: I mean, even if I’d got in first, I would have actually been wrong. I thought it was actually Bring Your Pet to the UK.   Sarah Stewart: Where would I be bringing it from?   Laura Stevens: I don’t know. You might have bought your pet abroad.   Sarah Stewart: Oh yeah. I actually did look into dog rescue in Greece.   Laura Stevens: So you know, clearly I could have been right. But alas, it was more finding treasure.   Sarah Stewart: So what’s so good about step by step?   Laura Stevens: Well, there are now 47 live, and obviously, it’s really good that they are winning awards and everything but also they’re being, they’re really helping people. They are also helping the other parts of GOV.UK like our voice assistant work. So now you can ask your Alexa or Google Home if you want to learn to drive a car. And yeah, it's helping people where they need it.   And it’s quite like, when I spoke to Kate [Ivey-Williams] and Sam [Dub] about it, Kate was saying what motivated her is that ease to make government like, as invisible as possible. So say you’re dealing with a very distressing situation, like somebody has passed away, you don’t want to be like dealing with any government admin at that point. And so if the step by step can just give you the answers that you need and tell you very clearly, that’s a really helpful thing to do for users.   Sarah Stewart: What is your favourite step by step journey, Laura?   Laura Stevens: My favourite step by step journey is quite a boring one but I like it because I’m on the video for it. It’s How to Drive a Car. I feature saying it into a phone. Then it got screened at Sprint 18.   Sarah Stewart: Wow.   Laura Stevens: So you know, me in this jumper, it’s quite an old jumper. I didn’t really expect to be used in filming that day. It’s been immortalised.   Sarah Stewart: So if you want to have a visual picture of Laura, if you want to connect the voice to the face, watch that journey. It’s on YouTube.   In July we released, oh this is, actually, this next question could be in Laura’s advantage, just given your specialist subject for design. In July, we released new updates to the colours and font on GOV.UK. The GOV.UK colour palette is made up of 7 colours – grey, black, blue, red, yellow, green and white. Which 2 colours weren’t updated? Angus.    Angus Montgomery: Black and white?   Sarah Stewart: Correct!   Laura Stevens: That is great knowledge.   Sarah Stewart: Angus is in the lead.   Angus Montgomery: Yes!    Sarah Stewart: Wow.   Laura Stevens: Oh so I need to make a comeback?   Angus Montgomery: Yeah, Laura needs to make a comeback.   Laura Stevens: Is that because he’s got lots of half points? Trying hard but...   Sarah Stewart: He’s not committing.   Angus Montgomery: What’s that meant to mean?   Sarah Stewart: In August we talked about work we had to do following July’s reshuffle. When there is a reshuffle, GOV.UK needs to update the information as quickly as possible. True or false – the GOV.UK team knows this information before the public?   Laura Stevens: False.   Sarah Stewart: Correct. They find out at the same time as everyone else.    Laura Stevens: Yeah July...during the reshuffle in July, because it was quite like a big change and the changes were coming quite like quickly, the team really had to step up. And so that’s working late nights, making sure that GOV.UK is always like the canonical source of information.   Sarah Stewart: Yeah.    Laura Stevens: So they had to make updates to 100 individual ministers’ GOV.UK roles. They had to update ministers’ biographies. They had to add profiles to GOV.UK for people who hadn’t worked for Government before. They had to reorder the list of ministers on 22 department pages. And they had to reorder the Government Ministers page. And obviously there’s a lot of eyes on GDS, well on GOV.UK and GDS’s team, GDS’s work through that. So yeah, they did really well.   Sarah Stewart: Go team. Ok, next question.   Alison took up the role of DG [Director General] at GDS and wrote an introductory blog post sharing a little bit about her past. It’s incredibly well written. Alison has a fantastic background in public service but what was her very first job serving the public?   Angus Montgomery: I feel like I know this.   Sarah Stewart: It was in the blog post, if you read it.    Angus Montgomery: I don’t know if it was her very first job but she was Minister Responsible for Cage Fighting at one stage, wasn’t she?    Laura Stevens: That’s quite a high entry as your first job. Minister for Cage Fighting.    Angus Montgomery: Not Minister, obviously. She was a senior civil servant responsible for cage fighting in some capacity.    Laura Stevens: She was pulling pints…?   Sarah Stewart: You can’t give them clues.    Angus Montgomery: I thought you said first job in the civil service.    Sarah Stewart: No.    Angus Montgomery: Oh, first job.   Laura Stevens: No. It was first job serving the public.    Angus Montgomery: Oh so serving the public.   Laura Stevens: Is this a pun?   Sarah Stewart: Yes.    Laura Stevens: Oh!   Angus Montgomery: You’re operating on a level that I’m not!   Sarah Stewart: Yes! She was a barmaid when she was eight.    Laura Stevens: Oh. Is that...   Angus Montgomery: Is that legal?    Laura Stevens: Do we need to check in on that?    Sarah Stewart: It was…   Angus Montgomery: Do we need to check on the legality of that claim?   Laura Stevens: You need to investigate some pub wherever she grew up.   Sarah Stewart: It was her family pub and she just served soft drinks.   Sarah Stewart: Ok, so September. Plans for a new permanent secretary level Government Chief Digital Information Officer (GCDIO) were announced at Sprint. Alison said that GCDIO was a bit of a mouthful, so what was the title shortened to? Angus.   Angus Montgomery: She calls them ‘The Big G’.    Sarah Stewart: Correct. Adding that it incorporates a sense of scale and seniority for that particular post.    Mark Hurrell, the former Head of Design for GOV.UK and the Head of Graphic Design at GDS wrote the most popular blog post in Design in Government blog history. What was it about? Laura.   Laura Stevens: So I feel like I need to claw this back after Angus took my specialist subject earlier. Is it the post about the design principles posters?   Sarah Stewart: Correct. Yes, well done.   Laura Stevens: There was also a very nice… we can plug the Instagram here as well, because I believe Roger Valentine did a very nice animation about those posts as well.   Sarah Stewart: Oh.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Sarah Stewart: Great. In October, 2 members of the Sustainability Network – Emily Labram and Will Pearson – estimated the maximum amount of CO2 that GDS produces. How many tonnes of CO2 did they estimate we produced? Laura.   Laura Stevens: Was it 4,000?   Sarah Stewart: Correct!   Laura Stevens: Ah! That’s so much.   Sarah Stewart: That’s a lot but it’s an important piece of work. It’s good to know exactly what your impact is.   Laura Stevens: And is it on the blog post?   Sarah Stewart: It is. All of the details are on the blog post and how they calculated it as well.   Angus Montgomery: And where does that come from, the CO2?   Sarah Stewart: It’s things like data centres that are consuming lots of energy. Like and whether that energy is, I mean the question is whether you can have renewable energy sources to keep things like data centres up and running and...   Laura Stevens: Yeah and I think also, that blog post got a lot of comments, as well. So I think it’s something that other government departments or like arm’s length bodies, or whatever are looking into.   Sarah Stewart: Yeah cause you, yeah, I guess you think that the big culprits are fashion, oil and gas industries. Actually, everyone is sort of-   Laura Stevens: Yeah, everyone is responsible.    Sarah Stewart: Yes. In October, GOV.UK turned 7. Tell me, what was notable about the desks that the team worked on when GOV.UK was launched? Laura.   Laura Stevens: Is this from an article you wrote?    Sarah Stewart: Me? Or Secretary of State?   Laura Stevens: Sorry, sorry, the ghostwriting that doesn’t exist.   Sarah Stewart: Yeah, yeah.    Laura Stevens: Is it that they were cardboard boxes?   Sarah Stewart: Correct. Thank you for reading that by the way.   I’m going to read a quote from a GDS figure. Please can you identify the speaker, their job title and tell me what they are talking about. The quote starts, “Unlike many publishers or commercial organisations, we’re not incentivised by statistics like page views or the number of visitors. Our interest is in making sure we are where the user is,” end quote. Angus.   Angus Montgomery: That is Jen Allum, who is Head of GOV.UK, talking about, well I guess the sort of success metrics for GOV.UK. And it’s interesting what she’s saying about that, that obviously we’re not a commercial organisation, we’re an organisation that’s here to serve user needs. So the traditional kind of understanding of people, you know you want to increase the number of people coming to your site, like that’s not how we operate.   I mean it’s good to know those figures obviously. And it’s good to know who’s coming and what they are looking at and what’s getting a lot of traffic and stuff. But that’s not ultimately what motivates people and that’s not what motivates their future vision for GOV.UK, which is about serving users, helping them to do whatever it is that they need to do, regardless of whether that’s a simple thing or a complex life event.   Sarah Stewart: Perfect answer. One point.   November saw the creation of another community at GDS. GDS has got so many lovely communities. What was that community? Laura.   Laura Stevens: Was it Muslims at GDS?   Sarah Stewart: Correct! Networks are a nice thing, aren’t they?   Laura Stevens: They are.   Sarah Stewart: What’s your favourite network? What networks are you part of?   Laura Stevens: So at GDS I’m part of the Women’s Network. I’ve also recently joined the Mental Health Network because I interviewed Ben on the podcast, Ben Carpenter on the podcast last month. What about you Angus?   Angus Montgomery: I’m not a member, although I probably ought to be. But I go to quite a lot of the Women’s Network events, which are really good. I think it’s great obviously not being a woman and being able to go to these things and being part of that community.   But no, I think the good thing about the networks is, even if you are not a member, they are really visible so I’ve been to quite a few events that the LGBT Network have done as well. I just think it’s really good that, yeah they’re so active and there is so much going on.   Laura Stevens: Yeah, I think that part about being open to all is really nice. Because often you can just join them by joining the Slack channel, and that’s very, you can just be there. So if you’re joining GDS as a person who’s not been in government before or anything, you can just be like, “here’s a few friendly faces” and you don’t have to...you can be kind of as active or as inactive as you want to be as part of the network.    So what networks are you part of?   Sarah Stewart: I dip my toes into a few pools. Does that work? I mean not physiologically. Metaphorically. I’m really interested in the work that the Women’s Group do, particularly around negotiating pay rises and public speaking. But also the Mental Health Network is really valuable because it’s such an everyday thing here. Well it’s becoming more of an everyday thing here to talk about how you are feeling. And I think that in other organisations, that’s not the case. I think there is a real push to normalise talking about it, which is ultimately very healthy.   Laura Stevens: And it’s really nice that GDS can take like a leading role in that then, in setting a precedent on how that’s a good thing.   Sarah Stewart: Yeah. Okay, we’ve only got 2 questions left. We’re almost at the end. So can you tell me how many types of chocolate were tried by GDS Chocolate Club in 2019? And I should add that GDS Chocolate Club is funded by its members and is an out of hours club.    Angus Montgomery: 6.   Sarah Stewart: Laura.   Laura Stevens: I’m going to go much higher. I’m going to go like 24.    Sarah Stewart: Well you’ve both fallen short. 65 chocolates were tasted in 2019.   Angus Montgomery: Woah.    Laura Stevens: Is this the final question?   Sarah Stewart: This is the final question of the quiz. Name every person in the Creative Team who made the GDS Podcast series possible this year.   Angus Montgomery: Laura.   Laura Stevens: Angus.    Angus Montgomery: Sarah.   Sarah Stewart: Thank you.   Laura Stevens: Producer Emily.   Angus Montgomery: To give her her full title. Animator and photographer, Roger.    Laura Stevens: And we’ve got filmmaker Graham. Producer Megan Painter.   Sarah Stewart: Yeah.   Laura Stevens: Designer Charlotte.   Angus Montgomery: Couldn’t possibly forget Alastair Mogford, who not only set up this podcast but documented how we do it and wrote down a very long description which we’ve all been using now because we all forget like what the set-up is and stuff. So thank you, Alastair.   Laura Stevens: Shout out to Alastair.    And also we’ve got to shoutout to our social media star, Lou Mullan.    Angus Montgomery: And thanks obviously to Chris Watson.   Sarah Stewart: Oh wait. How do we attribute points to this?    Angus Montgomery: Everyone gets points for that.   Laura Stevens: Because it’s a team effort.    Angus Montgomery: Yes.   Sarah Stewart: Aw that’s nice. That’s the spirit, isn’t it?   Laura Stevens: Well, well done team though, because we’ve done 14 podcasts!    Angus Montgomery: Yeah!   Laura Stevens: Thanks to everyone there.    Sarah Stewart: And thank you so much to all of our listeners for your loyal support over the past year.   Ok so Emily, can you tell us, can you hand me the final scores. I’m going to announce who the winner is-   Angus Montgomery: Ah!   Laura Stevens: Drumroll.   Sarah Stewart: After I announce who the runner-up is.    Angus Montgomery: Oh.   Sarah Stewart: It was Angus.   Angus Montgomery: Yay!   Sarah Stewart: Well done.    Laura Stevens: Well done Angus.   Sarah Stewart: But today’s winner is Laura Stevens. So, your prize is 3 chocolate bars wrapped up inside a civil service lanyard.    Laura Stevens: Oh that’s very kind of you, thank you.   Sarah Stewart: So claps for..   Laura Stevens: Aww! Well, but there’s 3 so you know we can divide amongst…   Angus Montgomery: Oh, well how convenient. Apart from Producer Emily.   Laura Stevens: I tried to do that really nicely.   Angus Montgomery: There, there are actually 4 of us in the room.    Laura Stevens: I will share that out amongst all of us here.   Sarah Stewart: That’s very magnanimous of you.    Laura Stevens: Aww.   Sarah Stewart: Aww, good winner. Ok so that brings us to the end of the last podcast of 2019. How did you think it went?   Angus Montgomery: It was very challenging.    Sarah Stewart: It doesn’t sound...   Laura Stevens: But I did come out as a winner, so I mean..    Angus Montgomery: Yeah.   Laura Stevens: I feel like-   Angus Montgomery: I mean obviously I came out as a runner up, so it was more challenging for me.   Sarah Stewart: 2019 has been quite a year, hasn’t it?   Laura Stevens: Yes.   Angus Montgomery: Uh huh.   Sarah Stewart: What have your highlights been?    Angus Montgomery: Well I moved team. So I’m now on the Strategy Team, which explains why I’m not as involved in the podcasts as I was before. So yeah, that’s a highlight. But obviously being on the Creative Team was also a highlight.    Laura Stevens: Aww.   Sarah Stewart: That’s sweet. Laura, what’s your highlight been?    Laura Stevens: I’ve really liked actually getting more involved in the podcasts, which is quite an appropriate thing to say in this podcast episode.    Angus Montgomery: On the podcast..   Laura Stevens: But no I’ve spoken to really interesting people, like Kate Ivy-Williams and Sam Dub. Yeah, lots of other people as well, on the podcast.    Sarah Stewart: Great. Okay.    Laura Stevens: But what about you? What was your highlights for the year?    Sarah Stewart: Well I helped Alison with the presentation that she delivered at the Women into Leadership Conference. And we made a spoof book about Alison. It’s called ‘Alison by Alison Pritchard’.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Sarah Stewart: Because we were talking about like stories from her life and someone thought it was real.   Laura Stevens: Yes. I believe also, I’m quite surprised by this because you actually wrote in fake reviews, I believe.    Sarah Stewart: Yeah, I did reviews from ‘People’s Friend’ and ‘Time Magazine’. That was really funny, and it was a really good event as well.  So thank you to all of our listeners over 2019. It’s been quite the year in the world of the GDS Podcast, we’ve covered lots of topics. So thank you for your loyal support and lending us your ears.   Laura Stevens: And please keep listening.    Sarah Stewart: You can listen to all the episodes of the Government Digital Service Podcast on Apple Music, Spotify and all other major podcast platforms. You can read the transcripts on Podbean. Bye.   Angus Montgomery: Bye.   Laura Stevens: Bye 2019. 

