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Creating Safe Spaces for Challenge, being a Lead Assessor for Government Service Standard Assessments
- 2. ...being a lead assessor for Service Standard Assessments
- 3. Sam Villis @stamanfar Local Collaboration Lead - MHCLG Clara Songaila @clarasongaila Digital Engagement Manager - GDS Steve McCready @stevemccready Spend Controls Lead - GDS
- 4. Write down what you would like to get out of this session...
- 5. What we will cover: ● Why and how we assess services against the Service Standard ● How assessments help teams to deliver the best services for citizens ● Code of Conduct
- 6. What we will cover: ● Why and how we assess services against the Service Standard ● How assessments help teams to deliver the best services for citizens ● Code of Conduct
- 7. What we will cover: ● Why and how we assess services against the Service Standard ● How assessments help teams to deliver the best services for citizens ● Code of Conduct
- 9. The Standards Assurance Team in GDS run the digital and technology Spend Control and Service Assessment processes on behalf of the Cabinet Office.
- 10. The aim is to reduce government waste and ensure departments make the right technology decisions to deliver great digital services to citizens.
- 11. Maybe we could all talk more about what the service standard enables: a transparent way to measure progress, a lodestar for government to work towards, a fair and reasoned way to avoid departments marking their own homework, an important sponsor of working in the open and, most importantly, a catalyst for better services for users.
- 12. Senior Technology Advisors (STA's) work with departments to approve (...or not) requests to spend public money.
- 13. Digital Engagement Managers (DEM's) work with departments to make sure that the services they are creating meet the Digital Service Standard.
- 16. Services are assessed to make sure they meet the Digital Service Standard and to protect the quality of GOV.UK.
- 17. They also help get feedback from a panel of experts and solve problems with the service as it is built.
- 19. ● A four hour peer review of a service, ● using an agenda-guided discussion, ● with up to five assessors on the panel ● and five members of a service team, ● to understand if the service meets the Service Standard.
- 20. ● A four hour peer review of a service, ● using an agenda-guided discussion, ● with up to five assessors on the panel, ● and five members of a service team, ● to understand if the service meets the Service Standard.
- 21. ● A four hour peer review of a service, ● using an agenda-guided discussion, ● with up to five assessors on the panel, ● and five members of a service team, ● to understand if the service meets the Service Standard.
- 22. ● A four hour peer review of a service, ● using an agenda-guided discussion, ● with up to five assessors on the panel, ● and five members of a service team, ● to understand if the service meets the Service Standard.
- 23. ● A four hour peer review of a service, ● using an agenda-guided discussion, ● with up to five assessors on the panel, ● and five members of a service team, ● to understand if the service meets the Service Standard.
- 25. How do service teams feel about assessments?
- 26. Well, there are a number of different views...
- 35. A good chance to get outsider perspective.
- 36. To share knowledge and make contacts with people doing the same role in other government departments.
- 40. We’ve made improvements that reinforce this being a peer review and guidance opportunity
- 41. We do this by engaging with service teams earlier and by using an ‘agenda-guided’ discussion in the assessment
- 43. Well no…. We’re really just very nosy.
- 48. Being a lead assessor is a big responsibility.
- 50. How do you make a safe space?
- 51. 1. Making sure everyone is heard
- 52. Learning people’s names! Seating! Enabling people to speak early Giving people opportunity to reflect
- 53. 2. Giving teams the opportunity to explain their context
- 54. It’s impossible to know everything about other departments Dedicating time to understanding the context of services is imperative
- 55. This extends outside the realm of the assessment… Service assessors can request more information from teams before or after the assessment.
- 56. 3. Work hard to create a space free of judgement
- 57. Looking out for language Making sure everyone understands the details Clarifying
- 58. 4. Make sure that everyone in the room feels that the time has been valuable
- 59. We believe it is important for assessors to look for opportunities to add value - if we can Building connections, making introductions, suggesting reading or case studies
- 60. Panels need safe spaces too!
- 61. Creating a safe space extends to the panel - often we don’t all agree!
- 62. Lead assessors have to weigh up a range of different views from the panel, made up of colleagues from across government
- 66. Code of conduct
- 67. The team pulled together a number of examples of Codes of Conduct
- 69. Value everyone’s ideas, skills and experiences.
- 70. Ensure all are free from discrimination and harassment.
