Senior service ownership could help Defra become more service-led, efficient and user-focused. Laura Churchill shares what her team learned while testing the concept, why plans had to change, and how they’re building the right conditions for more joined-up, accountable services.
While I was away on holiday the sad news reached me that David Pearson had died unexpectedly. I’ve described David as part of the fabric of Defra, and he’s a...
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 …
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 …
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 …
...individual working in the department has a day rate, which covers both the cost of that individual working on a project, as well as any extras such as project support...
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...
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.
...application. We then put these screens on the wall underneath the full process, to show how much less we could do. We managed to reduce 72 pages to 22 pages,...
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