Laura Stevens: Hello and welcome to the Government Digital Service podcast. My name is Laura Stevens and I’m a writer here at GDS. Today we’re speaking about mental wellbeing at GDS. We’ve chosen to highlight this now as November is Men’s Mental Health Month. But we will be talking about mental health and wellbeing in the workplace more generally today.  And to tell me more is Ben Carpenter. So please can you introduce yourself and what you do here at GDS, and your role in supporting mental wellbeing here.   Ben Carpenter: Hello. Yeah, I’m Ben Carpenter. I’m Inclusive Services Lead in the Service Design and Assurances Programme. And I co-lead the Wellbeing Working Group, and I was, before we kind of rebranded as the Wellbeing Working Group, I was lead of the Mental Health Network.   Laura Stevens: So can you tell me a bit about the GDS Mental Health Network and where it fits into the Wellbeing Group here at GDS?   Ben Carpenter: Well the Mental Health Network used to be kind of everything in the mental wellbeing space. Now that we’re expanding things to try and incorporate all aspects of wellbeing, physical and mental, the Mental Health Network in that name, really comprises basically of a Slack channel and a newsletter and of the people within the Slack channel.   That’s not to trivialise it ‘cause those things are really important, and a lot of work goes into those things, so the Q&As etc. But whereas we used to refer to GDS’s mental, GDS’s Mental Health Network as being all things mental wellbeing, I’d now say that’s more falls under the whole wellbeing banner.   Laura Stevens: So, these Q&As. These are regular anonymous peer-led mental wellbeing Q&As on Slack. And can you describe some of the topics that come up?    Ben Carpenter: We organise those around topics that staff nominate and then vote for their preference. And so the topics can just vary all the time, from Imposter Syndrome to general anxiety to dealing with heavy workloads to dealing with a lack of a heavy workload, having had you know changes in, fluctuations in workload, that’s what you say. Bereavement and loss, you know, just the full range of emotional challenges.    Laura Stevens: And how have you found people have responded to the Network?   Ben Carpenter: So it’s not my day job at all. It’s like, it should be a fraction of my time and often it takes up a big fraction of my time. But it’s a funny area to work in and on, because it’s hard to get feedback on success. So the nature of the topic, the nature of the beast is, you might not hear from people even if something’s going really well.   A good example would be the Q&As that we hold on Slack each month.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Ben Carpenter: So you have an anonymous route through, in those Q&As, to ask questions or answer questions. And you never know how many people are watching and reading, you never know how many people read the transcripts for information afterwards. So it can be very, it can be a very kind of quiet space to work in. You can, I sometimes think ‘oh god, is this work, is it worth it?’.   But when you do get feedback, it’s very very positive and. But yeah, it’s often hard to put something more tangible on that, to sort of prove value.    Yeah. Yeah, it’s just, yeah. It’s hard to know exactly what is most valuable to users but I think it’s really…by users, I always talk about us. I talk about the Network as, and the Wellbeing Group, as a service and we should think of staff here as our users. Because I firmly believe we should be a user-centred service so…   Laura Stevens: Sort of like doing the GDS principles in all aspects.   Ben Carpenter: Absolutely, yeah. I mean this more than anything right, is a, if you’re going to try and help people with their wellbeing, you should be doing it in a way that you believe to be organised around what they need.   Laura Stevens: And so yeah, a sort of more general question. Why, which might sound obvious but I think it’s good to ask it anyway, is why is it important to have a Mental Health Network and Wellbeing Group at all? What does it bring to the workplace?   Ben Carpenter: I’m not sure. You tell me.   I mean so, that was a facetious question as in ‘you tell me’. Because I always think I want the GDS staff and colleagues to say why they appreciate the network’s efforts or presence.   But we know that people with healthy wellbeing are generally more productive in their work. So on a boring sort of corporate side, you know people work better. But we’re also a human-centred organisation, I think we are. I’m a human-centred person. So I take on this work because I care about people here.    And so there’s no, to me there shouldn’t have to be any metric in terms of productivity or sort of value, ‘cause it’s just the right thing to do. I mean imagine, flip that round. Imagine a workplace where nobody thought, or took the time to organise around their staff’s wellbeing.    Now that we’re doing this work and we have things like the ‘Time to Change’ pledges and commitments that we’ve made as an organisation, and we have a bunch of people in a working group saying, “hang on, lets try and provide things that the staff need to improve their wellbeing”, it seems perverse to everything, you wouldn’t do that.   Laura Stevens: And can you talk a bit about the ‘Time to Change’ pledge that you’ve mentioned?   Ben Carpenter: I can a little bit.   Laura Stevens: Ok.   Ben Carpenter: Yep, so Alison, Director General, signed the pledge last month or the month before. So Time to Change is a charity and they help organisations like us, companies, organisations to make a stack of commitments.    So we’ve got 7 commitments under the Time to Change pledge. It covers things like, encouraging staff to be able to be frank about their mental health, training line managers to have conversations with staff about mental wellbeing, and broader wellbeing.    All Senior Civil Servants here are going to undergo, go through some training on wellbeing awareness and support. Commitments in there as well around mental health first aid.   Laura Stevens: I mean I was really interested when I was researching this to hear about the mental health first aiders. And when did they get brought in at GDS?   Ben Carpenter: Well so they, they exist in...some people brought those skills with them to GDS. Some people were able to go on mental health first aid training courses while they were here.   But what we’re doing at the moment is trying to organise that group of people, because again they’re just volunteers. These are not paid, there’s not a paid role, these are people who are volunteering to be mental health first aiders for their colleagues.   So what we’re trying to do is move away perhaps from a sort of set-up that we might have had before. It was like ‘oh, you know, that bloke over there happens to have been trained as a first aider, everyone go talk to him if they’re miserable’. And instead we’re trying to say ‘hang on, there are 800 staff here.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Ben Carpenter:  Right, how many mental health first aiders do we need to be able to look after, or provide that kind of support, to that number of staff?’. And what we’re aiming for is 1 in 50. So for every 50 members of staff, there’s a mental health first aider.    Laura Stevens: What are they qualified to do, what are they not qualified to do and why would you go to them?   Ben Carpenter: They’re not practitioners. They are listeners, they’re confidential listeners and signposters. And as simple as that sounds, to do that in a robust and reliable way without yourself struggling too much perhaps with what you might be talking to people about, takes a couple of days training.   But yes, I think it’s really important to run that as a service, not as a thing that just happens. By which I mean, base it on what we believe that users need. Make sure it’s run in a sustainable way, you wouldn’t want to have 15 first aiders now and then you talk to me in a year, and we’ve suddenly only got 3.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Ben Carpenter: So you’ve got to know how many we need, we’ve got to have funding for that, we’ve got to be constantly making sure that we’ve got volunteers to take on those roles if needed and so on.    Laura Stevens: And how do you think, how long have you been at GDS?   Ben Carpenter: 2013...six years.    Laura Stevens: And how have you seen support for mental health change since 2013?   Ben Carpenter: Well...do you know when I was first here I probably wasn’t thinking about it very much. It was much more a sort of start-up feel, very whirlwind.   I’ve been more and more open about my own mental health as well in recent years. I mean I’ve always been pretty open about it, ‘cause I’ll talk to anyone about anything. But..   Laura Stevens: That’s how you’re on this podcast.   Ben Carpenter: Right, right. But I think I’ve also more, proudly is the wrong word, less self-consciously happy to be known for having some mental health challenges while in the workplace with my colleagues. That was probably something I would have felt less comfortable doing even in the early days at GDS. And definitely at previous organisations that I’ve worked for.    I would always have shared that sort of thing with line management or friends, but I don’t think I would have sat on a podcast saying, ‘I lead this network as best I can and I also have mental health challenges and occasionally, I’ll write about that on Slack or a blog post or something’.    So that’s something that has changed for me but I wouldn’t...I think the signing of the ‘Time to Change’ pledge is a big deal for GDS. It’s a public statement under those 7 areas. And so in terms of policy, you know the mental health first aid commitments within that are, they’re really good and they’re really big.   So it’s up to us all to actually make sure they happen.   Laura Stevens: Would there be any other things you’d like to see change here at GDS, oh, and good practices, or that you’ve seen elsewhere that you might want to bring in here?   Ben Carpenter: I’m really pleased with the direction things are going. It would, it really does just come down to people and time.   I’d say that fully user-centred approach to what we provide is something that I would like to see really properly embedded across all of our wellbeing mental health work.   And personally, I’m much less interested on working on something that I don’t know, or have good confidence, to be useful for people, my colleagues that I work with in terms of their mental health.    So I don’t want to just tick any boxes. And I don’t want to make us look nice within the Civil Service. I don’t, I’m not interested in any of that.    Laura Stevens: You don’t want to pay lip service to something.   Ben Carpenter: Right. It can sound repetitive but I think it’s really the thing that matters. So for me with wellbeing, it might be that the very best thing this organisation can do for its staff is to continue to provide places for them to talk, continue to train line managers, continue to train mental health first aiders, continue to run things like the Q&As and speaking events and make people feel, even if they never speak up and say ‘oh that was brilliant, I loved that talk’, you know, even if they’re very quiet about it or silent about it, we know that it’s valuable to staff for these things to take place.    So we don’t have to be coming up with new things.   Laura Stevens: Uh huh.   Ben Carpenter: Might just keep doing simple, quiet, useful things. Which isn’t always cool and isn’t always popular. But that’s what I like.   Laura Stevens: How would you say the mental health sort of practices here, employee wellbeing, compares to other workplaces? Or have you’ve spoken, in your work with this network, have you spoken to the other people from other workplaces and have they brought in ideas or you’ve shared ideas there?   Ben Carpenter: Lots of people are really impressed and pleased to see what GDS has set up by the way of this open spaces to be able to talk about this. And the network and the community around to support people. But the most, lots of people who come into GDS say, ‘gosh this is, this is new to me’   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Ben Carpenter: ‘This is remarkable in that, just that it exists’.   Laura Stevens: Do you think if there’s, if people are finding best practice here at GDS, is there potential for it to be shared across other government departments? Obviously if you’re involved and you go elsewhere, you can take that...   Ben Carpenter: There is a cross-government network. People do try and share ideas and approaches. We did try and pool approaches to mental health first aid provision and training and business cases to support the recruitment of people to do that, for example.   Laura Stevens: So there’s that opportunity for if stuff has been learnt here and tried and it’s found to work.   Ben Carpenter: Yes. We need to get better at blogging about what we do and what works. You know we’ve done a couple of blog posts but not enough really.    Laura Stevens:  Yeah, I saw your Slack Q&A one and...   Ben Carpenter: Yeah, wrote up that. And that was good. So I did a blog post about the Q&As that I’ve been talking about. And I’ve had 3 or 4 organisations, I’ve had meetings with since then to show them how we do, and they’ve gone off and run their own.   Laura Stevens: And how does that make you feel? Like sort of, it’s sort of out in the open now, it’s sort of being spread.   Ben Carpenter: It’s nice. Yeah it’s good.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Ben Carpenter: It’s nice. It seems such a simple idea but it’s, behind the scenes it’s surprisingly sort of complicated to make sure you’re trying to ask, field questions in a sensitive way really keep on top of them. The last thing you would want would be to miss, miss questions coming in or feel like peo-- I wouldn’t want staff here to thi--, I’d be mortified if I thought staff felt it was sort of poorly curated or was not sensitive to their needs or feelings. So.   Laura Stevens: Do you think things like the Network, the Wellbeing Group, are sort of helping encouraging people at GDS to say that’s ok to say that I have mental health, have you seen that as a response in your, anecdotally or?    Ben Carpenter: Anecdotally, yeah. Definitely anecdotally. I know that many of the comments that we see on the Slack channel, either through the Q&A sessions or just spontaneously, are people saying you know, ‘I feel so glad this network exists, I feel so glad this is something that people talk about here, I feel supported by the existence of this channel and that you guys are here piping up with this stuff and it’s not taboo, or it’s not taboo here.   Our Slack channel, I know it’s Slack it’s just Slack, but it’s the second most, it’s got the second most number of people in it of all the channels on GDS’s Slack after the community. So you know, and that’s nobody’s been forced onto there so people come in to read and listen.   Yeah, so we get...it’s another very hard thing to measure.   Laura Stevens: And can anyone on that Slack channel, if you’re part of the Slack channel, can anybody respond to anybody else or is it just if you’re part, if you’re a mental health first aider or is it just open to all?   Ben Carpenter: No, no. It’s just an open forum. So that’s why I think the anonymity of the Q&As is so valuable. So what we do with the Q&As is a 2 hour session every month. And you can post questions through an anonymous Google form in advance which I, or whoever is coordinating the session that month, would get and copy and paste them in Slack basically. Just say here’s a question and then people reply as a thread within Slack. And if they don’t want to answer the question publically either.    So we get, last time out I think there were a dozen questions, none of them posted live. So nobody wanted to ask what they wanted to ask straight into Slack with their name next to it. Maybe some of them would have if there hadn’t been an anonymous route. But if it didn’t matter, they would have done it. What’s the opposite of anonymous? Nonymous? Nonymous?    Laura Stevens: Identifiable?    Ben Carpenter: Yeah, right. They would have identified, they would be happy to be identified so. So if 12 people ask 12 questions anonymously, to me that’s a massive indicator in itself, that out of an organisation of 800 of a Slack channel of three or four hundred people, you get a dozen you know…I don’t know what, you imagine there are a dozen who do dare to ask an anonymous question.   Laura Stevens: Of course, yeah.    Ben Carpenter: There must be a whole stack more who are finding it hard.   Laura Stevens: A tip of the iceberg.   Ben Carpenter: Right, yeah. It might not be a massive iceberg but it’s still an indicator.    Laura Stevens: And do people, how do people respond like do you have to monitor the responses or do you just let people respond how they would like?   Ben Carpenter: I keep an eye on them for worrying signs, but nothing else. We never claim for it to be something of experts, it’s a peer-to-peer support thing.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.    Ben Carpenter: It was only, actually a couple of months ago, as a confession, running the Q&As and I thought it’s always been in the back of my mind, worrying that I would get a really scary message anonymously.   Laura Stevens: Of course.   Ben Carpenter: And you think, ‘oh my god, there’s somebody here who’s gonna hurt themselves or hurt someone else, or sounds really on the brink’. I’d always thought that felt like a risk of doing the Q&As. But to be honest, actually it’s only a risk of hearing about those thoughts, not a risk of creating those thoughts necessarily.   So it was only then that we suddenly jumped up and said we need to have a statement ready. So I do have, while I’m running the Q&As I’m ready with a document if I get something like that. I would copy and paste my message, this agreed comms message that we’ve agreed with comms and senior management, across all staff as an email and across all the Slack channels as a message, not just the Q&A, to say ‘if you sent this message containing this word’, so we wouldn’t share all of it just to make sure they knew we were talking to them, ‘then please contact one’, and we’d lead with 999.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Ben Carpenter: Or talk to a first aider. You know we’d give them contact options.   I mean it’s an odd, yeah it’s an odd leading a network like this and getting involved in this kind of work, I do feel a massive sense of responsibility.   Laura Stevens: Yes.   Ben Carpenter: And in a way that’s one of the things that makes me want us to do less, really well rather than take on too much. So sometimes in the network, it can be hard in the working group for all of us to find the time just to meet and just organise ourselves just to provide a few events and speakers, and get posters and you know, sell some pin badges and coffee mornings. That can be hard just...   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Ben Carpenter: Even to get to that level. So I feel like whatever we do, I want us to do it well rather than lots of things averagely.    Laura Stevens: And how are you, you said about feeling this responsibility particularly for a network that deals with things like this, how are you supported in running this?   Ben Carpenter: David Dilley is our mental health champion at GDS, a Senior Civil Service, Senior Civil Servant. Fiona James is the wellbeing champion. So I can talk to either of them whenever I like. Abby Peel co-leads the Wellbeing Working Group with me. So we work really nicely together, Abby’s brilliant. And there’s actually much more of like tour de force behind the stuff that does get done in the working group.   So I mean I’ve got my line manager, and I’ve got the first aiders and I’ve got the Q&As.    Laura Stevens: So...   Ben Carpenter: This whole thing is just therapeutic for me right.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Ben Carpenter: That’s why I’m doing this ‘cause it gives me, it’s my own private brilliant therapy network.   All the anonymous questions on the Q&As I just, are mine for example. I make them all up myself.   That’s not true, that’s not true.   Laura Stevens: So you are supported and?   Ben Carpenter: Yeah, of course, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.    Laura Stevens: And can you, you were saying, so mental health is part of the wellbeing group, can you talk a bit more about the wellbeing group, and the wellbeing, and its aims?   Ben Carpenter: So yeah, so we had the Mental Health Network which was, as the title suggests quite focused just on mental health. And I think quite rightly, particularly when Fiona joined GDS and is the senior wellbeing champion for GDS.   Laura Stevens: Is this Fiona James?    Ben Carpenter: Yes.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Ben Carpenter: Sorry, yes. You know, it’s correct I think to pull everything together in terms of wellbeing and say, because we know there’s such strong links between physical wellbeing and mental wellbeing for starters. And if we’re trying to say you know, a bit of a common tropey type phrase about mental health is, ‘well if you broke your arm you go and see the doctor, so when you’re feeling down why don’t you go…’.   You know which is a bit of an ugly comparison made in those, because they’re not comparable really but, we should be trying to bring them together so to totally normalise mental health. We’re not, nobody’s got any qualms about physical health or moaning about physical health, so lets moan about our mental health. Let's be honest about it. Let’s ask for help.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Ben Carpenter: So that’s the evolution of that, and I really welcome it. In many ways the discrepancy, bothering to split these things up is really just a semantic exercise a lot of the time. Ditto for, so there’s a daily meditation session, 10 minute session, happens every day anyone can go 10 minutes of peaceful reflection. That’s meditation, it’s not, it doesn’t happen on my watch right, we don’t talk about it in the Wellbeing Peer Group.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.    Ben Carpenter: But it’s everything to do, there’s a running club that takes place every, every well at least every week. I’m not sure how often they run.   Laura Stevens: No, I can’t say that I’m part of that so I don’t know.   Ben Carpenter: Mental health doesn’t all have to be about crisis. It’s just about ongoing care. Yeah, looking after yourself.    Laura Stevens: Are there any sort of tips you can give me to create a better workplace for mental health, for employee wellbeing?   Ben Carpenter: If you’re looking to provide this for staff rather than you’re somebody yourself who has mental health challenges and you’re thinking, ‘what can I do, I’m at work what can I do?’. I think it’s the openness of the topic is primary. So be bold and be brave enough to stand up and say, ‘here’s what I struggle with’. And you know talk to people, give that message out loud, ask people to reflect back to you how they feel, does it ring any bells with them.   So I think there’s been, so Helen Nickols, who ran the Mental Health Network before I joined it as well, I feel like she really led by example you know. She wasn’t afraid, still isn't afraid to stand up and say ‘this is what I struggle with, this is how I deal with it’, you know.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Ben Carpenter: And I think if you can’t do that then it’s gonna be hard to expect other people to sort of come out of their shells and start to talk about things that might help them, in a way that might help them, sorry.   So, yeah, it really helps to have champions, people who will treat this seriously and not as a taboo.    Laura Stevens: So be open, be bold, be honest, and have champions.   Ben Carpenter: Yes, keep talking.   Laura Stevens: Would be your sort of, yeah. And…   Ben Carpenter: Yeah.   Laura Stevens: And make sure that you, there’s a space as well I guess for people to be able to have these open conversations.    Ben Carpenter: I think we have to be really aware in organisations that it’s a massive luxury and privilege to be able to be frank about your mental health. It can take a massive amount of privilege. So I’m a white middle aged man with every privilege really. So, and career wise, I’m probably pretty robust. I don’t mean in GDS, ‘cause they could sack me tomorrow, but I just mean I have the luxury of being able to stand up and say you know, the reason I couldn’t come to work last week for a couple of days, was you know, mental health.   To expect that of everybody is not fair. So I think it falls upon people who do have those privileges just to use that capital a bit and try and break those taboos, ‘cause it’s massively biased towards people like me.   Laura Stevens: And how do you get in touch with the mental, how do I join the wellbeing group?   Ben Carpenter: You go on the Slack channel, you listen, you ask questions. It’s not something you can join, it’s just there for you. It’s not a club. The only aspect of it which is a club is that you need to join the Slack channel if you want to read what people are asking or saying, but even within there for a few days at a time, it may only be little nice bits of chat and people asking questions or sharing things they’ve read. So it’s not intense.    If you want to get involved, if you want to give help you might want to train to be a first aider. If you want to give help you might want to put the Q&As in your diary, last Friday of every month 10 to 12 in the morning. And listen to people and offer them your support, if not expertise.   Sometimes people just want to be heard. Now certainly the Q&A, some of the feedback I’ve had is, ‘it’s so good just to be able to write this down and be heard, even if people didn’t know it was me who said it’. And people just say, ‘I hear you, it’s valid, you’re fine, it’s ok to think that and feel that’. So you don’t have to be like I say you know a therapist going on there with amazing clinical advice. So if you want to give help those are good ways to do that. Or you could offer to, you could think about what you could talk about if you’ve had challenges of your own, anything.   If you want to receive help, so if you need help, then there’s a mental health first aiders. Look on the wiki, search for mental health support, look at all, look at the wellbeing pages on there, see what activities and timetables there are for you to get involved with.   Go to the yoga sessions, go on the lunchtime walks, go to Abby’s crafting sessions, dial in to the Q&As, call the Cabinet Office listening service, call, go and see your GP. You know whatever you think works for you. The most important thing is to do something, it can be anything.    Laura Stevens: So if I’m listening and I’m not at GDS so I can’t join the Slack, how would be a good way to get in touch with you if I want to find out more about setting up a Slack channel at my own organisation or running this sort of network?   Ben Carpenter: Totally happy to be emailed, Ben.Carpenter@digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk. That sounds right, is that right?   Laura Stevens: Yeah, that’s right.   Ben Carpenter: Yeah. I can’t give mental health advice but I will talk to you about what we do as per this podcast.    And so I often talk about leaning forward, and I think this was actually the name of the Facebook CEO’s book wasn’t it recently? And I think she stole it from me.   The analogy being if you want to jump off a really high diving board and you’re terrified of it, don’t go up to the top of the diving board and think ‘now I’m going to jump 200 feet into this cold water’. Just go to the top of the diving board and lean forward a little bit and think, ‘I know what I’m going to do, I’m just going to lean forward’. And before you know it you’ll be in the water swimming around. Right?    Laura Stevens: Yeah.    Ben Carpenter: So I think, as with any life's big challenges, take the first step and then just try and let the other steps follow.    Laura Stevens: So thank you to Ben to talking to us today about mental health and employee wellbeing. You can listen to all the episodes of the Government Digital Service podcast on Apple Music, Spotify and all other major podcast platforms, and you can read the transcripts on PodBean.    Again, thank you very much to Ben for joining.   Ben Carpenter: Thank you.   Laura Stevens: Goodbye.

