The Service Standard and the Local Government Digital Standard

A few people have asked if the work on the existing Service Standard affects the Local Government Digital Standard. Yes and no!

First up, read the post. It’s good and it looks like the Service Standard is going into some interesting places:

We are reimagining the Service Standard as part of a broader shift from a static, assessment-led model to a living system that supports the whole life cycle of a service.

This represents an important step in improving how we design and deliver public services. By bringing together strong standards, sector collaboration and practical implementation, it sets a clear direction for how we can make services simpler, more consistent and more effective for people and businesses.

(Weirdly the blog post doesn’t include an actual link to the Service Standard, which seems a tad perverse to me. Have littered this post with links to make up for it 😀)

I’ve spoken to some of the team working on this, after they saw me bleating about the LGDS in various corners of the internet. They were lovely, and very supportive of what I (and Luton!) were trying to do.

The hope from that team is, I think, that the revised Service Standard will work better for local authorities. I hope it does to! For me though it does not remove the need for the LGDS, which acts as a set of ‘training wheels’ or stabilisers for councils wanting to get to grips with the Service Standard and use it to improve their digital work.

That need for a ramp to help councils won’t go away, I don’t think, and so there is space for both to exist. Really importantly – the LGDS is based on the Service Standard and embodies much of what the Service Standard aims to promote. It just does so in a more accessible way for less digitally (and service design-y) mature organisations.

So it’s quite likely that if the Service Standard gets a major update, the LGDS will too, so it stays true to the North Star. But if you are a council thinking about adopting the LGDS for your work, please do so with confidence. It might be that at some point you graduate to the Service Standard proper, or you stick with the level the LGDS offers. It’s cool either way. But in following the LGDS you won’t be deviating from the path the Service Standard sets now, or in the future.