What happens after services go live? What happens once large scale digital transformation programmes end? We work on live services at HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS), as part of a multidisciplinary UCD (user-centred design) squad which includes a service designer, user researcher, content designer and interaction designer. Others have reflected on how continuous improvement for services varies across government once services are live. At HMCTS, we have one UCD squad per jurisdiction: civil, family, tribunals and crime. Each jurisdiction contains multiple live services, for example family includes services like adoption, divorce, probate, family public law, so we work with multiple digital delivery teams, and service managers in a collaboration model. We’ve been working this way on live services for almost 2 years, and have learned a lot about what works well in our context, as well as from some of our challenges. We shared experiences recently with designers from the International Design in Government Community at the 2024 Helsinki Conference. ## **Challenges and complexities of working on live services** A ‘live’ service is never finished, it must adapt to changes in policy or law, and design for new user needs. The services we work on are complex, and operational. We see variation in how processes work across services and sites, and an immense range of users whose needs differ and change, from members of the public to staff, professional users and judges. We pick up work that multiple teams have worked on over years, part of what Kara Kane and Martin Jordan describe as the ‘long slog of design in government’. We’re working on services which often do not have an up to date map of the end to end journey and changes released since the service went live. We have some dependable tools when we tackle a project on a live service including the Service Standard and the double diamond. However, we reflected on the gap in guidance available for design in government on maintaining services compared to standards and guidance for building services. ## **What we’ve learned through our work and from others** ### **Using data to prioritise based on what users need is important** We work on problems that will have the biggest impact. To understand this we need to collect data with help from other teams such as Google Analytics and in page survey feedback. We also analyse contact data by listening to calls and analysing emails, which can tell us where the service isn’t meeting users’ needs. We help teams look at their service data with a “qualitative eye” and make sense of it to prioritise service improvements. ### **We need space and time to explore problems** Discoveries don’t become surplus to requirements once a service is live. We still need time to explore and understand problems fully. Skipping discovery research can be risky. We end up sticking plasters instead of solving real issues. Inevitably we miss things we have to pick up later. We recently had to re-design a part of the journey where multiple applicants need to agree on a piece of information. Our discovery involved speaking with other government departments that have the same challenge, as well as involving policy at the earliest stages to understand what would be possible to change. The result of these conversations is a strong yet simple journey which our users can confidently complete. ### **The map of the end to end service is our guide** We need a map of the live service to guide us. This map includes any screens themselves and information about changes which have taken place and when. We need to see it all to understand the journey and address issues where they matter. We created an end-to-end map of the Probate online application service to understand the user experience. This map was initially just for our UCD team but quickly became a reference for the service team as well as developers. No one in the team had had a visual overview of the journey and all the possible branching within the single application journey. ### **Having design capacity alongside delivery can be a winning formula** We are embedded in live service delivery, working hand in hand with service managers, delivery managers, business analysts and developers who build our designs into the live environment. This means, even in discovery, small design changes to address problems can be developed and released without waiting for the project to go into alpha. Given all this complexity, we try to work on only one service at once! ## **What we learned discussing this topic with international colleagues** * Designers are working in lots of different contexts. Not all designers work in multidisciplinary squads with development capacity, not all designers get to work with user researchers (and vice versa). * Funding model constraints can affect project outcomes, especially when funding doesn’t allow for continuous improvement to services or user-centred design once a service is live. * Understanding the differences and impact of designing a service from scratch versus continuous improvement of existing journeys is useful. * Live services can offer teams rich sources of data and will depend on the service itself. ### **Considerations for this work in the future** * How might new sources of data and insight help drive and measure continuous service improvement? * How might live services transform to meet individual needs and changing user needs in the future? * How might automation and new sources of intelligence support real time user feedback and tools for instant process improvements? In the comments let us know if you are working on live services in government. What is your model for continuous improvement? How are service improvements for live services prioritised where you work?