Laura Stevens:  Hello, and welcome to the Government Digital Service podcast. My name is Laura Stevens and I’m a writer here at GDS. Today we’re going to be speaking about the work of the International Design in Government community. This community has grown rapidly since its inception 2 years ago, and now has 1,500 members from 66 countries and 6 continents.   The group brings together designers and design minded people working anywhere in the world to share best practice, host events and tackle common obstacles. And this summer, they held their first international event in the USA and Scotland.   So let's hear from 2 people directly involved in the community, Kara Kane and Martin Jordan. So please can you introduce yourself and tell me about your role here at GDS.   Kara Kane: Hi, I’m Kara Kane. I’m the Community Lead for User-Centred Design at GDS. So I work on growing user-centered design capability and as well, understanding and awareness of user-centered design across UK government. And I also manage the International Design in Government community.   Laura Stevens: So you’re quite busy.   Kara Kane: Yes.    Laura Stevens And Martin?   Martin Jordan: Yeah. I’m Martin Jordan, Head of Service Design here at GDS. And this means shaping what good service design looks like across government. It means helping government increase its service design capability through recruiting, training and as well, mentoring. And then yeah, building a strong service design community across government and well now as well, internationally.    Laura Stevens: And could you describe the community to me for somebody who has never heard about it before?   Kara Kane: So the community is just a group of people that are all working on similar things in government. So we have a shared purpose around making better government services. And it’s just, as you said in the intro, it’s extremely diverse and extremely international so it’s grown really quickly and as we’ve started kind of running the community in different ways, so we have online channels, we do monthly calls, we’ve now started doing events. So doing, through doing these different formats, we’ve been able to help people meet each other and helping people meet each other face-to-face.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: Which then helps the online stuff and helps that make it easier because people are more willing to reach out to someone if they’ve met them in person.    Laura Stevens: And you mention you’ve got countries from all the continents apart from Antartica.    Kara Kane: Yes.   Martin Jordan: Yeah. I think there are no designers there.   Laura Stevens: Yeah. I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.  Ok so, I thought to show how diverse the community is as we mentioned earlier, I’d ask you a few questions about some of the different 66 countries you’ve got involved.   Martin Jordan: Oh gosh.   Laura Stevens: So do you know who your most northerly member is?   Kara Kane: Think it might be Iceland…?   Martin Jordan: Oh yeah, probably.   Kara Kane: We might have people in Reykjavik…?   Laura Stevens: Kara, you are correct.   Kara Kane: Yes!   Martin Jordan: I thought of Helsinki but yes, yeah, that makes more sense, yeah.   Laura Stevens: And then we, who is your most southerly member?   Martin Jordan: So it’s, it’s probably New Zealand. Because there are people, there are people in Wellington.   Laura Stevens: Yes! Martin, you got that right.    Don’t doubt your guess.   And then you have, out of the members, you have both the largest country in the world by area and the second smallest, do you know what those 2 countries are?   Martin Jordan: So one might be Russia. And the second one, I have no idea.   Laura Stevens: OK, you got Russia, so Kara, can you do the second, the second smallest country in the world by area?   Kara Kane: It might be Monaco..?   Laura Stevens: Yes! Well done.   So, and then the final one, just to showcase this diverse group, you have a country that’s a member, that is made up of more than 200 islands.   Kara Kane: I was ready for this one. I did some pre-work. So I know that this is Palau.    Laura Stevens: Well done! So this shows how, even amongst these diverse groups, there’s lots of shared traits with design in government.    Was there a particular catalyst for this International Design in Government group? How did it start?   Martin Jordan: So our former boss Lou Downe, at that time Director for Design, and the UK government, they like to blog. And they wrote a blog post I think in February 2017. And they referenced the D-5 countries.   Laura Stevens: Could you explain the D-5?   Martin Jordan: Yeah. So the D-5 countries were kind of like very digital countries that came together I think around 2011 or so. That included the UK, Estonia, Israel, New Zealand and South Korea. And there’s an ongoing conversation and a regular monthly call around design around government. And there was a special edition on design.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Martin Jordan: That we did do in early 2017. And Lou basically wrote a blog post and said like, well we’re having this great community of designers in the UK government, but there’s probably like more stuff to do as well on a global scale, because we very likely have common issues.    We all kind of like, design services that are somewhat similar. Policies might be different, laws might be different but overall, there are a lot of like, similarities. So we might be able to like, scale co-authored patterns, we might be looking at like, how to embed user-centred culture in government.   Kara Kane: Yes.    Martin Jordan: All of those things. So they wrote a blog post and then we were like, ‘ok, what does it actually mean?’.   Kara Kane: We had a form at the end of the blog post for people to let us know if they were interested in joining whatever this thing would be.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: So I went away and took that list of people, and kind of started developing the community. So we just invited all of those people to a Google group and then went from there.   Laura Stevens: And it grew really rapidly. Like I’ve got here in the first 10 months, it grew to 250 people from 37 countries. What sort of like challenges did you face when you were growing it at that sort of scale quickly?   Kara Kane: I think with any community, starting it is, is just difficult to start kind of forming relationships and to start getting the conversation going. So as a Community Manager, it was really about trying to get to know people in the community, trying to start introducing people, trying to just, like I would just have calls with people to find out what they’re working on to get to know them a little bit.    And then we started running these monthly calls, which were a way to, to kind of start sharing work in a different way. But again that took a while for the focus to turn away from GDS in to, to be a focus on sharing internationally. So not just us kind of telling, but us learning as well from, from other people.    Laura Stevens: And do you find there are a lot of shared things? ‘Cause obvio--, the countries we mentioned earlier, they’ve got hugely different geographies, populations, all different. But are you finding there’s, they are these shared obstacles that designers face in government and what, what would some of them be?   Martin Jordan: So in some places, there might not be a designer there at all but like a design minded person who’s doing it in some way.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Martin Jordan: So they ask like, how do you, how do you make the first business case for the first designer, and then we might be able to like, share like some of, some of the arguments and also there are a lot of, a lot of good stories out there so we try to like, give them good examples that they can kind of like, go to their, their seniors and like, advocate with these stories.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.    Martin Jordan: That is quite, quite, quite, quite powerful.   Kara Kane: Then following on from that, if you think about things like immigration, like that runs across…   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: ...every, everywhere. So there’s a lot that we can, can learn from the similarities and differences of how, of how we run services related to immigration or employment or benefits.    Laura Stevens: And is it quite a lot of physical meetups or is it more sort of interaction online? You mentioned earlier there’s Google groups, Slack. So how does that, how do you all communicate with each other in the community?   Kara Kane: When it first started it was all online.    Laura Stevens: Uh huh.   Kara Kane: And because it’s an international community and, from the beginning it was really widespread in terms of representation geographically, it was hard to kind of think about you know what’s, what’s something we could do to get people to meet face to face. And I think the monthly calls were a way to do that. Because we were using Zoom, so it was the first way to like, show my face…   Laura Stevens: Yeah.    Kara Kane: ...to the community. And to, for Martin and Lou, when we were all on these calls, and meeting people. But then from there, I think, when I first joined GDS, Martin always wanted to do a conference.   So we were always looking for a reason to run a conference. And then the international community seemed like that was the next natural step, was to get people together face to face.   Laura Stevens:  So yeah. You had your first official conference in London, 2018. Can you talk a bit about that and how you went about getting everybody here from all these different countries, who was able to attend with that?   Martin Jordan: Yeah. So we had a tiny budget to actually make this happen. We didn’t spend much, much money on that. And we kind of relied on kind of, everyone paying for their own flight tickets…   Kara Kane: So when we, when we decided to run an international conference, we really wanted to involve the community in what it would look like. So we started sending surveys and emails out to the community to say, ‘what do you want this to be? Do you want to even come? What kind of format do you want it to be? Where should it be? What time of the year?’ So we kind of used the community to figure out what it should look like.   And then from there, started to shape the agenda.    Laura Stevens: What was the atmosphere like on the day?   Kara Kane: It was exciting.   Martin Jordan: I think people were like, super excited to see each other.    Laura Stevens: Yeah,   Martin Jordan: Because apart from like, interacting via Slack and as well as seeing each other in the monthly calls, people started following each other on Twitter, and there was quite an exchange there.    As well, some people met at other international conferences. So whenever there was kind of a design or service design conference, they were like, like almost like, you how they were like literally like asking like, ‘who else is there?’ I was in Helsinki at some point in winter when it was freezing and I was like, ‘Hey, Finnish government folks, shall we meet for tea?’ and they were like, ‘yeah!’.   So like, you were, yeah. I think it was a really really great atmosphere and for, for the conference, for the 2 days, we tried to have representatives from all continents.    So we tried to like, yeah, have a, have a good representation of of of regions. And then we had workshops on the second day. And for those workshops we really basically asked everyone in the UK government who can kind of like, host a workshop, run a workshop.    Laura Stevens: What came out of that in terms of saying that people were more connected and did any like working groups come out of it?    Martin Jordan: So the Finns, the folks in (the) Finnish government, started kind of like, a local community that gets together every, every month. And literally today, the Finns, as well the Estonians, run a joint workshop meetup together. So we actually started to, regionally we started connecting, connecting people with each other.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Martin Jordan: They’re now doing things, which is amazing to see. Yeah.   Kara Kane: I think another thing that came out of it is, so at the very end of the conference, we kind of asked people ‘do you want this to happen again?’, ‘do you want there to be another conference?’.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: And people were like, ‘yeah!’. And there’s people, in the community, who are willing to kind of, take on the responsibility to do something. So that was really, really exciting.    But I think, yeah the other thing was just, we’ve had people tell us that they know feel more confident to reach out to people. Like they’ve met people face to face, or at least they saw them at the conference, so now they feel like they can reach out to them.    People are using tools and methods that they learned in some of the workshops. They’re continuing to, to work on the things, if they, if they presented at the, at the  conference, they’re continuing to work on those, on those things that they were presenting about. Whether it was a workshop format or a kind of, yeah, a different way of thinking. So that’s really exciting.    Martin Jordan: Some countries even like, started translating some of the tools they’re using into English to make it more accessible for other community members, which is amazing to see.   Laura Stevens: What, I was also going to ask about that. Because obviously running an international community, you have the time zones and the language, do you, how do you get round those things?   Martin Jordan: Yeah.   Kara Kane: Time zones are really difficult for the monthly calls. In the very beginning, we tried to run, I don’t know why I thought this was a good idea but I was like, we’ll just do the call twice and obviously that did not work. And obviously that’s a ton of work.    So what we started was just to, just to move the times around.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: So it’s not like always run a call at the same time. We’re always trying to, to kind of, engage with different people. So we’ll run calls after work, later in the evening so that the Australians and the Kiwis can join.    Martin Jordan: But not too early in the morning.   Kara Kane: Yeah, not too early in the morning. Happy to, happy to do things after work but not before (laughter from everyone).   Laura Stevens: And the languages, are all the calls run in English?   Kara Kane and Martin Jordan (same time): Yeah.   Kara Kane: We haven’t, we haven’t encountered any issues with, with language. But I think you know, going forward we’re trying to be as, as inclusive as we can. We’re trying to reach as many kind of countries working in this space as we can. So that might be something that we have to think about in the future.    Martin Jordan: Yeah we were really impressed to hear recently that at a conference in Taiwan, a government conference, they had subtitles in 12 different languages to reflect like, all the people attending. And we still have no idea how, how to make that work but this kind of like, the level of ambition.    So at the most recent conference in Edinburgh, there was live subtitling in English and we’re looking into like, technologies to make it as inclusive as possible.   Laura Stevens: And that leads me nicely on. Because you mentioned earlier that this, the last event in 2018, led directly to the 2019 events. And this is the first time that the events have gone global. So could you talk through those, what’s happened so far this year?   Kara Kane: The first thing that we did this year was collaborate with Code for America. Code for America is a non-profit in the United States and they work on reforming government nationally. So they work really closely with state and local level government. They do really amazing work, and they run a summit, they run a yearly summit called ‘Code for America Summit’. And our idea was to bring the international community to the summit. So what we did was run a one-day international design in government day…   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: ...before the Code for America Summit. So that was in Oakland in May of this year. And yeah, it was a real collaboration between between our 2 organisations. And to really bring the community to the US and reach people there that we’re not reaching, you’d think that the US would have a really strong design in government community, but they don’t yet. It’s still kind of nascent and forming. So it was really exciting to kind of, try and get all of those people in the room. Which they found really really valuable just to meet people like them, working on the same types of problems and challenges.   Laura Stevens: Is that because of like, the vast geography of America or is, and the federal...or is that?   Martin Jordan: The latter as well.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Martin Jordan: Yeah, totally. Totally.   And of course again like, there’s a lot of stuff that they can share. And then they can share kind of like, their recipes to how to solve a certain thing with other people.   Laura Stevens: Well, and that sharing tool--like I noticed New Zealand picked up the GOV.UK Design System and...   Martin Jordan: Yes.   