Kick-starting digital service delivery with good practice guidance and patterns
Our UX/UI working group presents new guidelines and patterns designed to help governments overcome the key challenges of digital service delivery. With our proof of concept complete, we are now moving forward into the testing phase.
Introducing GovStack
GovStack working groups develop technical specifications that are accessible for free, forming the foundational building blocks of digital government—such as payment systems, consent management, and digital registries. GovStack provides governments with the specifications that enable them to purchase tools and support needed to accelerate their digital transformation journey.
Our users
We work with organizations and governments facing barriers to scaling their digital transformation—whether due to limited financing, siloed initiatives, or challenges with intergovernmental coordination. Our guidance helps GovStack’s implementation teams to support these organisations and kick-start delivering the foundations for accessible and inclusive digital public services.
Our progress so far: good practice guidelines and service patterns
Over the last months, the UX/UI working group has developed a set of guidelines and patterns to serve as templates for creating user-centric, accessible, and technically sound digital services. Our work has culminated in a proof of concept, which is now entering the testing phase. If successful, we will scale these efforts to reach more teams and organizations.
- Good Practice Guidelines for Designing Services
Our guidelines are influenced by the challenges we’ve seen teams face during in-country delivery as well as by service quality standards like ISO25010, the UK’s Service Standard, Dubai’s Smart Service Excellence Delivery Model and the OECD Good Practice Principles for Public Service Design and Delivery in the Digital Age. These guidelines and standards assume a certain level of digital experience and capability; we saw an opportunity for a guide focused on developing the foundations that organisations themselves or advisory teams could use.
The guidance currently breaks down into 4 sections;
- user centred design
- accessibility and inclusion
- consistency
- technical choices
These sections break down into specific points and 22 pieces of short guidance to meet each point. The work went through 2 iterations based on internal review.
- Service Patterns to streamline the design of user journeys
We developed generic service patterns to support points within the guidance on accessibility and consistency. These patterns were highly influenced by the work of Essex Council and TPXImpact (then FutureGov) as well as public sector design systems like the GOV.UK, US Web Design System, Japan Digital Agency or Helsinki Design Systems. Rather than develop a product or coded tool, we limited the scope to wireframe flow diagrams with supporting examples of implementation, we made a conscious decision not to dictate how government services should look or be technically built.
We prioritised patterns to develop based on the “Apply For A Construction Permit” use case being developed with Djibouti. The use case broke down into 5 high level patterns:
- Find the service
- Register for an account
- Apply for the service
- Make a payment
- Give feedback
For each pattern we adapted existing guidance from other governments based on the GovStack building block context. For example, the ‘find the service’ high level pattern broke down into 3 design patterns:
- Service catalogue
- Service sheet
- Search results
These patterns were then used by the GovStack Sandbox team to develop and test a prototype user journey.
So far, we’ve documented 5 high-level service patterns and 10 wireframes but have scoped many more for further development.
Next phase: testing early assumptions
In this first phase of our journey, we’ve developed a proof of concept that’s highly influenced by our personal experience as well as feedback from experts. This is just the beginning. The next phase is all about testing our early assumptions with the implementation team. If successful we would like to open up the project to a much broader team of contributors from around the world.
How to get involved
We welcome your contributions! You can provide feedback via the Gitbook feedback form, and the GovStack specification team will review your suggestions. If clarification is needed, we will reach out to you directly. Your input is invaluable as we continue to refine and expand our work to support digital public services worldwide.”
You want to join the Working Group? Register here: Join UX/UI Working Group | GovStack
Laurence Berry (Komo.international) and Betty Mwema (UK Government Digital Service), led the user experience (UX/UI) working group for GovStack, a community driven multi stakeholder effort supported by ITU, DIAL, and the Governments of Germany and Estonia, that aims to make it easier to implement digital government. The working group established a template service design standard, guidance, and patterns that aim to kick-start the development of user-centred, accessible, and technically robust digital services. With thanks to Amy McNichol for proofreading, and helping us edit this article to share our message clearly.
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