Don’t just keep the lights on, shine bright
Users don’t have a choice to use government services. They can’t go anywhere else, so the services must work and work well. It’s an adage that does well to remind us why public services are not the same as private-sector ones.
However, the same isn’t true if you work on digital service platforms, or Government as a Platform.
Platform products, built by government for public sector organisations, are intended to be better, cheaper and preferable to competitors. If an arms-length body or small government organisation has to choose between a private-sector platform or a platform built by government, both of those platforms are in a market. The arms-length body will choose which platform to use based on the features offered, the price, the complexity of integration, design, accessibility, and loads of other factors.
This is intentional. By introducing a public-sector platform into the market, usually for free, the market can be shaped, making it fairer and cheaper for public-sector organisations. It’s mission-driven procurement. The early successes of GOV.UK Pay and GOV.UK Notify show this.
Because that arms-length body (or other public service organisation) can choose between platforms, the platforms are in competition with one another. Free is not always better, and users will go elsewhere if their needs are not met through the features available.
This is why teams working on government platforms can’t follow the adage that users have no choice in using their service. Your users do have a choice, and they will go elsewhere if they need to.
That is the fate that GOV.UK Platform-as-Service (PaaS) unfortunately met. It couldn’t ship enough value to its users compared to competitors, so users went elsewhere. It achieved a lot in the time it was around, and users loved it. But the cold, hard reality of a competitive market won over.
To avoid the same fate, platform teams need to think like startups and grow their market share. They can’t sit back and go slow like teams working on transactional services, whose users don’t have a choice.
Every arms-length body or local authority or other public service that isn’t using a government-built platform has the potential to be ripped off. Tracking benefits realised, in £GBP, is a good North Star for any digital service platforms team. Look at your benefits model, learn it, wield it. Talk about how you’re creating value for money, and how mission-driven government can create economic growth.
Incremental growth is OK, but every 1–2 years there should be a huge leap made as a result of solving a big problem for users. Like offering a new communication channel, a new payment method, or serving local authorities as well as central government.
Leaders have a role to play here too. If teams are too constrained and only have time to work on maintenance, or public sector equality duties like accessibility, you’re not working hard enough to get the funding and people your teams need. Do better. Remind your service managers and teams of the principles of Government as a Platform.
Any time the benefits realised slows or stagnates, teams should ask why. What problems do users have that we’re not meeting? What value are we not providing but they desperately need? Is everyone waiting for us to release a feature? Is onboarding easy enough? Are we no longer cost-effective? Have we not done a good enough job of marketing our platform?
And if you’re losing users or partner services, that’s a wake-up call. Act now.
There’s a unique privilege in working on Government as a Platform: it saves money for government and, in turn, the taxpayer. These savings can be reinvested in other public services, like health, housing and justice. But those savings can’t be realised if the platform does not keep growing market share, does not keep shipping value to users. Deliverables are a part of achieving outcomes for users.
Find a big, gnarly but super valuable feature on your roadmap and ship it sooner. Make it small, get it in front of users so you can iterate. Measure and monitor the impact, quantitatively and qualitatively. Write about it and share case studies. Encourage one new organisation to sign up and start using the platform. And watch the benefits grow.
It’s time to make an impact. Onwards!