This was amazing to see. Yeah, they kind of like took that and kind of made it theirs. Like restyling it, taking a few things in and out.   Laura Stevens: And was that facilitated by the community?   Martin Jordan: Well to some degree. So we have those monthly calls with themes, and the most popular ones were around design systems. So we actually had to, to repeat this theme so we had it in 2018 and did it in 2019 again because there’s so much interest.   And I think this was by far the most popular call we had, with more than 100 people joining.   Laura Stevens: Oh wow. Ok so...   Martin Jordan: And partially it was like a group of people in one room like, counting as 1 right.   Laura Stevens: Oh ok.    Kara Kane: Yeah. It was our biggest call ever. I was just completely shocked to see over a 100 people online joining us on Zoom.   Laura Stevens: Is it quite tricky to manage that as sort of, or does, is everyone quite respectful when somebody’s talking, everyone else will be muted. Is that, how is that to manage?   Kara Kane: Yeah. We have to set some, some ground, ground rules at the beginning to say, ‘everyone please go on mute’. And like yeah, there’s kind of there’s rules around, around how to ask questions. So there’s a chat function which is really easy to use, so you can write your question in the chat.   And then if you feel comfortable enough to go off mute and ask your question during the time for questions, then you can do that. Or I just read through the questions and try and help facilitate, facilitate that.    Martin Jordan: And there’s always recordings as well. So people can go back. So when they join the community later, they’re able to like, watch these previous calls or recordings of those, and once in a while, when people like, raise a question on Slack or on the mailing list, we’re like look, this was already covered, like have a look and they’re so thankful to like, find these resources.   Laura Stevens: And if we can go back to the America, the conference in America. Was the community involved with organising that like it was with the one in London, or was that is that a slightly different way it was organised?   Martin Jordan: Yeah.    Kara Kane: We reached out to some of the North American community members.   Laura Stevens: And who would they be?   Kara Kane: So we had people at Nava [Nava Public Benefit Corporation] in the United States, we had people at the Canadian Digital Service, people at the United States Digital Service, the USDS.   Martin Jordan: Veteran Services.   Kara Kane: So we kind of came up with 3 different kind of themes, which were around getting leadership buy-in for user-centered design, designing services for and with everyone and building design capacity and capability.   Martin Jordan: This was kind of like, although it was called International Design in government day, it was more kind of like, North American design in government.   Laura Stevens: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. With that regionalised context?   Martin Jordan: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.   Laura Stevens: And how did it feel on the day? Did it feel similar to the one you felt, you did in London, or was it different?   Martin Jordan: I mean I was so impressed.   Kara Kane: It was a lot of people that we hadn’t met before from the community, or people that were new to the community. It was people that maybe hadn’t all been in the same room before.   Laura Stevens and Martin Jordan (same time): Yeah.    Kara Kane: As in designers working in government kind of talking about things and realising, ‘oh my gosh, I’m not the only person...’    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: ...that has these really frustrating things’. Or that has you know, learning about a success of someone like you just feel, you could feel how proud people were. And that was amazing.   Laura Stevens: And do you think that sort of, like talking, you were talking there about that sort of emotional support that the community provides, and that sense of ‘oh no, you’re not alone’. And obviously there’s very practical outcomes like you can use the same user research or you can use parts of the design system, but do you think that emotional support is quite a big part of why people get involved in the community?   Martin Jordan: Absolutely. This is..   Kara Kane: Yeah. Definitely.    Martin Jordan: This is, such a, such a strong, strong point. And yeah, I think, I think we see this as well in the Slack conversations. Like people asking questions and getting then a response from from somewhere, from another part of the world, is, is really reassuring.    Laura Stevens: And we should talk about your second conference as well in Scotland this year. So what happened there?   Kara Kane: So when I mentioned at the conference in London, when we had the hands up, well one of the hands was Anna Henderson, who is a Service Designer in Scottish government, in the Office of the Chief Designer. So Anna and her team got in touch with us and said, ‘hey, like we’re really serious, like we really want to do this, like we’re going to get budget, like everyone is, everyone is excited’. They had you know, from their team level up to their minister, ministerial level, was really excited about running an international conference.   So Martin and I were like, amazing, let’s do this!    Laura Stevens: Great!   Kara Kane: Yeah. Why wouldn’t we do this?    So this was the first time that we were kind of running an event, or this is the first time that we were kind of handing over the responsibility of running a conference to someone else.   Laura Stevens: So you didn’t do the agenda or…?   Kara Kane: So we really kind of stepped back. And our role was to kind of, advise and share what we had learned from running the conference in London.   Kara Kane: Yeah. So it was really shaped around the values of Scottish government, which is a lot about inclusion and participation. So the theme of the conference was participation involving citizens in the design of government and public services. And they had really amazing talks from the community, they had things on inclusive recruitment, they had things on doing international research, they had things on working with policy colleagues, and there was a fantastic keynote by Dr. Sally Witcher, who’s the Chief Executive of Inclusion Scotland.    And I think the whole atmosphere of the conference as well was really also encompassing their values. So as Martin said, they had captioning for all of the keynotes and all of the breakouts. So every single room that you went into, there was live captioning available to you. And for all of the keynotes on the main stage, we also had British Sign Language interpreters.   Laura Stevens: And is this something you’d want to carry forward now having seen it done in action?   Kara Kane: Yeah, I think as Martin said, with trying to figure out like, how can we use technology, and these kind of new technologies that are available, around live transcription and live translation. Like how can we use those better because that’s just, that would be just so amazing to be able to help people feel more involved if they can understand the content better.   Laura Stevens: And we can also look forward as well to the, your final is, your final international event of the year.    Kara Kane: And biggest.    Laura Stevens: And biggest in Rotterdam. And so yeah, can, Martin, can you tell me a bit about that?   Martin Jordan: Yeah, yeah. So yeah, as I said it will be the biggest conference we’ve had so far. So the Dutch government is leading on that. So the, my Dutch is really bad but the Gebruiker Centraal community, so which means like users first.    Laura Stevens: Yes.   Martin Jordan: Which is a community in the Dutch government that is around I think, for a few years now. So they had local events and as well conferences there for a while. And now they’re kind of like, opening up and embracing and welcoming all the international visitors. So they’re aiming although, we’re aiming for like 800 people...   Laura Stevens: Wow.   Martin Jordan: ...that will come together for like a full three days in Rotterdam in like mid-November this year, so 18th until 20th. And there will be workshops again, because we try to like not only in all of the conferences, not only have people talking at you, but you can actually participate and interact with people. So there’s always a lot of time for like, networking and workshopping things.   At the same time as well, kind of like open, other open formats, panel discussions. So all of that is going to happen. And again, there’s been like call for participations, we have been creating a kind of like, advisory board, again an international advisory board. Where people from different continents kind of like help shape as well, the content.    We’re still on an ongoing basis like asking for more content, because there will be so many people so we need a lot of content as well.    Laura Stevens: So you’re doing a call out now live to…   Martin Jordan: Yes!    Laura Stevens: So how if you, how do you put something forward, how do I go to this conference?   Martin Jordan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can go to ‘international.gov-design.com’. There you find all of the events that have happened already, and the one that’s happening next.    Laura Stevens: And are you hoping this will, you mentioned for like the American one was a bit more localised to North America. Are you hoping this will have a more global outlook because it’s just a bigger conference?   Martin Jordan: The other day, I was listening to a talk from the Italians and I feel like everybody is kind of innovating in another pocket. So at the beginning some people were like, ‘oh GDS is so far ahead’, but like, we are ahead in some regards. In other regards like, other governments are totally leading. So there’s a lot of stuff we can learn from each other.   Laura Stevens: Is there an example you can think of, maybe from that conference that you were like, ‘oh, they’re doing so much better, we can learn from them’.    Martin Jordan: So the design system that was created by the US folks and as well the design system created by, by the Australians, contains like various components that we might not have had.   So there has been, after one of the calls, like kind of like, an immediate exchange of code...   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Martin Jordan: ...which was like, wow. We were like, ‘oh this is a component we do not have here’. So that people…   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Martin Jordan: ...just share code literally, just…   Laura Stevens: Straight away.   Martin Jordan: Yeah. Which is quite amazing, amazing to see. Yeah.   Laura Stevens: And in terms of obviously, you’ve had a really significant growth over these past few years, in terms of where you want to the community to go, is there any plans you’ve got for 2020, in terms of maybe, targeting different countries or growing it further or in a different direction. What would be your take on that?   Kara Kane: In terms of the events, we’re intrigued to see how we can continue running those, and how we can continue having the community take ownership of those events. So we have been in, we’ve had people contact us from 3 different countries saying that they’re interested in running a conference. So we are in talks.   Laura Stevens: Watch this space.    Kara Kane: Watch this space.   So we’re trying to think about you know, how many events should we do a year, and what should those events look like, and how big should they be. So we’re working on a bit of a conference playbook…   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: ...at the moment, that we can share with people who want to run a conference, to really help them be able to do it.    So in general for the community, going forward, we want it be, we want it to continue to be a place that is supportive for people working in this environment and in this space. We want to continue bringing people together, we want to continue seeing things like the Finns and the Estonians kind of working together and running events together.    And you know, people working on similar service areas coming together to share and learn from each other. But we really you know, in the future, want to get to a point where we’re, as Martin said around the design system example, like how can we share interaction and service design patterns.   Martin Jordan: Yeah.   Kara Kane: There’s so much kind of possibility for that. So how can the community facilitate that and what does that look like and is it possible, and at what level can we get to, and how can we keep you know, stealing from each other.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: Stealing code, stealing ideas and just you know, really learning from what everyone else is doing. So it’s really about kind of, maximising share and re-use, which is the theme of the November conference.   Martin Jordan: Exactly, yes.   Laura Stevens: And so if, how would I join this community if I’ve been listening to this, wherever I am in the world, how would I join?   Martin Jordan: So we have quite a few blog posts on the design in government blog, that is one of the GDS blogs.    There you have a dedicated international category, and whatever international blog post you read, at the bottom there are all the links to join the Google group. And then you’re part of the community.   Kara Kane: So once you apply to join the Google group, and join the community, then you’re sent a welcome email. Which kind of tells you about the Slack channels, it tells you about the recordings of the monthly calls, it tells you about the events that are coming up. So you can immediately find out what’s going on and how to get involved.    Laura Stevens: And tell me about applying. Who exactly can join the group?   Kara Kane: So it’s open to people that are working embedded in government, working in user-centered design. So you could be a designer, a user researcher, some working in accessibility, anyone who’s interested in design, and you have to be interested in talking about those things, from any government in the world, is welcome to join.   Laura Stevens: And I don’t know if we could round off with maybe some tips that you, on how to set up your own community, if this is something, if there’s some quick fire tips that you’ve found over learning this community. Sort of, how do you scale, how do you keep momentum going and what tools do you need.   Is there anything you’d want to add those?   Kara Kane: I think the first thing is using platforms that people are already on.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: So…   Laura Stevens: Don’t reinvent the wheel.    Kara Kane: Don’t reinvent the wheel. Please.   Just people use Slack, so use Slack.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: People use email, so use Google groups. It makes it so much easier if you make it hard for people to actually get to the platform where the conversation is happening, you’re already putting up a barrier to your community.   Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: So make it really easy, easy to access once you’re part of the community. And easy to, easy to respond and join conversations.   Martin Jordan: And if there are events happening, whether they’re kind of like online calls or like physical meetups with talks, like if you can, try to record stuff. So if there is like material you can share, because people will either kind of like, join communities later. Yeah, do that.    Or as well be not able to attend, and if you can then share the materials so they can still consume it in their own time, it’s really beneficial.   Kara Kane: Yeah and I think, building on that, is just having different formats. So not just having a Google group or a Slack group, where it can be really really scary to ask a question or share something.    Having things like monthly calls where you’re kind of, inviting people in to present, inviting people to consume information in a different way, having face to face events where people can network and meet people in a different way. Just having different options for people to feel engaged in the community.    Laura Stevens: So different formats, use the tools people are already on and record what you do.   Kara Kane: Yes.   Martin Jordan: Yeah.   Laura Stevens: Three excellent tips.   Kara Kane: And help introduce people.    Laura Stevens: And is that sort of, facilitating..?   Kara Kane: As a Community Manager.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Kara Kane: It’s really, especially in the beginning, is just help facilitate relationship building.    Laura Stevens: Yeah.   Arrange lots of cups of coffee.   Kara Kane: Yeah.   Laura Stevens: So thank you to both Kara and Martin today for telling us about their experience in running the international design in government community. So thank you for coming on.   Kara Kane: Thank you!   Martin Jordan: Thank you.   Thank you to both Kara and Martin today for telling us about their experience in running the international design in government community.    You can listen to all the episodes of the Government Digital Service podcast on Apple Music, Spotify and all other major podcast platforms. And you can read the transcripts on Podbean.    Thank you both again very much.

