The Government Digital Service (GDS) has published a ‘work in progress’ prototype business case for joining up government services.
Its service design and technology standards team has made the prototype available on Github along with a template and said it will be updated through the discovery process which runs through this month.
It has also invited feedback as part of making the document an effective business case.
The move is part of GDS’s effort to solve a common problem for government organisations in avoiding repetition for service users. It says in the document that it would not be feasible or advisable for it centralise the digital services of other government organisations, but that that prototype can help to offer meaningful choices to users about re-using past answers and removing unnecessary questions.
The early version includes an outline of strategic objectives that identify two main causes of repetition: organisations are not incentivised or funded to share privately held data about users; and policy teams design new and isolated schemes with limited time to understand existing services.
It identifies the key challenges in these areas as an early step towards finding solutions.
More to do
More work is to be done, and among the possible success factors are that service users will not have to repeat themselves and civil servants can work across organisational boundaries more easily.
Sections on benefits and the economic case are yet to be added to the document.
“This is an early prototype,” GDS says. “There will be mistakes and inaccuracies. Please tell us. We hope that by making this open we will make it better.”
