Service Design in Gov - Connecting the online to the offline

11:50-12:20, Raked Lecture Theatre

Rebecca Walsh

The public sector has a reputation for focusing on delivery of pre-defined solutions and not designing tech based on the needs of the public. GDS (Government Digital Services) UK has started to shift that focus with the adoption of Service Design but in Northern Ireland we are struggling to keep up.

There are many reasons for this:

  • We don’t understand it
  • It’s not easy
  • It can seem costly
  • We don’t have enough trained Service Designers

During this talk I will take you through the challenges I have faced trying to embed Service Design in the Public Sector and what we have to do to shift our thinking towards the integration of the online and offline and how we can easily start focusing on users and not just tech.