Listen to this month’s episode of the Government Digital Service podcast to hear about the award winning step by step work on GOV.UK. Kate Ivey-Williams and Sam Dub, from the GOV.UK team, explain why and how the navigation was created and its impact on users.  A full transcript of the episode follows.    Laura Stevens: Hello and welcome to the Government Digital Service podcast. My name is Laura Stevens and I’m a writer here at GDS. Today we’re going to be speaking about the award-winning ‘Step by Step’ navigation on GOV.UK. This is a navigation that breaks down complex tasks into simple steps. The navigation follows you throughout your journey, indicating what to do now and next. It also shows you what previous steps you might have missed. For example, getting a provisional driving licence before booking a driving theory test. To tell me more about this is Kate Ivey-Williams and Sam Dub, so, please, could you introduce yourself and tell me what you do here at GDS, for Kate first?   Kate Ivey-Williams:   Yes, so I am Service Design Lead for GOV.UK. That basically means my work focuses on 2 things. It’s looking at how the platform of GOV.UK helps government to deliver services, but also looking at how the GOV.UK programme, as a group of people, are helping government to improve those services.   Laura Stevens: Sounds great, and Sam?   Sam Dub:   I’m a product manager working on GOV.UK. For the last couple of years, really, I’ve been focusing on navigation of GOV.UK. That means, really, making things easy to find, but also, with ‘Step by Step’ navigation, making things easier to do. Ways that we can join things up so they make sense for users is a key part of that.   Laura Stevens: Okay. Your team won a prestigious design award last month. That was from D&AD. How did you feel when you found out about that?   Kate Ivey-Williams:   Really exciting. I think it’s like you spend a lot of time looking inwards at government and having a strong belief that you’re working on the right things and doing things that make sense, but it’s very nice to get recognition from people outside of your world of work, and peers across the industry, that the thing that you’re working on is a good thing and that it feels meaningful beyond just the context that we’re working in.   Sam Dub: I think one of the things that’s really nice about it is it’s an iteration on GOV.UK. A lot of the work there are like re-launches or rebrands, and this is like a continuation of some of the thinking that’s been around GOV.UK since the beginning. It feels like a kind of validation of a process of iteration, like week by week, month by month, we’ve got to this new place. It’s quite exciting.   Kate Ivey-Williams:   I was a bit unsure, actually, whether we would win an award, because obviously GOV.UK has won 2 awards previously, mostly focused on… They were awards for content design, and I was unsure whether entering this they would just see it like, “GOV… It’s just the same thing.”   Laura Stevens: You’re just getting all the awards, aren’t you?   Kate Ivey-Williams:   They’re just, “What do you want another award for?” But we entered it in a different category and I think they did understand that we’re trying to achieve slightly different things. Driven by the same principles, we’re now focusing on doing slightly different things and working in slightly different ways than we did 5 years ago, or whenever we won the previous awards.   Sam Dub: It built on that work. The early achievement, the big achievement of GOV.UK in its first year was just getting everything together in the same place. That’s something that Neil Williams was talking about on… I think it was the first or second episode of the podcast.   Laura Stevens:   Yes, the first podcast; yes.   Sam Dub: He was leading that work. Just getting all those departmental websites shut down and all that content moved into one place was a huge achievement. Then there was a, kind of, follow-on challenge for that, which was like, “How do we make this stuff findable and usable, and how do we join this content up and these transactions up across departments?” We’re able to do what we’re doing because of that work that came before us, but it follows in a, kind of, tradition of ideas of, like, joining things up for users, making things easy, like making sure that users don’t have to understand the structure of government in order to find what they need.   Laura Stevens:   This is what I was going to talk about, like how ‘Step by Step’ came about. What was the genesis of it?   Kate Ivey-Williams: It’s, kind of, the reason that I joined GOV.UK. I was one of the first service designers to join GDS as an organisation. Lou Downe joined first and established service design as a profession within GDS, and then they brought in myself and another person. I joined GOV.UK with the idea that, “Okay, you’re going to be on GOV.UK and you’re going to think about how does GOV.UK do services?”  I’ve been at GDS for about 4 years now, and it took, probably, about a year and a half before we could kick off this work in any meaningful way, because we had to still do quite a lot of technical work on GOV.UK, bringing all the content into one place so that we could do consistent universal navigation across all content. There was quite a lot of technical debt to deal with.  It’s been ticking along and our ideas have been evolving, a year and a half ago, we were able to really kick this work off in earnest and think about how all of those ideas translate into something actual, real.   Sam Dub:   Yes, and it’s such an attractive idea. For me, somebody who didn’t have all that background, coming to it at that point, it was just such an exciting idea – the idea that we could have, like, a single page that would tell you everything you needed to do in order to get something done, something big, and chunky, and meaningful, like learning to drive, or starting a business, or employing someone, these complicated processes. If, as government, we could just create one page that’s well structured and explains exactly what you need to do, that’s such a valuable thing for users, for citizens. That was a really exciting idea to just pick up and run with.   Laura Stevens: Why did you pick the first one, which was ‘Learning to Drive’?    Kate Ivey-Williams:   There was quite a lot of previous work done in that area. When Lou first joined GDS, they went off to Swansea, and worked a lot with DVLA, and were looking at a lot of the driving services, so we had quite a historical knowledge base in that area and already had quite a good understanding of that journey.  From that respect, it was quite a good one to pick up, because we had stuff we could build on, but it also is a journey that’s quite simple, and linear, and quite easily understood.   Sam Dub: I think it’s, kind of, exemplifies what this pattern, this design pattern, this new feature on GOV.UK is for, in that inside ’Learning to Drive’ you’ve got a load of guidance. You’ve got stuff like… The ‘Highway Code’ is probably the best-known part of that. You’ve got all these kinds of transactions you need to do with government.  Before you start, you’ve got to get a provisional driving licence. That’s a transaction with government. Then, at some point in that process, you’ve got to do your theory test. You’ve got to take some driving lessons. Then you’ve got to take your practical test.  You’ve got to do those things in the right order, like you can’t take a driving test until you’ve got your provisional licence. So, it was just a really nice kind of model for how we could start organising that content in a simple sequence that made sense to people, to make that easier.   Kate Ivey-Williams:   ‘Learn to Drive’ had quite a good mix of things across it that we could start testing the pattern slightly about how it could deal with real processes that a user’s going through, not just the government processes.   Laura Stevens: I was actually going to talk through the design of that, because it went through quite a few rounds, iterations.  Sam Dub: Like with most things, we start in identifying a need. We knew that we needed to join up transactions and guidance, because you need both. You need to engage with the guidance, and you need to do these transactions, so we started developing prototypes for how we do that.  As with most things in GDS and GOV.UK, we start with user research. That’s bringing in people who are in the process of learning to drive. We put these early prototypes in front of them and we really asked them just to go through the… To engage with them naturally, as if they were in their own homes, and do the parts of the journey where they were at, at the moment.  That allowed us to evolve a design over… I think it was, in the creation of the original pattern, about 10 rounds of user research. Each time, we were bringing a slightly different prototype, like building on the learnings and insights from the previous round, and really honing this design pattern to a point where users felt comfortable with it. It felt natural, it felt intuitive to them. Laura Stevens: You also went up to Neath, as well. Kate Ivey-Williams:   To the Digital Accessibility Centre. Yes, that was good. We went a whole crew of us. We were, like, the back end, front end: me, the designer; you, the product manager; user research. We all went along and we tested it with, I think, around 10 people who were in the Digital Accessibility Centre who have varying access needs, whether that be cognitive ability or sight, or perhaps it’s… I think one of the people we tested with has ADHD [Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder]. There were quite a lot of different access needs that we tested against, and that was… It was such an interesting day, yes.   Sam Dub: Yes, we learnt tons from that, and that directly translated into improvements to the designs that make it work better – for everybody, actually.    Laura Stevens: Now there are 41 ‘Step by Step’ lives. You’ve got quite a range. You’ve got, obviously, the first one, ‘Learning to Drive a Car’, ‘Getting Married’, ‘Getting Divorced’. On a slightly lighter note, you’ve got ‘Reporting Treasure’, as well.   Kate Ivey-Williams:   Yes.    Sam Dub: Yes.   Kate Ivey-Williams:   My favourite.   Sam Dub: For the metal detectorists out there, if you find your Anglo-Saxon hoard, unfortunately you have to tell the government about that. You can’t just keep it and so that’s a ‘Step by Step’ process. It’s about, like, we deliberately picked early on these wildly diverse types of processes from, like, something really emotionally taxing and legally complicated, like divorce, and then something like, if you find buried treasure or the cargo of a shipwreck, you have to tell government about that. We were testing to make sure that this pattern could handle all these different kinds of interactions that people have to make with government.   Laura Stevens: How did you go about creating these step by step?   Kate Ivey-Williams:    We’ve developed a bit of a standardised process now where we’ve now got enough traction with government that in the early days we were going out to departments and saying, “We think your thing would work really well as part of this user journey thing that we’re doing on GOV.UK. You don’t really know what it is yet, but we’d love to give it a go. Can you be our alpha partners?” to a point where we’ve now got enough traction with government that they’re coming to us so we’ve actually got hundreds of ‘Step by Step’ journeys in our backlog that we could build, and now it’s about picking up them, based on prioritisation. And once we… We have 2 different starting points. Sometimes you have a really tangible idea of what the journey is and who the users are. When you’ve got that idea, you can start building a draft of that journey internally in GOV.UK with our content designers, who are brilliant service designers, actually. They interrogate the content on GOV.UK and start mapping out a draft of this thing.  Then, alongside that, we start working out who are the departments involved? Who do we need to get into a room to go through this journey, validate it, make sure that we are going to be pointing at the right things, in the right order, so that users can do all the things they need to do? Sometimes you start off with a much more fuzzy service area where you’re not quite sure what journeys should be built in that area, or it’s just it’s a bit complicated. You need to think: how are you going to break that down?    Laura Stevens: Does that journey happen here at GDS, or would you go out to the departments?   Sam Dub:   It’s generally whatever works for the participants. I think this is, maybe, a thing that, outside government, people are not necessarily so aware of: that, with a journey like employing somebody, that’s how a user sees it in terms of, “Okay, I need to hire someone for my business,” but actually that’s owned. The guidance and the transactions are owned by 5 different departments that could be in 5 different offices, in 5 different parts of the country.  What’s exciting is getting all those people in a room together and going, “Actually, collectively, as government, we own this thing. We own the journey. You don’t just own your little bit. We all, together, can make the journey of employing someone really simple, quick, seamless.” It’s really exciting getting those people in the room. People are generally really up for that, like they’re enthusiastic about making the whole thing better.   Kate Ivey-Williams:   More often than not, as well, these workshops, it’s the first time that these people have ever met or thought about how their things join up. That’s really one of the key reasons why this ‘Step by Step’ stuff exists. It’s not just about creating a good experience for users who are trying to do things with government. It’s like 20% that, but it’s like 80% getting government to understand their services, and know who else in government they need to collaborate with when they’re thinking about improving those services, and getting them to take ownership of that as a joined-up, cross-departmental group of people.   Sam Dub: That’s what we really hope happens with this stuff, is that when we’re just getting started in terms of, like, we’re at 41 at the moment, there are hundreds of these kinds of services that the government provides.   Kate Ivey-Williams:   So many – so many.    Sam Dub: We’ve got a lot of work to do.   Laura Stevens: You’ve been busy.   Sam Sub:   But then once, even for … So, the 40 that we’ve mapped out – and you can go see them on GOV.UK – they’re also just the beginning. Those things are 7 or 8 step processes. It’s really great to have a group of people come together and, maybe, have a think about: “Okay, now we’ve mapped it out and seen it all in one place, actually that’s quite complicated,” like, “This, maybe, doesn’t need to be an 8 step process. Maybe we have a policy goal which is reducing this down to 3 steps.” That as, like, Step By Steps’ as an enabler of, like, transformation and improvement of services is one of our goals for this work.   Kate Ivey Williams: It’s journey mapping, basically, which is like… As a service designer, that’s our bread and butter, is doing journey mapping, because that’s how you understand how everything works and what’s going wrong, but it’s translating that into something that’s, kind of, shiny and people want it.    Laura Stevens: There have been some really good outcomes, I’ve got some figures, like since launch it’s been used by 10.5 million people. Is that still correct?    Kate Ivey-Williams:   Yes, possibly more because I think that’s the numbers for the overview pages, which are… Within every ‘Step by Step’ journey you’ve got, like, the overview page, which is the journey on one page, but then every page within that end-to-end service will also have the ‘Step by Step’ navigation on. Actually, there are more people using the navigation on the content and transaction pages than they are using the overview pages, so yes.   Sam Dub: Yes, that’s one of the key insights that are shaping GOV.UK, is the fact that users generally start from search, and they land deep in GOV.UK on content, or they might only think about the process in terms of a transaction. They might think about driving in terms of:  “Okay, I’ve got to take a test.” Actually, there’s a load of stuff you need to do before you get to there. It’s about helping users, when they arrive on a piece of content, to go, “Actually, this is part of a 5 step process. Maybe I need to hop back a few steps, do a little bit first, and then I can do this bit.”  We’re making it clear on the site. You’ll see it looks like a kind of underground map on the right-hand side of webpages. It’s a beautiful, responsive design, so it looks good on mobile, too. It’ll show you exactly, using this kind of underground line metaphor, exactly where you are in that process.  We’ve seen that in the lab, users telling us, like, “This is really useful. This makes this process seem manageable,” for some things that often don’t, things that people often need, maybe get professional help or have to call and have to get a lawyer to come and help them do it because it feels so vast and unmanageable. Just by breaking it down and saying, “This is what you need to do now. This is what you need to do next,” really, really helps people. Laura Stevens: How do you know that people are reading the content and making use of it?   Sam Dub:   I think we start with user research, but then we start looking for data at [site] scale [when we] start publishing things on GOV.UK. One of the things that we developed alongside the ‘Step by Step’ navigation is this new component. You’ll see it at the bottom of every single page on GOV.UK. It’s just got one very short question in a little blue bar at the bottom of the page, and it just says, ‘Is this useful, yes or no?’. It’s a kind of live usefulness vote that we’ve got running on every page of the site.  This is a common technique across the web. We didn’t invent this, but it gives you a very useful starting metric for what’s working for users and what’s not. It’ll often flag an issue that you then might want to take into a user research lab and look at more in detail: “Actually, what’s going wrong here?” But one of the first signs we had that we were like, “Really on the right track here,” is that the usefulness scores for the new ‘Step by Step’ journeys that we published – the first [set of] ‘Step by Step’ journeys – were way higher than some of the things that they were replacing, and equivalent formats.  We had, like 80%, 90% usefulness scores, which were great news for us. I think the no prompt, if you say, ‘No, this page isn’t useful,’ you’re prompted to give us a bit of feedback. If one of the ‘Step by Steps’ isn’t working for you, there is this mechanism for people to say, “Actually, this is why. This is the bit you’ve… You’ve missed this bit,” or, “I’m in this circumstance and this doesn’t work for me.” It’s a way of us getting feedback at scale from users, and that’s always where we’re focused. We’re always watching the live performance data of what we’re doing, to make sure that it’s right for the circumstance, that it’s right for where we’ve applied it.   Kate Ivey-Williams:   We know it helps people because we’ve seen, for example, the ‘Applying for tax-free childcare’, once we introduce the ‘Step by Step’ – well, the hypothesis before we built the ‘Step by Step’ was that people were not checking whether it was right for them, or they weren’t checking their eligibility before jumping into the transaction itself to apply. They were using the application process as a bit of an eligibility checker, which is not what it’s built for.  Because of that, a lot of people were dropping out, or failing, or applying for the wrong thing. After introducing the ‘Step by Step’ navigation, in the analytics we saw more people who were hitting the transaction page but then jumping back to the eligibility guidance, and then coming back to the transaction and going through it successfully because they were going through with confidence that this was the right thing for them. Fewer people were applying for it incorrectly.   Sam Dub: That – those kind improvements, getting people just, like, not jumping into transactions that are wrong for them, filling in the right form – is like, one, it saves users tons of time, and primarily that’s what we care about. The secondary impact of that is that also, in turn, saves government loads of money, like having to deal with forms that aren’t filled in right, or calls to call centres because someone doesn’t understand how stuff [has been]… How a service works. That also costs government money, and civil servants time. So, by making things better for users, it has this benefit of saving government time and money, as well, which is really nice.   Kate Ivey-Williams: I’m nodding.    Laura Stevens:  Can you give me a step by step to making a ‘Step by Step’? Sam Dub: There’s a serious one. As a family, we’ve been talking a lot about lasting power of attorney, and everyone in my family is healthy and good, but my parents are in their late 60s and it’s a sensible thing for people to start talking about and planning ahead.  So, within, like, family WhatsApp groups and email, people are just pinging around links to GOV.UK guidance, going, ‘Have a look at this. Is this like…?’ Because there’s a different role for the person who is making the lasting power of attorney, and the people who will, essentially, have an obligation to look after that person if something was to happen to their health.  We’re pinging around guidance, discussing this, and I’m sitting there going, “We should totally do this,” like, “There’s a user need here.” This is complicated. There are decisions being taken. It’s a thing that some people go and seek legal advice about.  Whilst, as a product manager, I wouldn’t abuse my position to get stuff made that’s helpful to me, there’s an indication that there might be a need there. That’s something that we could do the research to actually see if there really was something there, but I’d love to see that happen.   Laura Stevens: How would you go about doing that if you wanted to create that particular one?   Sam Dub:   In that case, you would look at the parts of the service and the guidance that exists around it. Then you get someone like Kate to come and run this, these workshops that we’ve now got pretty practised at, but Kate can probably tell you what happens.   Kate Ivey-Williams:   Yes, less me and more the content designers, because they are experts in knowing what’s on GOV.UK and how it all fits together. They’re really good. Content design is basically about explaining government services in a really clear way so that people understand them.  And I think we’ve now got to a point where we’ve got the right balance where we’re taking something in that helps them share their knowledge and helps us to get moving quickly so that we can give them something back quickly that is the results of their collaboration.   Sam Dub: Invariably, something does emerge that’s new and that is a new way of framing something. That is something that no one department could have done on their own.   Kate Ivey-Williams:   Exactly.   Sam Dub: We certainly couldn’t have come, arrived with that up our sleeve and said, like, “This is how it’s going to be structured.” It’s a genuine collaborative process where the input of the expertise in the departments about the different parts of those journeys come together to create this thing that is, hopefully, framed in a way that makes sense to users and is how they think about it, rather than how government thinks about that problem.   Laura Stevens: Yes, I was going to touch on that, how you’re making government think about itself as a place that delivers services. It sounds like, [with all] this collaboration, that’s been a key outcome from this.   Kate Ivey-Williams:   There are a lot going on across government to help them think about things in a slightly different way, to help them think about themselves as service providers. Like, the new service standard is really strong on that, and about getting government to think about services and whole problems, and tackling those collaboratively, but I think ‘Step by Step’ is one of the really tangible tools that enables departments to start work on that. It’s the first step on the road, I think, yes.    Laura Stevens: And I should probably also finish the Step by Step. Once the workshop has been done, what’s the next stage with your service here?    Kate Ivey-Williams:   Usually, if we’re going into that workshop with a fairly good idea of the journey and we have that very draft-y thing in the publishing tool, as the conversations are going on with the departments that’s been facilitated by someone from our team, someone else in our team is sitting in the background, updating the draft of that thing in the publishing tool.  So, by the end of the workshop we can show them the tangible output, a sort of first-draft example of what they’ve been discussing, with the caveat that we need to take that away and do a bit more massaging of the content. Then the thing gets “2i” internally. That’s a jargon-y term for it gets reviewed by another content designer within GOV.UK. Then we send it out for fact-check with departments. This follows our standard mainstream guidance fact-check process, where it goes to the subject-matter experts within departments, who then say, “Yes, that is factually correct. Go ahead and sign it off.” Or they give us feedback about, “Actually, you’ve misunderstood something there.”    Sam Dub: I always enjoy when it goes to the lawyers. That’s when you know it’s like… That’s when you know you’re changing stuff, because the lawyers are there to make sure that, in the way that we’re presenting this in a simple way, we aren’t straying from what’s legally correct, and we aren’t misleading people, but we are… Presenting some of these complicated legal processes as a simple one-pager does mean it needs to get read and fact-checked by a lawyer in the process. There is often this wide range of expertise that we need to consult, and people who, in the process of reframing this stuff, we’ve had to consult, but everything’s gone live. At every point, we’ve reached a consensus. When everyone sees it at the end, they go, “Oh,” like, “That’s better.”    Kate Ivey-Williams:   Yes.   Laura Stevens: Does it go back to that point of, exposing those…? Perhaps the policy challenges that this is what part of the process is.   Kate Ivey-Williams:   Yes. I think sometimes a confusing and complex policy is hidden in guidance that is spread across GOV.UK. When you extract it and expose it in this really simplified view of that thing, you actually realise the policy is complicated or the thing doesn’t make sense, because the policy is complicated.  Hopefully, that is… Showing them that is the start of a process of thinking: “How can we simplify this, because this is confusing users and this is making work for us, as government, it’s making work for them to try and understand something which should just be simple.”   Sam Dub:   That was really one of the early learnings of this, was that we needed to get the policymakers in the room for those workshops, because often there can be a process where our content designers do a bunch of work and then they pass it over to policy people. Some context is lost there. If you’ve got the policymakers in the room from the start, that’s another kind of collaboration. It’s different departments and it’s different disciplines being there to inform the process.   Laura Stevens: These ‘Step by Steps’ have also been very helpful to the voice assistant work, as well, haven’t they?   Sam Dub:   Yes. This is part of a broader strategy. We sometimes talk about GOV.UK now… Or trying to make GOV.UK understandable to humans and understandable to machines. I sometimes wonder, when we say that, what people are imagining, like some kind of robot overlords.   Kate Ivey-Williams: Exactly.   Laura Stevens:   Our new user.    Sam Dub: To be clear, to clear this up on the GDS podcast, not for the robot overlords, one example of what we mean by that is so that our content is understandable to search engines. If you do a search for becoming a driving instructor or learning to drive a car, from a search engine on mobile – actually, this is something that’s gone live in the last month – they’re able to see the… The search engine is able to look at the structure of our content.  You get, like, this little carousel of steps that appears that you can swipe through. You can jump to: “I’m at step 3 of ‘Learning to Drive’,” like, “I’ve got my provisional licence, so now I’m studying for my test, so I can jump to that.” That’s powered by some mark-up that we’ve added to our ‘Step by Steps’ that makes them easier for machines to read. It’s the same mark-up that powers search that can also power voice assistance, so you can query those ‘Step by Steps’ – or the content within those ‘Step by Steps’ – in the same way.   Laura Stevens: I’ve also seen a figure floating round that there are, like, 400 services you want to do this to. Is that how many, or is it literally just-?   Kate Ivey-Williams:   That’s that finger in the air. I think that’s based off of the amount of mainstream guidance we have, which is it covers the really major, far-reaching government services, but, because ‘Step by Step’ navigation can work across all content on GOV.UK, it means that even beyond those 400, if there are departments who are sitting in some really niche area of government, they can still start using this pattern for something that [might]… Maybe it only has 200 users a year, but they can still start thinking about it and piecing their journey together in the depths of Whitehall content, as well. There’s potentially way more than 400, but that covers some of the really key services that we know we would like to build.   Laura Stevens: What sort of journeys are definitely not ‘Step by Steps’? Like, when you’re thinking, if you’re listening and you’re working on a service, what would be not suitable?   Sam Dub: This is a crude indicator of it, it’s generally stuff you need to do in more than one sitting, like you can’t learn to drive or get married in one web session. It’s going to take a bit longer.   Kate Ivey-Williams:   One day. I think you can in Estonia, probably.   Sam Dub: It will generally be something where you’ve got to read a bit of GOV.UK, go and do a thing in the real world, come back, and then read or do something else. That’s a, kind of, gut-feel indicator of when some navigation that’s going to help people join up those activities is going to help. Kate Ivey-Williams:    When I think about the ‘Step by Steps’ I want to build, one of the ones I really wanted to do was what to do when someone dies, because it is these high-emotion, really difficult times of life when the last thing you want to be doing is thinking about government admin. I know they’re a bit depressing, but that’s what motivates me, is to take the pressure off people at those horrible times and make life a little bit easier.  I think other ‘Step by Steps’ I would love to build would be, like, helping people who are out of work, and tying together all the services and the suite of things in that space that could support them in that time of life, or other things like that. That’s where we can add, I think, the most value.   Sam Dub:   It’s those moments in life where you really value somebody saying, like, “You just do this, do this, do this, and you’ll be fine.” Yes, that’s what motivates us, I think.   Kate Ivey-Williams:    Totally, yes.   Laura Stevens: Not adding unnecessary stress or pressure on a highly emotional situation.   Kate Ivey-Williams:    Yes. Who wants to think about government when you’ve got all that other stuff on your plate? No-one. I think it’s about making government much more invisible. Ultimately, people don’t want to think about that. They want to get on with their lives.   Laura Stevens: “Thank you” to Kate, and, “Thank you” to Sam today. You can listen to all the episodes of the Government Digital Service podcast on Apple Music, Spotify, and all other major podcast platforms, and you can read the transcripts on Podbean. Thank you very much again.   Sam Dub:   Thank you.   Kate Ivey-Williams:    Thanks for having us.

