Service Designer

Government Shared Services (GSS) is a unit within Government Business Services (GBS) in the Cabinet Office. We support the Cabinet Office’s aims to ensure the delivery of the finest public services and improve the efficiency of government.

We are the centre of expertise working across departments to make it easier for civil servants to use platforms for HR, finance and payroll. Civil servants are users too so we deliver services to the same standard we expect from citizen-facing services. We recently launched the new Shared Services Strategy for Government, which will deliver services that are better value, and cut through processes that cost time and money. Our overarching objectives are:

1) Meeting end-user needs, promoting excellence and convenience for both staff and managers.

2) Delivering value and efficiency, including by separating technology from Service Centres, and including all transactional services.

3) Convergence around processes and data, including the consolidation and modernisation of technology platforms, while maintaining choice for departments.

Through this strategy, our ambition is to free up civil servants to focus on what they do best: engaging with and delivering for citizens.

You will be primarily focused on the ‘Interoperability OneData’ programme which envisions a more flexible, efficient and effective Civil Service using technology to enable civil servants and data to move more easily across departmental boundaries. Each strand is designed to achieve a major improvement to how the Civil Service operates enabling us to better serve the public. The programme has 5 main strands:

1. Workforce data & analytics – creating the capability to analyse and use workforce data (such as skills, experience and knowledge) across Civil Service departments, professions and functions. This will enable improved workforce planning, resource deployment, capability building interventions, and business services.

2. Staff transfers / movers – improving how civil servants move between roles. This will involve simplifying, streamlining and automating processes for moving civil servants around government, so that we have the right people where we need them quickly.

3. Unified communications – providing the tools for Civil Service leaders to engage with all civil servants through multiple channels and approaches. The goal is to communicate, connect and collaborate with civil servants across all departments on vital messages and updates.

4. Single identifier – creating a unique identifier linked to each civil servant throughout their career which is used when interacting with business services (e.g. HR and finance). This will enable more personalised and integrated services that cross departmental boundaries.

5. Integration capability – introducing common tools, standards and platforms to enable seamless integration between business services to reduce the burden on users and reduce costs.

It’s likely that you’ll mainly be focused on the first three strands, but the remaining two are likely key enablers. You will be joining us right at the beginning of this programme starting with the Discovery Phase. You’ll also work with our wider portfolio of digital services covering recruitment, learning and business services.

Responsibilities

As a Service Designer, your job will be to work with skilled multidisciplinary teams to design, prototype and build excellent public services. You’ll create multi-channel, cross-government services that are user-centred, equitable, sustainable and accessible.

You’ll help identify and fix some of the toughest problems in public infrastructure and you will be focussing on design of services at scale. You’ll help the government transform the way it delivers services, so that they’re more efficient, simpler, faster and easier to use.

If you’d like to work with us to simplify services and want to be part of a fantastic service design in government community, where we share ideas and challenges with 1000s of designers across the public sector. This is a chance to work on services that matter, at a huge scale, with people who value design.

As a Service Designer you will:

• Plan and design high-quality digital services, based on user needs and sets of related stories. Oversee the design of end-to-end services ensuring that user needs and policy intents have been considered throughout and will be achieved by the service.

• Work with product teams and senior leaders to ensure a seamless user journey across multiple products and services (including both online and offline processes). Understand user needs and identify where separate interactions with government should act as one service to meet that need.

• Create and rapidly iterate service prototypes and mockups to explain to teams and stakeholders how the service will (or could) work. This will also include other approaches such as storyboarding, service mapping or user journey mapping.

• Develop service strategies in partnership with service owners, product managers and senior leaders. Help to develop roadmaps, business cases and performance frameworks.

• Work with product teams to apply the service design framework and standards, ensuring that project plans include the design contribution, review and approval. Review service designs to make sure they are fit for purpose and meet government digital standards.

• Identify opportunities to improve robustness, resilience and stability helping team members identify ways to improve services and user journeys by simplifying complex experiences and improving content.

• Collaborate with other disciplines such as architecture and security to understand what needs to be built conducting quality assurance, peer review/critiques, fact-checking and accessible design reviews as required.

• Validate the outcomes of design, to ensure they meet operational, technical, architectural, service support and user needs for agreed Live service delivery. Flag any potential service design risks and escalate them as appropriate.

Essential criteria:

You may not have been a service designer previously but you have transferable skills and experience from other digital roles such as user experience, product management/strategy, or business analysis. We’ll review applications against the following criteria:

• User focus – You know how to collaborate with user researchers and can represent users internally. You understand the difference between user needs and the desires of the user. You can champion user research to focus on all users. You can prioritise and define approaches to understand the user story, guiding others in doing so. You can offer recommendations on the best tools and methods to be used.

• User-centred design – You can absorb large amounts of conflicting information and use it to produce simple user-centred designs. You can collect and analyse a range of evidence sources to understand the user and business needs that inform your designs.

• Leadership and guidance – You contribute to best-practice guidelines. You understand the sustainability and consequences of your decisions and can make decisions characterised by managed levels of risk and complexity. You can resolve technical disputes between wider peers and indirect stakeholders, taking into account all views and opinions.

• Prototyping – You approach prototyping as a team activity, actively soliciting prototypes and testing with others. You can establish design patterns and iterate them. You can use a variety of methods of prototyping and choose the most appropriate ones. You can develop prototypes with a tools and/or the GOV.UK prototyping kit.

• Strategic thinking – You can define strategies and policies, providing guidance to others on working in the strategic context. You know how to evaluate current strategies to ensure business requirements are being met and exceeded where possible.

• Agile working – You have experience of working in agile, including an awareness of agile tools and how to use them. You can advise colleagues on how and why agile methods are used and be able to provide a clear, open and transparent framework in which teams can deliver.

This role is aligned to the Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) Capability Framework for the Civil Service. You can view the Service Designer role at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/service-designer

We’ll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Changing and Improving
• Communicating and Influencing
• Seeing the Big Picture

We’ll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• User-centred design
• Prototyping
• Strategic thinking