Scott Colfer writes Most of What We Call a ‘Service’ Isn’t One (and Why That Matters for Product People)
In government and the wider public sector, we’ve built our identity around “services.”
Digital teams design them, measure them, apply the Service Standard to them.But most of what we call a service isn’t actually a service.
More often, the work we label as a “service” is really something else:
- An experience (like applying, enrolling, or updating).
- A capability (like payments, case management, or publishing).
- Or a technology system (like a website or platform).
The Service Standard itself, our flagship guidance, is rarely been applied to a true end-to-end service. Most of the time, it’s applied to fragments: experiences, capabilities, or tech.
And that mislabelling matters. You can end up treating a website like a whole service, or expecting a tech platform to deliver a citizen journey.