Attempt to create more consistency in repeated activities marks next stage in building government as a platform
The Government Digital Service (GDS) is working on creating standards for “service patterns” for online activities as part of its campaign to build government as a platform.
It wants to build a more consistent, but not uniform, approach to patterns that relate to repeated activities, such as obtaining permission to do something or delegating responsibility for a task.
A GDS blogpost by Louise Downe says it is part of a two-pronged focus that also involves developing more unified “cross-department journeys”, such as buying a vehicle or disposing of waste, to reinforce the platform approach to online services.
It says that more consistent service patterns should provide better interoperability between services, and could provide an instruction manual for using platforms and registers. This could provide a template for building services that are similar to others already in place.
Reduce effort
“By creating standard patterns for services we can significantly reduce the amount of effort it takes to redesign a service well, allowing teams to concentrate on the things that are unique to their service,” the blog says.
Work is taking place on identifying the creation and management of a service pattern, with the aim of providing more consistency for users and in internal processes, a relevant set of standards, and a set of modular components that can plug together, including registers, platforms and reusable codes.
“These patterns will need to evolve constantly, fed by the experiences of those using and testing them in the field – in the same way that the GOV.UK interaction patterns have grown and evolved over time,” the blog says.
The move is the latest in the GDS’s efforts to build a core infrastructure of shared digital systems, technology and processes under the government as a platform banner. It is aimed at preventing duplication in service development and supporting interoperability between services.
Image from gov.uk under Open Government Licence 3.0
