Digital
Digital programme – Digital Scotland Service Manual
July 30, 2024 by Stewart Hamilton 2 Comments | Category Digital Scotland, Digital Scotland Service Manual
Blog by Thomas Ozers, Senior Delivery Manager, Digital Scotland Service Manual team.
Hi there! A very warm welcome from the Digital Scotland Service Manual team to our blog! In this first one, we’re keen to outline what the manual is and who it is for, and outline some of the key pieces of work we’re delivering as we iteratively develop the service manual offering.
The project team have been working tirelessly over the last year to establish some base principles, and agree how we will deliver the changes we need to meet our objectives. One of thing we needed to do was establish the current purpose of DSSM. This can be stated as:
“supporting public service reform by reducing the cost of delivery, improving the design of services and increasing digital knowledge”
Sounds pretty straight forward right? But wrapped up in this is the establishment of a new operational model for the whole public sector – something we haven’t done before but are very much up for the challenge of doing.
We know that we need to do things better and in a more joined up way and the establishment of the service manual will form a core aspect of making sure the new operational model is fit for purpose, sustainable and enticing for people to engage with it.
To set us off on the right footing, we have developed a vision and mission statement to guide our work and ensure we remain focused on the aspirations of how we want the service manual to be both received and perceived.
And our mission is to:
“centralise guidance, streamlining access to specialist knowledge from experts and communicating these methods to public sector teams in Scotland”.
Our vision is to be the:
“trusted, comprehensive guidance and advice service for all public service bodies, enabling them to design, build and maintain high quality and cost-effective digital services.
To achieve our ambitions, we’ve distilled this into a series of objectives, strategies and tactics to help us along the way.
Who is the manual for?
The manual is for those about to start or currently undertaking digital transformation projects in the Scottish public sector, specifically those assessed under the Technology Assurance Framework (TAF).
Those outside of TAF can also make use of the manual but won’t be able to access some aspect of advice. Suffice to say that anyone can make use of the manual – it’s in the public domain – and so we do encourage those of you who may fall outside of the scope, to still consider it first when you embark on new digital projects.
Agile delivery
The manual is in Agile delivery and will be iteratively developed, with new content, content pathways, and products and services released incrementally and based on how our users want to interact with us and what is important to them.
We’re still in the very early stages, but would encourage everyone to take a look at the manual and give us feedback and suggestions on how we can make it better.
We expect to transition from a project team to business as usual operations by early 2025, after which products and services we own or that are referenced in our content will be subject to continuous improvement, based on both user and business needs.
What’s in the manual?
The establishment of a new online presence for the Digital Scotland Service Manual is probably the single most important thing we’ve delivered to date.
We’ve been live for almost 6 months now, progressing through our first few iterations, and I’m super pleased to say that the manual is a significant improvement both in terms of content and accessibility, when compared to the old Digital Support Hub.
The home page includes a series of topic based tiles such as
- a space that outlines what the service manual is and how you can get involved
- good practice guidance on how to create user-centred content for public services
- guidance on how we can make everything we do accessible and usable
- commercial considerations under ‘how to buy a digital product or service’
- what you need to do when in the discovery phase of Agile delivery
- and guidance on how to publish web content or create a new website
I should mention that the structure of content will continue to evolve over time as new content is published and the manual iterates.
To guide this, and better understand how people want to use the content, we’re carrying out further user research and analysis of user data. This means in future, content is likely to be structured in a way that reflects how people access and use it, rather than the topic structure we have in this first iteration.
Digital Scotland Service Manual products and services
What kind of things will DSSM contain and do? We will deliver both products and services, they are:
Products to enable delivery of digital transformation:
- Standards via the Digital Scotland Service Standard
- online guidance via the Digital Scotland Service Manual website
- tools to help you do your work more efficiently
- templates such as business cases, discovery reports and project plans
- patterns and wireframes to build websites that are consistent and easy to set up
- shared data repositories
Services to support adapting and adopting products:
- common components such as Cloud platform service, ScotAccount and ScotPayments
- access to DDaT communities of practice and other networks to share expertise, ideas and collaborate
- professional development via the Scottish Digital Academy
- expert advice and targeted support for projects prioritised as part of a new portfolio management process
Find out more and get involved
Thanks again for taking time to read all about the service manual – we hope you found this blog both interesting to the work you do and informative.
We are super keen to hear from each of you about your thoughts on this first iteration of the manual and so would encourage each of you to spend a little time looking at content that’s relevant to you and dropping us feedback on individual content pages or via the ‘get in touch’ link below. Thanks, the Digital Scotland Service Manual team.
- Digital Scotland Service Manual
- Get in touch with the service manual team
- Take part in user research
Tags: Digital Programme, Digital Scotland Service Manual, scottish government, Technology Assurance Framework
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Thanks Dean!
Fantastic stuff Thomas