- 72. Don’t assume. If you don’t know, ask... and ask again.
- 73. Have empathy and respect.
- 75. Questions?
- 77. Thanks!
Editor's Notes
- Clara
- Hello!
- We will cover it at the end...
- TBC
- TBC
- TBC
- Steve
- Important to note we’re not speaking ON BEHALF of GDS - so anything I overcommit to isn’t binding
- Spend controls were introduced with the creation of GDS back in 2012. They exist across multiple functions (property, marketing)
- Spend controls are delegated from the Treasury Team of 12 Individual relationships with departments
- The important part of the team. Guidance - organisation - coordination
- STA’s and DEM’s are reliant on each other to deliver that services are delivered that adhere to the standards - STA’s use assessment outcomes and DEM engagement to drive spending decisions, DEMs use spending conditions to help frame an assessment
- Clara
- Services are assessed to make sure they meet the Digital Service Standard and to protect the quality of GOV.UK. This is important as users don’t have a choice when they interact with Government. They need to be able to carry out the task they need to, simply, easily and have trust in the service they are using. By creating services that meet the Digital Service Standard and therefore GOV.UK design patterns the user can more easily trust they are using the right service and doing the right thing to get the task done.
- They also help you get feedback from a panel of experts and solve problems with your service as you build it. This is important as we all face many challenges in government. It can be really easy for us to remain in silos, whether that be our teams, our programmes or department. Assessments enable us to learn about other contexts and ultimately share how we’ve overcome challenges, passing on that knowledge to more teams, programmes and departments Assessments are a great forum for improving our own capability whether you are a service team member or an assessor in the assessment.
- Clara
- Assessments are positioned as a peer review as that is exactly what they’re supposed to be, a conversation from one colleague to another to provide feedback in a constructive way.
- The agenda runs with the service team giving a show and tell for roughly the first 45 mins to an hour. Gives an opportunity for the team to explain any context that the assessors might not know and ‘show the thing’ to the panel. Then it moves on to sections based on 5 specific themes, user research, team, design including service design and content design, technology and service performance. For each of those sections the assessors and service team are given a short list of questions before the assessment so they can get an idea of the types of questions they might ask or be asked.
- The 5 assessors reflect the different themes mentioned in the agenda. There is a lead assessors who covers team and leads the assessment, then a user research, design, technology and analytics assessor for the other themes respectively.
- The idea is that the service team mirror those who are on the panel so we expect the service manager and product owner, the user researcher, designer (interaction, service or content), sometimes 2 of those or on the rare occasion all 3!, technical architect and performance analyst. The Digital Engagement Manager works with the service team if they are unsure of who to bring along to an assessment as it might be that a legal or policy person has been working on the team and they might bring more relevant knowledge to show how the team have been working collaboratively.
- The panel then collectively decide on whether the service meets the standard or not. This result and the feedback which is written up in the form of a report is communicated by the Digital Engagement Manager, who also sets up any further conversations that might be needed in more complex situations.
- There is information on GOV.UK for service teams to understand if the service they are working on needs to be assessed by GDS. The Digital Engagement Manager allocated to the department will also help them to do this.
- Sam
- From Matt Jukes: We need to talk about Service assessments Matt talks about the assessments as being a necessary evil. In that they build capability and give assurances that government transformation is underway, but he also says that they are problematic too, especially when they are linked to funding… but there are other opinions of assessments out there which are far worse…
- Panic! If you know anything about assessments this is probably the main thing you have heard about them.
- “Bricking it” Lots of service teams view service assessments as an scary exam marking process.
- Eeek! Lots of service teams view service assessments as an scary exam marking process
- Sometimes it’s much worse
- This is from a weeknote by Ian Ames at HM Land Registry.
- It feels personal. People take it personally, this is their work! That’s why it’s so important to create a safe space.
- But if we go back to Juksie’s blog you can see that the aim has been for a long time to provide a peer review system for services. Peer review. This is what we want to foster.
- And if we think about assessments as aiming for a peer review process it all looks quite different. We know from showing and telling and working in the open that bringing in new perspectives on a project can help to improve it - diversity of thought can be difficult when you’re in the rhythm of agile. But assessments give a really good opportunity to break that routine
- Communities of practice - opportunity to build capability and to learn from best practice (for both the service team and the panel! That’s one of the principles of the One Team Gov movement - working across boundaries and breaking silos to make better services for the citizen
- Andy - Gambling Commission A good way to get validation that your team are on the right track!