On this week’s show, Amy and Dr. B. are joined by Laura Stevens, author of Solving the Puzzle of your ADD/ADHD Child: Natural Alternatives for Hard-to-Raise Children. Laura tells Amy and Dr. B. how she became interested in the topic of ADD/ADHD and how this led her to write her first book, How to Feed Your Hyperactive Child. Laura describes the importance of clean diets when dealing with hyperactive children and why it’s especially important for parents to be on the lookout for dyes on ingredients labels. She talks about the impact of sugars, whether organic and non-GMO are terms we should be paying attention to for hyperactive children, and some of the most important nutrients to keep an eye out for. Laura also talks about good sleep hygiene and the importance of physical activity. You can find Solving the Puzzle of your ADD/ADHD Child: Natural Alternatives for Hard-to-Raise Children on amazon.com and wherever books are sold.

Give your loved ones the very best nature has to offer with the Essence by Isagenix Essential Oil collection. Listen in as 2018 Woman of the Year recipient Laura Stevens shares her favorite ways to use these incredible essential oils and how she's planning to give the gift of Essence this year.

Jay Bennett, Laura Stevens, and Gabrielle Dean know how to keep the ball rolling and the wind in their sails by staying motivated and fired up about their business. Listen in as they share exactly how they build and keep that excitement growing within themselves as well as in their teams.

Courtney Cogburn: Virtual Reality to Improve Race Relations (Ep. 132) Columbia University School of Social Work Professor Courtney Cogburn joined Joe Miller to discuss her work with virtual reality to improve race relations. Bio Courtney Cogburn (@CourtneyCogburn) is an assistant professor at the Columbia School of Social Work and a Faculty Affiliate of the Columbia Population Research Center. Her research integrates principles and methodologies across psychology, stress physiology and social epidemiology to investigate relationships between racism-related stress and racial health disparities across the life course. Her work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Her current research projects examine: the effects of cultural racism in the media on physiological, psychological and behavioral stress reactivity and moderating effects of cognitive appraisal processes; the role of structural racism in producing disease risk; and chronic psychosocial stress exposure and related implications for understanding Black/White disparities in cardiovascular health and disease between early and late adulthood. At the end of 2014, Dr. Cogburn received an award from the Provost’s Grants Program for Junior Faculty Who Contribute to the Diversity Goals of the University for a project titled “Black Face to Ferguson: A Mixed Methodological Examination of Media Racism, Media Activism and Health.” In addition to her academic research, Dr. Cogburn works with the Southern Jamaica Plain Health Center at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and is a senior advisor at the International Center Advocates Against Discrimination in NYC to educate and build community activism around issues of racism and health. Before coming to Columbia in July 2014, Dr. Cogburn was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at the Harvard School of Public Health. She received her BA in Psychology from the University of Virginia, MSW from the University of Michigan School of Social Work and PhD in the Combined Program in Education and Psychology from the University of Michigan. Resources Columbia School of Social Work Experiencing Racism in VR by Courtney Cogburn (Ted Talk) The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss News Roundup Facebook makes moves to contain Cambridge Analytica fallout Facebook has made several moves to contain the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal and salvage what remains of its integrity and public image. The company announced that it will now fact-check political photos and videos, allow you to see the personal data they have on you, and limit the sharing of your personal information with data brokers. Meanwhile, on the legal front, Missouri’s Republican Attorney General has opened an investigation into Facebook’s data collection practices. Attorney General Josh Hawley wants to know about every instance in which Facebook shared user data with political entities, the rates they paid and whether users were notified.  In addition, Facebook will not provide evidence or testify before a U.K. parliamentary committee investigating Facebook’s use of user data. However, he will testify before Congress, and Sunny Bonnell reports in Inc. that it could happen as soon as April 10th. In addition, housing groups are suing Facebook for allowing real estate advertisers to discriminate against mothers, the disabled and minorities, according to Jordan Pearson in Motherboard. And Ali Breland reported on a memo leaked from 2016 written by Facebook executive Andrew Bosworth suggesting the company’s expansion is justified even if it costs lives from bullying or a terrorist attack. Sinclair, which is in the process of buying Tribune Media, has anchors read same script Sinclair Broadcasting, the little-known media company that’s in the process of buying Tribune Media for $3.9 billion, has been accused of being a mouthpiece for conservative viewpoints. Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has been seen by many to have paved the way for Sinclair by relaxing longstanding media ownership rules. Now, Deadspin has put together a video showing dozens of anchors on tv stations owned by Sinclair reciting the exact same script making the same claims about fake news that the Trump administration has been making. Sinclair now reaches 2 out of every 5 American homes, with 193 stations concentrated in midsize markets. The merger with Tribune Media would bring that number up to 236, including stations in New York City and Chicago, if Sinclair doesn’t divest some of the stations.  Emily Stewart reports in Vox. In a Tweet, President Trump defended Sinclair.  Saks/Lord & Taylor hacked  Vindu Goel and Rachel Abrams report for the New York Times that a well-known band of cybercriminals hacked the credit and debit card numbers of some 5 million Saks and Lord & Taylor customers. The parent company of the two department stores, Hudson’s Bay Company, said in  a statement that the company has identified the issue, is taking steps to contain it, and will keep the public informed. Trump attacks Amazon Trump attacked Amazon on twitter last week, saying the company should be regulated, which led to a dip in the company’s stock prices. But policy experts say that antitrust action against Amazon is a long shot. Laura Stevens reports in the Wall Street Journal. City of Atlanta hit by cyberattack Eight thousand employees of the City of Atlanta had to shut down their computers last week. The reason? A ransomware attack. The attackers demanded $51,000 to unscramble government processes usually handled online. While the attack did not affect major systems like wastewater treatment and 911 calls, police officers had to write tickets by hand, none of Atlanta’s 6 million residents could apply for city jobs, and the courts could not validate warrants. Nicole Perlroth and Aland Blinder report in the New York Times. FCC greenlights SpaceX’s satellite internet service The FCC has given the green light to SpaceX’s satellite broadband internet service. The company aims to deploy thousands of small satellites to reach underserved areas, such as rural communities, at fiber-like speeds. Samanta Masunaga reports in the LA Times.   Tumblr cancels 84 accounts tied to Russia Morgan Chalfant reports in the Hill that Tumblr took down 84 accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency, the Russian troll farm at the center of a federal investigation into the Russian propaganda campaign that swayed the 2016 presidential election. Last month DOJ Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russians and 3 Russian entities connected to the Internet Research Agency. Trump administration to look at social media accounts for visas The Trump administration announced that it is planning to review the social media accounts of people applying for visas to enter the U.S. People entering the U.S. from countries with visa-free status, like the UK, Canada, France, and Germany, won’t be subjected to the additional vetting. But individuals seeking entry visas into the U.S. from countries like India, China and Mexico would need to turn over their social media information. The BBC has the story. But Joe Uchill and Stef W. Kight reported for Axios that ICE already uses Facebook data – not to track immigrants, though, but to track child predators. D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to hear challenges to the FCC’s net neutrality order Finally, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will now hear the consolidated appeals of the FCC’s December order to repeal the 2015 net neutrality rules. The Ninth Circuit had won the lottery to hear the case, but Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request to move the cases to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which heard the appeals of both the 2011 rules and the 2015 rules, which it had upheld. John Eggerton reports in Broadcasting and Cable.

Our first Youth Center podcast! Rick Gorman, Executive Director of North Andover Youth and Recreation Services interviews Laura Stevens, Support Services Coordinator at the North Andover Youth Center about teen anxiety. 

