The Warrington-based flood digital team recently organised its first hack. Over two days #Floodhack2018 aimed to develop, build and test a product concept that could sit within the flood information service. If you’ve not heard of hacks, they’re dedicated problem-solving …
Recently the Waste Permitting Service reached the end of its first phase; to deliver an application process for standard rules waste permits. As we moved on to our next phase; supporting bespoke permits, we were keen to shorten the time …
Agile teams aim to release early and often, starting with a minimum viable product (MVP) and iteratively building on it. But choosing what to put in an MVP is hard. You don’t want to release something that delivers little or …
Back in October last year I wondered out loud why we couldn’t start funding teams not projects. At the time I rather naively thought that there was some senior person or group of people who just needed to be persuaded …
Minister Oliver Dowden announcing the GovTech winners at Sprint 18 I was at Sprint 18 last week, where I got some good news: Defra has won a slice of the £20 million GovTech Catalyst (GTC) grant fund. There will be …
More than a year ago, our predecessor Sally Meecham wrote about Defra’s digital principles, saying how they acted as a useful way of setting out our approach to simplifying services and cutting out complexity. A lot’s happened since then. In …
The more steps Defra takes towards becoming a user-centric, service design-focused organisation, the more we learn about changing the way we work and collaborate. That’s made more difficult in an organisation like Defra, which despite our best efforts over many …
A few weeks ago we posted a blog about how we’ve simplified the waste permits service. We've also made a short film about the agile team working on the service and how they are continually improving it based on feedback from users.
Minimum viable products (MVPs) are a hugely important part of service development. By aiming to release as early as possible you reduce the risk of never releasing at all. You also get valuable feedback from users using the system in …
We all need to protect personal information, we do this every time we lock our mobile phones, for example. It’s also important that we, as Civil Servants, protect the personal information that others share with us to help us create …
A few weeks ago, we were invited to speak at an internal event for managers in one part of Defra. The subject of our talk was "What are digital skills, and how do we develop them?" We think that good …
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