- Colleagues moving from central to Local Gov are taking their experiences of service assessments with them. Local Authorities (with increasingly squashed budgets) are starting to see the benefits of a check and challenge process
- Clara
- Clara: We’ve made improvements that reinforce this being a peer review and guidance opportunity - we’re doing this by engaging with service teams earlier in the assessment process and development cycle. We can have conversations earlier about the types of areas that we know service teams find a challenge when trying to solve a problem for users. We’ve seen the value of this in service teams being able to better express how they’ve addressed these challenges during assessments. We’re getting more and more feedback that assessments are a good place to voice those challenges to get cross government advice. Service teams feel assessments are a safe place to do so because they are more comfortable with the idea that the service is a peer review from early engagement with people like me!
- Clara: An agenda guided discussion also helps enable that conversation style peer review. I explained earlier that the agenda has 5 different sections that have questions under each of them so that the service team and assessors know what might be asked. We use this as a guide as there have historically been long lists of prompts being used as a checklist. An assessment is about the enabling an open conversation instead of ticking points on the standard off. The agenda also allows for change - if the service team feel they haven’t been able to cover something of there is space in the discussion for that to happen and vice versa with the assessors. This agenda-guided approach has improved people’s attitude towards assessments.
- Sam and Steve
- I love finding out what other teams are doing because it’s a great opportunity for me to learn.
- When I asked the question on Twitter Jess replied with this gem!
- Andy - Land Registry
- From Andrew Travers, On service assessments, Medium We decided to become assessors because it’s an privilege to see great teams in action and learn from them
- From The other side of the table: leading service standard assessments by Kit Collingwood
- It’s really important that we create the right environment for a positive, useful, peer review session.
- Sam
- This should be what most of your slides look like
- Steve - This should be what most of your slides look like
- It’s not a job interview It should be a relaxed atmosphere that enables service teams to show the great work they have done Creating the opportunity for people to have a say (through introductions, explaining)
- Often the panel of assessors won’t know the details and the on
- Reinforcing that they can talk openly and won’t be quoted verbatim.
- This should be what most of your slides look like
- This should be what most of your slides look like
- This should be what most of your slides look like
- It should be a valuable experience for everyone Some of our most successful assessments are where relationships continue after the assessment
- Really important and encourages the cross-govt collaboration that GDS are there to encourage
- Sam
- This should be what most of your slides look like
- we might not know each other ahead of the day, so we need to quickly build trust with the panel members. The panel is just like a multidisciplinary team, we compliment and challenge each other, to reach a consensus.
- Once the assessment is over the Lead Assessor has to translate all of those views into a service assessment report
- Writing a service assessment report requires turning things that could be construed as negative into workable, useful advice Reports should enable service teams to unblock issues within their organisation. They are supposed to be pragmatic but reinforcing of the standard.
- Remember Trilly? Well when we write service reports we also have one eye on the organisation. If we can, we think about how we can support the service team and give them a lever to make changes within their organisation.
- Hattie Kennedy who by rights should really be up here with us, kicked off this work. We first looked for codes of conduct took these from established places, including One Team Gov, Gov Camp, other conferences and anywhere else that the good people of Twitter suggested.
- Here’s one, it’s from One Team Gov. The team reviewed them all and grouped by theme, there were eight themes in total that we distilled into the following statements.
- Participants are encouraged to be open, honest, respectful and discrete. The aim is to empower everyone to make better government services focused around user needs.
- Participants should ensure they respect and are sympathetic to different individuals’ needs. Assessments should be as safe, accessible and open as the services we are building.
- Ensure everyone is heard, be aware of those around you, and do your best to avoid talking over your neighbour or monopolising the conversation.
- Assessments must be a fair and honest reflection of the evidence presented. Make sure you check or clarify if you don’t understand a question or answer
- Be mindful of how people feel when assessing their work. Ensure you maintain a positive spirit and mutual respect for one another. Avoid making discussions personal, and ensure feedback is positive, encouraging and constructive.
- Be mindful of how people feel when assessing their work. Ensure you maintain a positive spirit and mutual respect for one another. Avoid making discussions personal, and ensure feedback is positive, encouraging and constructive. Retrospective direct: "Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand."
- This is your end slide
- This is your end slide