Users will be able to access product details, explore problem areas, learnings, patterns and components and user insights. This will support smarter, joined-up delivery for service teams.
Problem we’re looking to solve
DfE is leading on the Government’s Mission 5: Breaking down barriers to opportunity, making digital services essential to outcomes across early years, schools, further education, higher education, and skills.
This raises expectations for consistent, connected, high-quality user journeys and supports efficient use of public funds and technology.
We identified through research with teams in digital, data, technology (DDT) that it can be challenging to understand the digital product landscape as a whole across the department, to understand services, products and their interconnectedness.
The product goal
To create a centralised source of truth for all DfE services to:
- consolidate service, product, and technology information
- enable reuse and reduce duplication
- speed up delivery
- ensure compliance with standards and strategy
This includes both a technical solution (interface and backend) and a cultural shift towards reuse and shared understanding.
We identified 3 parts to the project
- Service interface – how users access, search, and use the service data.
- Backend integration – bringing together service, technology, and user data from dispersed systems.
- Cultural shift – to embed reuse and revisit learnings from previous projects across teams.
Primary users
Service delivery teams
This includes product, design, research, technology.
They need to find existing insights, services, and tech quickly.
Central Operations team This is a new team in the department, who will create a new ‘front door’ to digital, data, technology. They will enable triage of projects and portfolio-level oversight.
DfE Central Operations. Opens DfE intranet
This overview of products and services supports a cultural shift towards reuse, consistent application of standards and joining-up work.
The start-up of Central Ops, and our new Chief Digital Officer coming into post, created the right environment to kick-start this project.
Examples of user needs
DDT professional user need examples
I need to know what services exist or are being developed,
So that I can find potential join-up opportunities with the service or product I'm working on, where relevant.
I need to know what services exist or are being developed,
So that I can decide whether, and to what extent, an existing service already solves the problem my team are looking at.
DDT Central Ops user need examples
I need to know what services the department has and what they do,
So that I can easily identify opportunities when new requests for work come through to DDT.
I need to know who the key contacts on a service are,
so that I can contact them for more information on any reporting or risk requirements.
What’s next
Exploring design options in alpha and setting scope for what’s in – and out of – scope for the project. Plus, user testing and iterating based on what we learn.