It's been a really busy start to the year in the Government Digital Service (GDS) and in our design team. Just a couple of months ago, we launched the blueprint for modern digital government in an event that included a speech from our Secretary of State, Peter Kyle. The announcement included the news that teams from GDS, the Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO), the Incubator for AI (i.AI) and colleagues from the Geospatial data team and the Responsible Technology Adoption Unit would merge together as the new, strengthened Government Digital Service, within the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). Ahead of the announcement, we had to work out what the new visual identity was going to look like. This post is about how we approached designing a logo fit for the new digital centre of government. We are sharing how we approached the work, what the final output looks like, and how we’re using it. ## **The new Government Digital Service** The UK government has a well-established brand identity system that requires departments to use standardised coats of arms, specific colours and logo formats. This simplifies the overall visual identity for government departments, saving taxpayers’ money and reducing the potential for confusion. It was important that the new Government Digital Service logo visibly echoed this identity system, supporting our new connections with DSIT and placing us within the larger structure. However, we also knew that recognition of the brand is high amongst public sector professionals and people who work in digital (both here in the UK and internationally). We were tasked with maintaining this so that we can continue to attract talent, and to retain the positive associations that have been built up with the Government Digital Service over the years. We had to deliver the work quickly, robustly and at no additional cost. To meet these objectives, we redesigned our visual identity around three significant changes: * we added the Tudor crown throughout * we adopted the colour palette of GDS's department, DSIT * we created a set of well-formatted, more flexible layouts for the new logo We believe the outcome works well with the existing government identity system and sits comfortably under and alongside DSIT’s identity. Through retaining the Government Digital Service workmark within the logo, we are able to build on our established reputation, while the visual changes also signal our increased scope, welcome new colleagues in, and create a bold foundation for all of the exciting work we’ve got coming up. ## **Using the Tudor crown  ** Working to a brief set by Government Chief Product Officer, Chris Bellamy, we explored various names and visual executions before agreeing with our stakeholders to use the recently redesigned Tudor crown instead of the more traditional coat of arms used by DSIT in most contexts (for example in official publications). We worked with the DSIT Digital Communications team to ensure the new treatments were consistent and complimentary with DSIT’s parent brand. And we worked with the Government Communications Service (GCS) to make sure that any treatment supports their work on the overall government identity. There are some good reasons for doing this. Firstly, the Tudor crown symbol has very high levels of recognition already, due to its association with GOV.UK, the public-facing website and brand launched in 2012. Secondly, in a recent change to the overall government identity system, the Tudor or ‘digital’ crown now serves as the single identifier for _all_ government departments in smaller-format digital spaces (including social media avatars and mobile notifications), with differentiation provided through setting it against the relevant departmental colour as a background. For our new identity we went a step further than this change by integrating the crown symbol into our formal logo, and into the Government Digital Services’s organisation page on GOV.UK too. Doing so creates a connection between our external public-facing and internal civil service identities and pays homage to what the organisation had previously achieved (which remains a source of pride for many) whilst also creating a more approachable, informal and ‘digital’ impression than the more official and heraldic coat of arms. ## **A bolder, more flexible brand** We knew that our use of colour had to reference the wider DSIT colour palette, so after some design exploration we landed on two main colours: the cyan and the midnight blue. At the same time, we took care to typeset the logo properly and create layouts (‘lock-ups’) that work well across a range of contexts. We have a ‘formal’ version, as well as an acronym version, and a fully spelled-out version. We’re used to working with the Tudor crown and with Helvetica Neue, so creating arrangements that work was a familiar and enjoyable challenge. Some of the main places you can see variants of the new logo include our GOV.UK page, our slide deck template, and our social media profiles like this one on LinkedIn. We believe that the new Government Digital Service identity is able to stand on its own better than our previous logo was, and also allows us greater flexibility to appear across platforms and contexts, both now and for the future. ## **Bringing it into the office** The launch event was a great moment to share assets and guidelines on how to use the identity with colleagues, to welcome them into the new Government Digital Service, give them the opportunity to feel part of what was happening, and to make the overall rollout and switchover more consistent and effective. We also took the opportunity to give our workspace a minor ‘glow-up’, including some refreshed posters showcasing our product line-up framed around the office (available from Github), some tweaks to the on-screen data dashboards that show how people are using our products in real-time, and some impactful vinyl wall decorations in a few judiciously-chosen areas of our office floor. In some of our assets, you can see that we deconstructed elements of the Tudor crown and use it in the physical space, as well as on some of our social media and on publication covers. We’re still exploring all the ways we might be able to use this, but we like the flexibility it offers and how clearly it references GOV.UK. ## **How did we do this?** A set of posters showcasing our product line-up in early 2025, available from GitHub As is frequently the case, we had to work at pace in a small team of designers, together with trusted colleagues. Overall, we had around 8 weeks before the event to do the work, which included the end-of-year holiday period in the middle. This really tightened the cycle of design, critique, accessibility testing, sign-off and installation, and we were only able to move as fast as we did because we were enabled by great support and backing from our leadership. In developing the creative routes, we found it helped to set out all the possible options - including some we wouldn’t normally recommend - at the outset, in order to be able to move quickly in ruling things out with stakeholders and getting to an agreed shortlist as swiftly as possible. Now we’re on the other side of the official launch, we’re able to start iterating the work based on feedback from colleagues who are actually using the materials day-to-day in documents and presentations. We’re making it easy for people to suggest ideas, and regularly get together as a team to respond to them. We’re keen to build on this start and keep developing this new identity in the months ahead.

