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https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2017/04/03/what-we-blogged-about-in-march-2017/

What we blogged about in March 2017

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: GDS team

I recently joined GDS as the Head of Editorial for our cross-government blog network. I’m already impressed with the blogging work my colleagues are doing across GDS and beyond.

In this post I look at some of the highlights of March 2017 across our digital blogs. Here’s your chance to catch up on what we published that month.

change by doing post-it

Supporting users to verify

The team at GOV.UK Verify are committed to ensuring that their users receive comprehensive support when verifying their identity online.

In one of their March blog posts, Ciara Green and Kay Dale talk about how the team carried out research and interviews with their certified companies to better understand how they support their users to verify.

GOV.UK Notify is now open for use

After 9 months, 3.5 million messages, 32 live services, 850 code deployments, and 500 hours of user research — GOV.UK Notify is available to all of central government.

Read Pete Herlihy’s post to find out more about the launch of Notify and what the next steps are.

Improving navigation and search on GOV.UK

The team at GOV.UK has been doing a lot of work behind the scenes.

For example, they’ve been experimenting with how to organise the 300,000 pages on GOV.UK to make the navigation and search work better for users.

Mark Hurrell blogged about what exactly the team has been doing and why their work is about to get more visible.

GOV.UK stickers

The first national framework for technical roles

Over the course of several months, cross-government working groups have brought consistency to the multitude of technical roles that exist in the public sector.

They have built a single structure of digital, data and technology job roles and career paths that can be used by departments to help them find, develop and keep the people they need to build the best public services.

Read more about the framework and its benefits in a blog post from the Digital Data and Technology Profession. 

group of people looking at a board

Using Trello on the GOV.UK Publishing Platform

The team at GOV.UK use Trello to support their Kanban process.

In March, Alan Wright blogged about how the team use the app and other plugins to optimise the Kanban process.

Roadmaps in government

Not so long ago, product roadmaps in government were viewed as experimental and optional. Now, they’re seen as an important tool for delivering better products and transforming government services.

Read Ross Ferguson’s post about how roadmaps are being used in government.

Launching a user research panel for GOV.UK

A user research panel is a database of people who have volunteered to share their details – such as name, contact details and basic demographic information – so they can be invited to participate in user research sessions appropriate to them.

Katie Taylor’s post talks about how the panel works.

Building a design culture

Kara Kane blogged about the essential steps to building a design culture. Read her post to learn more about the importance of strong design leadership, collaboration, flexibility, support, shared tools, and keeping design fun.

keep things simple post-it note

Writing clearly to help the whole organisation

The national Screening Quality Assurance Service team at Public Health England (PHE) asked GDS to train their assessors to write effectively before they started publishing some of their content on GOV.UK.  

Karen Manser and Nick Johnstone-Waddell blogged about how GDS worked with PHE to deliver this project.

Did you find this round-up useful?

Leave your feedback in the comments below to let me know if you’d like to see a round-up like this one each month.

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9 comments

  1. Comment by James S. Elkins posted on

  2. Comment by Kate posted on

    yes very useful thanks

  3. Comment by Aaron posted on

  4. Comment by Sarah posted on

    Thanks for this, really useful to pick up on a couple of things I'd missed.

  5. Comment by Paul posted on

    Really useful to have all in one place

  6. Comment by Andrew posted on

    Great summary!

  7. Comment by Jane Kenny posted on

    Very useful and yes please

  8. Comment by Lara Middleton posted on

    Very useful - thank you !

  9. Comment by Jo Goodwin posted on

    Really useful round up!