In this podcast, Laura Stevens gives some advice for building your business with digital marketing…

My father William and grandson James Interview starts at 17:43 and ends at 42:24 “I've been writing a realistic fictional narrative for my class as an assignment. There are certain phrases in [Kindle] books that have been highlighted 300 times or a thousand times. I try to make my phrases be like those phrases, because I've gotten to know what are the powerful phrases that people are going to highlight.” News Amazon press release announcing Prime Now delivery from Whole Foods - February 8, 2018 “Amazon Finally Gets Serious About Whole Foods” by Phil Lempert at Forbes - February 8, 2018 “Amazon Prime to offer two-hour Whole Foods delivery” by The Associated Press at New York Post - February 8, 2018 “Amazon looks to put bookstore in Cherry Creek” by Thomas Gounley at BusinessDen - February 5, 2018 The Hermitage Bookshop in Denver “Amazon to Launch Delivery Service That Would Vie With FedEx, UPS” by Laura Stevens at The Wall Street Journal - February 9, 2018 “Amazon passes Samsung for 2nd place in worldwide tablet shipments” by Taylor Soper at GeekWire - February 5, 2018 Tech Tip Readwise recommended in Cool Tools Reading Basics, including View Your Reading Progress Interview with my father William and my grandson James Dad and James on TKC 413 in July, 2016 Number the Stars by Lois Lowry The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau Grant by Ron Chernow Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow Homecoming (The Tillerman Cycle Book 1) and Dicey's Song by Cynthia Voigt Tillerman Cycle Series by Cynthia Voigt (Goodreads) Content Monthly Kindle Deals Next Week's Show I will be reporting from the American Library Association midwinter meeting here in Denver on next week's show, which I will prepare in Cambridge, Mass. Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

Jane Ferguson:                 Hi everyone. Welcome to Getting Personal: Omics of the Heart. This is episode 11 from December 2017. I'm Jane Ferguson, and this podcast comes to you courtesy of Circulation: Cardiovascular Genetics and the AHA Functional Genomics and Translational Biology Council. I'm particularity excited about our interview this month. Doctor Kent Arell from the Mayo Clinic talked to Doctor Jennifer Hall from the University of Minnesota about her role as Chief of the AHA institute for Precision Cardiovascular Medicine. This is a really exciting initiative, which is bringing together researchers, patients and stakeholder to foster the growth and development of cardiovascular genomic and precision medicine. Through their Precision Medicine Platform you can access a virtual big data research hub and find data, tools, and collaborations. The institute also provides funding for projects related to precision cardiovascular medicine. You can find out more and register to access the platform at precision.heart.org. And listen on to hear Jen describe the platform and how this initiative first came about. Dr. Kent A.:                         Hello. My name is Doctor Kent Arell. I'm the Chair of the American Heart Association's FGTB Council early Career Committee, and a proteomic and network systems biologist in the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine and the Center for Regenerative Medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. As part of a highly collaborative team, my research efforts focus on omic space systems approaches for heart failure prediction, diagnosis and therapy. Specifically regenerative approaches to cardiac repair.                                                 This November during American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2017, FGTB Early Career Committee programming complimented the FGTB Council Precision Medicine Summit with a hands-on bootcamp on network systems biology, followed by a session introducing online computational portals and tools designed to enhance and facilitate basic and clinical cardiovascular research. A highlight of the second Early Career session was an introduction on the use of the Precision Medicine Platform of the American Heart Association's Institute for Precision Cardiovascular Medicine presented by the Institute's lead bioinformaticist, Laura Stevens.                                                 With these recent presentations in the many ongoing developments in precision molecular medicine combined with my own research approach and interests, I'm especially delighted today to be speaking with Doctor Jennifer Hall, Chief of the American Heart Association's Institute for Precision cardiovascular Medicine. Doctor Hall received her PhD from U.C. Berkeley and completed post-docs at Stanford and Harvard prior to taking up her first faculty position. Welcome, Doctor Hall. Is there anything I've missed that you would like to add? Dr. Jennifer H.:                  No, you're doing a great job, Kent. Dr. Kent A.:                         All right. Doctor Hall, the Institute for Precision Cardiovascular Medicine is one of the newest additions to the American Heart Association. And as far as I'm aware, you've been involved with the Institute since the beginning. Could you first tell us a little bit about the history of how the Institute came to be, and perhaps how you first became involved? Dr. Jennifer H.:                  I would be very happy to do that. So the Institute actually started in 2013 in the Fall, when the American Heart Association Board of Directors made an initial investment. And the vision for the Institute for Precision Cardiovascular Medicine was Nancy Brown’s, our CEO. And in the early years it was really led by the Chief of Staff, Laura Sol. And our lead strategist, Prad Presoon. And the original grants came out from the institute but was then called the Cardiovascular Genome-Phenome Center, or Study. Dr. Kent A.:                         Right. I'm familiar with that. Okay. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  Yes. That was the very early history. And it was rebranded in 2015. So that's the history. I joined about a year and a half ago now. And I'm just thrilled to be part of the team. Dr. Kent A.:                         Well, there's exciting things on the horizon, definitely. So what is the mandate of the institute? And what are its principal or primary objectives then? Dr. Jennifer H.:                  So the mandate is to really provide a better understanding in the area of precision cardiovascular medicine to all individuals. And that means participants across the United States and across the globe, patients and those that are healthy individuals as well. And finally to scientists, researchers and clinicians. Dr. Kent A.:                         Okay. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  And the five things that we are really focused on in terms of, I would say our principal objectives are really to convene people all over the world, experts, students, trainees. Provide transformative grants and this is at least half of our budget every year, if not up to 80% of our budget. Enable data discoverability and access. And that's through some of the new tools that we are creating. Act as a translation agent. And we can talk more about that if you'd wish. And finally to offer research enabling services or tools to our young trainees as well as our established investigators. Dr. Kent A.:                         Okay. Perfect. Well, I think I had some questions to cover most of those topics. But the translation agent would be interesting, if you wouldn't mind sort of expanding on that a little bit right now maybe, perhaps before I get to the other questions I had. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  Yes, absolutely. I think this means a lot of things to a lot of different people. Like one of the ways it can help people are, scientist that have been very focused in academics for a long time has not thought about intellectual property, or ways to really begin to commercialize their ideas and take them forward. So we used to think about bench to bedside. And the institute is focusing on helping these individuals. Helping these grantees really begin to think through how to talk about their ideas and to take them to market. So I'd say that is one way of thinking of the translation agent.                                                 The other is to really begin to take participant data and to bring new people into the field. So not only will we think about volunteers as being Heart Walkers anymore or being Go Red for Women volunteers, or one of the many 30 million volunteers we have throughout the United States within the American Heart Association and around the globe. But we want to ask them to contribute to precision medicine, and ask them to be a part of this new exciting movement as well and contribute data, interact, provide answers to surveys, and be educated a little bit more in the area of precision medicine. So those are the two big ways that we think about acting as a translation agent. Dr. Kent A.:                         Okay. Excellent. With respect to intellectual property, is there an intermediary that you connect researchers to, to facilitate that? Or is it more of an awareness of how to approach your own institutional technology transfer offices, or what have you? Dr. Jennifer H.:                  Well, you're going right where I would've led the conversation. So we're trying to do both I should say. Dr. Kent A.:                         Okay. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  It's just originally getting off the ground and talking to our volunteers at those academic institutions and figuring out the best way to do that. And then talking to some people in the industry as well to figure out how does it work best coming from that side. Dr. Kent A.:                         Okay. Excellent. Well, I think the next thing that I might transition to is the grants, because points one, three and five that you made about convening people, enabling data access and enabling services and platforms may all sort of relate to the Precision Medicine Platform. And we'll definitely be speaking about that quite a bit. But one thing I wanted to mention is the variety and the number of grants that have been awarded by the institute since it inaugurated grants I believe in 2015, is that correct? Dr. Jennifer H.:                  Yes. That's exactly right. And- Dr. Kent A.:                         Yeah. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  ... I think- Dr. Kent A.:                         Go ahead. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  ... we're quite happy. We've given over 72 grants and that totals, I think, just over 15 million. But more importantly the grantees have just done a remarkable job I think. The running total I have, which I know is a little bit out of date is 98 publications, and many of those in high impact journals. And certainly in new areas that AHA has not been in the past, which is artificial intelligence, machine learning, and creating new tools. Dr. Kent A.:                         So you're also trying to bridge multiple disciplines then I guess as well with some of these grants, correct? Dr. Jennifer H.:                  Yes. And many of the fields like you're working in as well, thinking about systems biology and proteomics, and bringing the field to beta science along with that as well. So exactly. And in many cases we have private partnerships or strategic partnerships with others like Amazon Web Services. So many of the grants at least, one of the portfolios we have has many grants in it in which the tech credits, or the cloud computing credits if you will, are given to us by our strategic partner Amazon Web Services. So AHA provides the salary support for the PI and others on the grant, as well as any supplies that are needed. And then those tech credits for cloud compute and storage come from Amazon. Dr. Kent A.:                         Excellent. Okay. And then there are other collaborative efforts with other institutions as well, is that correct? Like the Broad Institute? Dr. Jennifer H.:                  Yes, exactly. We have a great relationship with the Broad Institute as well. They've been extremely helpful in helping us get our direct to participant recruitment program off the ground. And we are co-investigators with them on an upcoming NIH data platform grant. So we're extremely excited to be working with them and their team. We've worked with several people, and Doctor Anthony Philippakis' team, and with Noel Burtt and David [inaudible 00:11:24] and others there. So we just couldn't be happier with that relationship. Dr. Kent A.:                         Perfect. Perfect. I know the current round of funding is defined as Uncovering New Patterns, and there are fellowships in grants available for that round of funding. What is the scope of the Uncovering New Patterns effort here? Dr. Jennifer H.:                  There's a lot of both science and tech built into that. And so, one of the ideas from the institute executive committee ... So one question people might ask is, "How do these ... How do you come up with these grants?" And it's really talking people, finding a need, listening to a lot of people no matter where we're traveling. And then bringing that up to our Institute Executive Committee who makes the final call on these grants.                                                 In this case, we were looking for a way to bring science and technology together. So if there was a way to combine datasets that hadn't been combined in the past, which creates some new data harmonization standards, perhaps there's some new methodologies around that. And that's one way to uncover new patterns that we were thinking about. That was the- Dr. Kent A.:                         Right. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  ... original example that came to mind. Dr. Kent A.:                         Okay. Or some new algorithms for- Dr. Jennifer H.:                  Yeah. Dr. Kent A.:                         ... interpreting data or what have you. And it sounds like there's goo dialogue back and forth and between the institute, and those who are sort of interested in the topic as well from the researchers' standpoint both clinically and for basic researchers. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  Yeah. We try. Dr. Kent A.:                         Yeah. Yep. Oh, I think you do more than try. I think it's a wonderful operation. So I see on the website that there's a new round of funding opportunities are soon to be announced. Can you give us any hint as to what the focus will be for the upcoming round or other things that may be in the pipeline in that regard for the upcoming months? Or do you want to keep it a secret? Dr. Jennifer H.:                  I can't disclose that. But there will be some things that are a little bit similar to what we've done in the past. Our focus is to really be on the cutting edge, and we are democratizing data on this Precision Medicine Platform making it open in a controlled access way. So you have to fill out a form. But we're really trying to get to those forms and turn over access to people, qualified researchers and scientists as quickly as possible in a very responsible way. And so we're piloting some new objectives around that. We'd love to bring all cardiovascular and brain health data together. And so people can identify and find new discoveries in this area. Dr. Kent A.:                         Right. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  And use new technique to do it. So the grants will be focused in that particular area. Dr. Kent A.:                         Okay. Well that give me an easy segue then into my next question, which is focusing on some of the resources that are currently available to basic and clinical investigators. And after maybe perhaps describing those, where or how can individuals access these particular resources? So I know definitely the Precision Medicine Platform is one that we'll hopefully hear quite a bit about. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  Yes. That's something that's been underway for about a year now. And we started with two beta testers that you can find the site at precision.heart.org. And we had two beta testers who Gabe [Lucenero 00:15:07] and Laura Stevens, and they were absolutely fantastic and gave us a lot of feedback. We've since hired Laura. Gabe runs his own company up in Canada in the area of bioinformatics. And they've just been fantastic. And since those two, in the last year we've grown to over a 1000 registered users. And once you register on the platform, you can register with your Google account, or however you ... It's a very simple process.                                                 Then you can search across all the datasets. Once you do that, you can access a workspace. And once you request access to the data, the data's put into a workspace for you that is really in the cloud. And allows you to use the power of cloud compute, meaning something that might've taken you weeks on your supercomputer back home in your institution, once you got in the queue, takes a day of a couple of hours using the power of the cloud and the compute power behind it.                                                 Each workspace also has over 85 analytical tools from visualization to statistics, to simple things. And we understand everybody doesn't know how to code. And so we're trying to make that as easy as possible as well. So there's some new things there. We're coming out with new things every week, and looking for ... If people are looking for help, we're taking emails and questions by phone and trying to reach as many people as possible. So we're looking for people to both contribute data and utilize that data to accelerate new discoveries. Dr. Kent A.:                         Perfect. Well, I know, I'm working with Laura actually on trying to implement Cytoscape within the cloud space as well. So it's exciting opportunities. And I'm not a coder myself, but for those that are I know most of the applications that Laura is looking at are based I believe in terms of the language that they're using, is that correct? Dr. Jennifer H.:                  That's right. Dr. Kent A.:                         I think so. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  So most are in R, or Python. Dr. Kent A.:                         Python. Okay. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  And they're on Jupiter Notebooks today. So the nice thing about that is that you can take that Jupiter Notebook, and those are being published in many journals today. So it's really a quick way to analyze the data, get feedback on the data from the community if you're looking for that, that's another piece that we're building in today. And you can have your collaborators work on that same workspace with you. And then just turn that Jupiter Notebook and publish it with all your methodology and code on it. Dr. Kent A.:                         Oh, okay. Excellent. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  And we're also establishing drag and drop code, so if you are just learning, you can take kind of from the recipe book and drag and drop, and practice and learn. And soon we should be hopefully working on some educational tools with our strategic primary, Amazon. So we're really excited about that coming out in the near future. Dr. Kent A.:                         Excellent. And we're doing our best at the council level to try to help spread the word as well with respect to the platform, and that was part of our offerings as I said, at Scientific Sessions back in November. Laura did a wonderful job presenting the platform and introducing it to a wide variety of backgrounds. I think in a way that is really ... It's really helpful bringing these people together with different backgrounds, with different abilities. People are ... Regardless of your background, people are coming up with wonderful ideas and ways to implement these applications. Are you taking say, feedback in terms of how people are using these tools and how they can utilize different applications in terms of making adjustments and modifications as time proceeds? Dr. Jennifer H.:                  Yes. We're really excited about that, because we'd like to keep all of that data like any scientist, and publish that. So not only ours, it's better, but others doing similar things also will improve. And this platform is meant to work with other groups and to interact with other platforms as well and be part of the NIH data commons as well. And so we're really working to interact a use standard language and standard systems to interact globally as well as within and U.S. So we're trying to make it simple for all scientists. But gather as much data as we can. And a big shout out and thanks to you, and Functional Genomics Council for allowing us to be part of that workshop at Scientific Sessions. Dr. Kent A.:                         Oh, we really appreciate the opportunity to be involved with it as well. I think one of the ... Another strength that as you mentioned is that collaborators can access the same workspace from different institutions so that they can be working together and collaborating without having to download an entire dataset in one space, and have someone working on it and modifying things, and then finding out that your collaborator at the other institute has modified something else. And then trying to- Dr. Jennifer H.:                  Right. Dr. Kent A.:                         ... sync those version together can be quite troublesome at times. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  And you weren't sure you had the right version, and datasets are so large now that- Dr. Kent A.:                         Yeah. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  ... really people think about it in terms of the researchers going to the data, instead of the data going to the researchers. Dr. Kent A.:                         Yeah. Excellent. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  [inaudible 00:20:55] the new ways. Dr. Kent A.:                         That's perfect. Well, I'll maybe just reiterate that website. It's precision.heart.org. For the Precision Medicine Platform. And while I'm mentioning websites, maybe I'll mention institute.heart.org, which is the homepage for the institute for Precision Cardiovascular Medicine, I believe. Is that correct? Dr. Jennifer H.:                  Thank you for mentioning that. Dr. Kent A.:                         Yeah, 'cause if I'm wrong, please correct it. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  Well, you see, I'm a scientist, not a marketer because I never mentioned that at the beginning. But thank you for doing that. And we'd love any feedback that anybody has of other things they'd really like to see there, or how we can be more helpful to the community. Dr. Kent A.:                         Definitely. And how would people go about contacting you in that regard or in terms of setting up a workspace, or accessing a workspace? Would they go through the institute homepage? Dr. Jennifer H.:                  In terms of setting up a workspace, you can do that directly from precision.heart.org. Dr. Kent A.:                         Okay. Perfect. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  And once you request access to data, if you check on a box and hit, "Request access," it starts you down that road. It doesn't mean you have to commit. But it will start you down that road. Dr. Kent A.:                         Yeah, it will set it up. Okay. Perfect. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  It will begin to set up the process for you. It takes ... You can put in there your grant, it takes tokens, it takes all sorts of things, because there's a small cost that is a pass through really from ... It's like if you were just to go directly to Amazon Web Services to create that workspace. Dr. Kent A.:                         All right. So it's a small cost incurred for ... Okay. Excellent. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  Yeah. For what you're doing. Dr. Kent A.:                         Okay. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  And so everybody should be aware of that. Dr. Kent A.:                         Sure. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  But the institute is giving the grants for that. NIH gives grants and tokens for researchers to allow to use that as well. And like I said, the cost is a couple dollars an hour really. So it is not something that's gonna break the bank. And the AHA has built some stopgaps to try to keep those costs as low as we can. Dr. Kent A.:                         Perfect. Well, that's much more reasonable than some of the bioinformatic applications I work with these days. So that's good to know. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  Well, just the license fees alone can be challenging [crosstalk 00:23:06]. Dr. Kent A.:                         Exactly. Well, even institutional licenses, you still- Dr. Jennifer H.:                  Yeah. Dr. Kent A.:                         ... you're paying a portion of, and it can add up quickly when you're on there frequently. So- Dr. Jennifer H.:                  Yeah. Dr. Kent A.:                         ... a couple dollars an hour is quite reasonable. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  Yeah. Dr. Kent A.:                         Well, I don't wanna take up too much of your time. I know you probably have another meeting scheduled right after this. So I wanna thank you for taking the time today to talk with me and discuss the AHA's Institute for Precision Cardiovascular Medicine. I seem to have trouble pronouncing, "Precision," today for some reason. And for sort of introducing the Precision Medicine Platform for our listeners. So thanks again for bringing these important advances to the American Heart Association membership, and for sort of introducing them to us in today's podcast. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  Oh, thank you, Kent. And thank you for all you do for functional genomics and the American Heart Association. Dr. Kent A.:                         Thanks Doctor Hall. Much appreciated. Dr. Jennifer H.:                  Take care. Dr. Kent A.:                         Take care. Jane Ferguson:                 Thanks again to Doctor Hall for joining us, and to Doctor Arell and the FGTB Early Career Committee for supporting this podcast. And as we bring 2017 to a close, I want to thank all of you out there for subscribing and listening. We're excited to come back in 2018 with even more content and would love any feedback or suggestions of topics you'd like us to cover. You can leave a comment or review through iTunes or other podcast aggregator, or contact me directly at jane.f.furgeson@vanderbilt.edu. Whishing safe and happy holidays for anyone who celebrates. And we'll talk to you again in 2018.