Sharing learning across the public sector is crucial if we’re going to effectively tackle our shared challenges. So we were very excited when, at the end of 2024, we were invited to speak at the Service Design in Government conference in Edinburgh, and then in Helsinki at the International Design in Government conference. As part of the Strategy and Design team at Camden Council, our design practice spans service and policy design. We get to look beyond service improvement and imagine how we might do things differently into the future, and understand the policy levers that we can use for transformation. To this end, Camden has been exploring the idea of Universal Basic Services (UBS) as a framework for future public services. UBS is a concept that has been developed by academics at the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP), which articulates a radical redesign of the welfare state. It sets out how a network of 7 kinds of public services (healthcare, education, legal and democracy, shelter, food, transport and information) could comprehensively meet people’s basic needs, enable them to thrive, and support social resilience in the 21st century. Camden and IGP have a long-standing collaboration, with written reports on public services and a Camden-run pilot that looked at the impact of free travel and digital services for those seeking employment. At the beginning of 2024, our team had the opportunity to continue developing Camden’s thinking on what UBS could look like at a local level, by running a series of co-design workshops. Over 3 months we brought together groups of Camden staff, residents, and policymakers through 7 chronological sessions - imagining together what a welfare state that’s fit for the 21st century could look like. We loved this piece of work and were really excited to be invited to share it with the international design community. Here are some of our reflections on the experience. ## **Our organisational context in Camden  ** At both conferences, we had questions about how this work came about and how we had secured permission to explore so broadly. We recognise we’re lucky that at Camden we have a mandate from our leadership to design projects that help move us towards the ‘third horizon’ of public services - work that helps us understand, tackle and transform around some of the big issues of our society, such as housing or care. The ‘third horizon’ framework, developed by the International Futures Forum, helps us think through how we can design services that demonstrate the possibilities of a future system (our third horizon) alongside the ‘business as usual’. Our work on UBS fits in this framework of designing for the future. Working in a mission-led way inherently invites us to design with our eyes on the horizon and build capacity within our organisation to work with a ‘test and learn’ mindset. Going forward, we’re looking to scale up our testing so we can start prototyping what elements of UBS might look like in the real world through small pilots that will give us and others interested in exploring this idea with us a good roadmap for how we can begin to make this tangible. ## **Sharing our co-design practice** We also had questions about how we built trust with residents and worked with them throughout the co-design process. Though we worked to build psychological safety through co-creating ‘ground rules’ for how we’d show up together, and compensated them for their time, we still had to navigate the tensions of doing this work as representatives of Camden Council. Many residents had valid reasons for having low levels of trust in government, and found it  hard to trust us when we said we wanted to work with them to redesign the welfare system of the future. Part of our role was in knowing how to hold the tension between recognising we need to fix things now, but also to begin creating something that will work for future generations. ## **Learning from shared challenges** In Helsinki Kara Kane and Martin Jordan gave a keynote speech about the “long slog” of design in government. They argued that whilst many designers come from the private sector where work can be delivered in fast-spaced “sprints” - design in the public sector is tied to policy, funding cycles and parliamentary terms, which hugely slows things down. Generations of designers will pass down their work and ideas in an “ultramarathon baton relay” in the hope that the time will be right for ideas to make an impact. This really spoke to our work on UBS and the way we had to navigate engaging residents in this process. The hope is that the work we do now to shape a vision will have an impact when the right conditions are in place. We were also inspired by David Martens from the EU Policy Lab’s  talk on the role of design in making things more intimate and beautiful, and we recognise how important this can be in our work around UBS when looking to build stories and ideas that will inspire many others to join us as we create a different future. Our main takeaway was a sense of solidarity with international colleagues facing such similar challenges, and a renewed sense of the value of design for bringing new energy, creativity and thinking to the public sector. Although it may sometimes feel like an “ultramarathon,” employing design thinking in government spaces feels so much more meaningful when you know you’re not alone. The value of sharing at and attending conferences like these shouldn’t be understated. If you’d like to read more about our work on UBS and our other work at Camden Council, check out our blog series at Change by Design. Services Week is coming up next month from 17 to 21 March 2025. It’s a great opportunity to share and learn across the public sector on public service design. Check out the Services in Government blog for information on how to get involved.