Today's Commexis Cast discusses Google's continued success, and Twitter's improvements in their earning's reports. The Wall Street Journal's Jack Nicas and Laura Stevens reported on Google's explosive growth, reaching a 33% increase in profits in the third quarter. Twitter publicly revealed they had miscounted their total user numbers for the last three quarters, thrown off by third party apps, but still had more success in the third quarter with only a $21.1 million loss compared to last year's Q3 loss of $103 million, reports WSJ's Georgia Wells. And in news no one is surprised to hear, eMarketer's latest report shows that millennials prefer digital communication over speaking face-to-face. In fact, almost 75% of millennials in the United States preferred digital communication over speaking in person. Today's cast: Len Ward (Commexis President), Matthew McGrorty (Commexis Videographer/Podcaster), and Phillip Brooks (Commexis Lead Strategist). Join the Commexis team as we add context to these stories for the busy CMO. All the news you need to know–from our inbox to yours.

What is a SLAPP Suit? Let's say you own a small business called "Policy Town Fajitas". You think your business is second-to-none. You've invested in it--time, sweat, money and otherwise ... But then, all of a sudden, one of your customers doesn't fancy your business as much as you do. So they post a negative review about your business on a site like Yelp. They say your "chicken fajitas taste like pigeon and that's how I know it's not authentic Mexican food." If you're like most businesses, you try to improve (such as by switching to chicken meat). But some businesses try to turn the tables by putting the reviewer on the defensive. Let's call the reviewer Mrs. Davis. So you file a lawsuit against Mrs. Davis that is simply designed to drive her absolutely nuts. Eventually, you hope, Mrs. Johnson will decide to delete her review. That lawsuit is called a "strategic lawsuit against public participation", but we just call them SLAPP suits.    Now, we know you would NEVER serve up pigeon fajitas. But what are the policy implications of SLAPP suits, particularly as they relate to online freedom of speech? Here to discuss SLAPP suits is Laurent Crenshaw (@LCrenshaw), Yelp's head of Federal Public Policy in Washington DC. At Yelp Laurent has championed the company's federal efforts to protect consumer freedom of speech on the Internet, and worked to implement Yelp as a tool for the federal government. Prior to joining Yelp in 2013, Laurent worked in the House of Representatives for over 11 years. During his tenure he served as the Legislative Director for Representative Darrell Issa focusing on technology policy issues, particularly in the areas of intellectual property, telecommunications and Internet law; and also worked in the offices of the House Majority Whip and House Republican Conference. Laurent successfully worked on numerous legislative efforts including the passage of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act in 2011 and the fight to defeat SOPA and PIPA in Congress. Additionally, Laurent also serves on the board of directors for Public Knowledge and as a member of the American Library Association's Public Policy Advisory Council. Laurent obtained his undergraduate degree in International Relations from Stanford University in 2002 and his Juris Doctor degree from American University's Washington College of Law in 2010. Resources Yelp's Public Policy Blog SPEAK FREE Act (Congressional Anti-SLAPP Suits legislation) Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel News Roundup Amazon is acquiring Whole Foods for $13.7 billion.  Experts see the move as a direct hit on big box retailers like Wal-Mart and Target, whose shares tumbled sharply on news of the announcement. Analysts see it as a significant step by Amazon to substantially expand its warehouse and local supply chain operations. Laura Stevens has more at the Wall Street Journal. One interesting thing to note is that on May 30th, Amazon filed a patent for technology that allows it to block customers from using their phones to "window shop", or check the prices of other stores, while they're on site at an Amazon property. Brian Fung reports on that in the Washington Post. President Trump has officially nominated former Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel to return to the agency.  Rosenworcel has strong Democratic support. Her previous four-year term ended last year when the Senate failed to reconfirm her term before it expired. Still open at the FCC is the third Republican seat. Brendan Carr--a current advisor to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai -- is considered the front-runner for that seat although, as of Monday evening, the White House has not yet made the official nomination. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security released a joint announcement saying North Korea has been executing cyberattacks against institutions  worldwide since 2009. North Korean government actors calling themselves "Hidden Cobra" are the culprits, according to the statement, and they have been attacking aerospace, financial and other institutions in the U.S. and around the world. Deb Reichmann reports for the Associated Press. Verizon has completed its $4.5 billion acquisition of Yahoo. Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer resigned with a $23 million package. Alina Selyukh has the story at NPR. The Federal Trade Commission will be opposing the proposed merger of DraftKing and FanDuel--the two largest fantasy sports  sites. In a statement released Monday, the FTC wrote that the combined company would control more than 90% of the market. The families of prison inmates could see their phone charges for calling incarcerated loved ones shoot back up to as much as $14 per minute. The Obama-era FCC had placed caps on those calls that ranged to between 14 and 49 cents per minute. But the DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that the FCC did not have the authority to regulate those rates. The Court ruled that the FCC lacked the authority to regulate those rates because they pertained to intrastate calls, and not interstate calls, and thus they fall outside the FCC's federal jurisdiction. Zoe Tillman covers this for BuzzFeed. The Indian woman who was raped by an Uber driver in India is suing the company in the U.S. for violating her privacy and for defamation of character. The plaintiff, a Texas resident, has filed as a Jane Doe. Apparently, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick had said publicly that the company would do everything it could to ensure the rapist would be brought to justice. However, behind the scenes, the victim alleges that Uber obtained her medical records in India and then worked to use the information to claim the rape was all a ruse that was orchestrated by Uber's main competitor in India.  Julia Carrie Wong summarized this story in the Guardian. Uber has been embroiled in numerous controversies of late. These culminated last week  in Kalanick being placed on an indefinite leave of absence and top ranking executives being let go. These latest developments were in response to a report spearheaded by former Attorney General Eric Holder that recommended these and other changes at Uber. Facebook has outlined a strategy for weeding out terrorist content on its platform. The company released a blog post last week saying that it has about 150 people on staff nationwide whose job it is to remove all content posted by or in support of terrorists. The company also uses artificial intelligence and other technology to take down content that promotes terrorism on Facebook and its other properties, according to the post. Finally, remember President Trump's Twitter typo a few weeks ago, when he tweeted the word "covfefe" instead of "coverage"? Well, The Hill's Harper Neidig noticed last week that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had more than 30 trademark requests containing the word "covefefe" since the flub. 

A healthy diet can provide an effective complementary approach to alleviating some symptoms of ADHD. From dietary supplements, food additives and artificial dyes to caffeine and food sensitivities there are a lot of options to consider. Create a plan for where to start when making changes and how to track if they are working. Laura Stevens, M.S., has been researching the role of nutrition and food sensitivities in ADHD for more than 25 years. She is considered a pioneer in this important field of study.

A healthy diet can provide an effective complementary approach to alleviating some symptoms of ADHD. From dietary supplements, food additives and artificial dyes to caffeine and food sensitivities there are a lot of options to consider. Create a plan for where to start when making changes and how to track if they are working. Laura Stevens, M.S., has been researching the role of nutrition and food sensitivities in ADHD for more than 25 years. She is considered a pioneer in this important field of study.

Technology Reporter at Observer.com Interview starts at 10:30 and ends at 42:19 "That's why I call this whole printed book thing fetishism. What's more important? Is literature and writing important or is this object more important? I think literature is more important, and writing is important. I don't really care how people read it. I just really want to push back on this idea that there's something sad that we've lost because print books are fading, when what I care about is not print or first editions. I care about people reading and the act of writing and that creative work." News “Amazon Alexa Voice Service Coming to DTS Play-Fi” - September 28, 2017 “Why Amazon is the World's Most Innovative Company of 2017” by Noah Robischon at Fast Company - February 13, 2017 “Amazon.com Takes Aim at Victoria's Secret With Its Own $10 Bras” by Khadeeja Safdar and Laura Stevens at The Wall Street Journal - February 10, 2017 “AWS Announces Amazon Chime” - press release February 14, 2017 Amazon Chime Tech Tip “Owners of first and second generation Kindles can't register them” by Andrew Liptak at The Verge - February 11, 2017 “Amazon Tap's new hands-free Alexa update means it's actually useful” by Lauren Goode at The Verge - February 9, 2017 Interview with Brady Dale “Despite What You Heard, The E-Book Market Never Stopped Growing” by Brady Dale at Observer.com - January 18, 2017 “Titans of Kindle” series by Brady Dale Podiobooks “How to reach me secretly and securely” by Brady Dale at Medium - February 12, 2017 Google Authenticator Mailbox.org Sync.com ProtonMail “On Twitter, Users Shouldn't Need a Name” by Brady Dale at Observer.com - February 14, 2017 Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads!

The idea of food affecting behavior and attention has been around for decades. Certain foods help our children learn, focus and behave in a world full of distraction while others, such as artificial food dyes, seem to hinder these skills. I chat with food dye researcher Laura Stevens in this episode and uncover what we know about artificial food dyes, ADHD and our food supply. Get full show notes and more information here: https://jillcastle.com/022

Senior Pastor of New Covenant Church, Indianapolis Interview ‪starts at 7:20 and ends at 33:36 I think it's a matter of accepting the change that God has provided with these tools, learning how to use the tools. For example, we could try to tell people, “Well, don't go to the movies.” Well, they're going to the movies. Teach them how to go to movies. With social media and all the rest, I believe we need to just focus on making it useful, making it fruitful, trying to remove distraction. In other words, let's not throw it out because some people abuse it. Let's be disciplined with it. Let's have purpose for it. Let's use it in a way that is productive. So I believe that rather than complain about it, let's harness it like one may harness a wild horse. Break the horse, you know? Learn to ride it! Let's ride this, and let's make the best use of it. News AmazonGo introduction video - December 5, 2016 A look back - Amazon Unveils Futuristic Plan: Delivery by Drone at CBS - December 1, 2013 “Can You Buy a Grain of Salt at Amazon Go?” by Ryan Mac at Forbes - December 5, 2016 “Amazon Working on Several Grocery-Store Formats, Could Open More than 2,000 Locations” by Laura Stevens and Khadeeja Safdar at The Wall Street Journal (paywall)- December 5, 20126 “Amazon's ‘Just Walk Out' Technology Isn't Revolutionary” (video) - James Corden on the Late Late Show December 7, 2016 “From Fire House to School Halls, Mark Bezos Advocates Volunteering” by Ryan Deffenbaugh at WAG Magazine - December 1, 2016 Mark Bezos's TED talk - March 2011   Interview with Pastor Bryan Hudson Herron School of Art + Design  New Covenant Church's 2016 Kenya Mission video Books by Bryan Hudson including Romans Road: Inspiration & Insights from the Book of Romans  Media consulting and production: http://visioncomsolutions.com New Covenant Church: http://www.newcovenant.org Vision Books and Media. My publishing company: http://www.visionbooksmedia.com Firm Foundation Conversations: http://www.firmfoundationtv.net Multimedia in Focus media camp: http://www.visionmultimedia.org Lightning Source by Ingram   Content Audible offers Invisible Man free till December 31 - a message from Audible founder Don Katz   Next Week's Guest Richard Hollick, author of the Making Book blog Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD.  Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads! If you would like to read my posts at Medium on everything from grandchildren to old friends and lost laptops, you will find them at Medium.com/@lenedgerly . 

EVP and Publisher, Open Road Integrated Media Interview ‪starts at 15:33 and ends at 43:28 "We are not an agency publisher. So we don't have any control over the consumer price. We set the digital list price, and we don't have control over the consumer price. And Amazon is free to discount it to whatever price they want. And I would also point out that we are very aggressive in the number of and the frequency of which we promote our books in price promotions." News “Amazon Music Unlimited versus Prime Music: What's the Difference?” by Jeff Gamet at The Mac Observer - October 12, 2016 Amazon press release on Music Unlimited service - October 12, 2016 “Amazon to Expand Grocery Business With New Convenience Stores” by Greg Bensinger and Laura Stevens at The Wall Street Journal - October 12, 2016 “If Amazon is really opening brick-and-mortar grocery stores, it's a big deal” by Sarah Halzack at The Washington Post - October 11, 2016 Wall Street Journal Tech News Briefing podcast - October 13, 2016 Tech Tip “New! Collection management comes to MYCD (Manage Your Content and Devices)” by Bufo Calvin at I Love My Kindle - October 13, 2016 Interview with Tina Pohlman Open Road Integrated Media The Corfu Trilogy by Gerald Durrell: My Family and Other Animals (Book 1), Birds, Beasts, and Relatives (Book 2), and The Garden of the Gods (Book 3) The Durrells in Corfu Season 1 on PBS Masterpiece The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell Click here to sign up for the Open Road Early Bird Books email list Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street by John Brooks The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson with Afterword by David Foster Wallace Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) by Viet Thanh Nguyen Content “PBS's ‘Durells in Corfu' gets its glow from the Greek Island” by Matthew Gilbert at The Boston Globe - October 13, 2016 “‘The Durrells in Corfu' Review: An Island of Charm” by John Anderson at The Wall Street Journal - October 13, 2016 Next Week's Guest Bufo Calvin, creator of the I Love My Kindle blog Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD.  Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads! Please feel free to leave a review of my podcast at the iTunes Store. It will help spread the word to new listeners! 

Laura Stevens was skeptical of networking marketing, but when a friend encouraged her to give Isagenix a try, she dove in ready to learn everything she could about the industry and Isagenix health and wealth solutions. Since joining in April of 2014, this military wife and mom of three young children has found financial security by using social media and the contagious energy of Isagenix events to propel her business and achieve 8-Star Golden Circle, 13-Star Crystal Executive status. Laura shares her tips for motivating team members and gaining new members through the power of social media and attending Isagenix events. To learn more, visit IsagenixBusiness.com.

The food your child eats can have a big impact on behavior. Laura Stevens, M.S., discusses common food sensitivities, the importance of essential fatty acids, elimination diets, and how artificial food colors, flavors, and preservatives affect us.

***Welcome to episode #83 The Russell Holland Edition ***email rumblestripradio (at) gmail.com ***website www.rumblestripradio.com ***Head on over to the site and donate to the show if you would be so kind ***Follow us on Twitter and Pownce *** Winner of the FASTER contest was Joshua Davis ***MotoGP Summer break is over back to work @ Brno    No Nicky ***WSS Craig Jones    Crash Footage http://media.libsyn.com/media/rumblestrip/Craig_Jones_Crash.mov  ***BSB Knockhill        Thanks to Laura Stevens of MSV    MotoGPBlog has pics ***More DMG Drama ***INTERVIEW Gill Campbell CEO of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca ***AMA From Mid Ohio ***INTERVIEW Kenny Noyes ***CSBK from Shubie ***INTERVIEW Melissa Paris ***RSR is a production of Raoul Duke Media LLC and is protected under a Creative Commons License, some rights are reserved