Building digital experiences that align to Digital Service Standards

(00:00) from Paul over to you for your uh presentation cool thank you Succi uh just share my screen uh it's working yeah yes it is perfect all righty so um yeah so I'm going to sort of represent what I did present very recently in Drupal South um which was this presentation on building digital experiences that align to digital service standards um anyone that saw my presentation um there'll be obviously repeats here but I think you know this session tonight is is is possibly an opportunity to be a bit more interactive

(00:40) so if anyone wants to ask questions as we go along please please do so um uh also it might save anyone from having a look at the YouTube videos i mean Nigel just mentioned that you know the uh Drupal South videos are out and uh I actually watched your video uh last night i didn't make your session uh actually yesterday i didn't make your session in the Drupal South but I really like the um presentation so um again you know these video mine hasn't come out yet i think the day two ones are coming out a bit later on but um you know might

(01:12) save you watching that but like I say I think we can be more interactive tonight and and feel free to ask me things as I go along um in terms in terms of what we will cover um the I do talk about digital service standards for those that are very very techy I don't know hopefully you get something out of this it's probably more around delivery um approaches to delivery um I will have a focus on the DTA's digital service standard 2.

(01:41) 0 um and I guess part of what I was really trying to achieve at Drupal South was was to dig into that into the into the standard but but more particularly give my own sort of practical tips um and guidelines on you know how to apply the standard um and that's sort of what I was really you know trying to achieve so let's see how we go with that today uh this is sort of the agenda that I went with so you know brief introduction um context around uh digital service standards sort of what is a standard why have a standard um

(02:17) little bit little bit about the DTA's DSS 2.0 which recently came out and and and and we'll get into that um I in in doing a deep dive into the DSS 2.0 I also sort of had a look at you know what other digital standards are around the world so just sort of touching on that and and part four is is the main part of the uh presentation which is the sort of practical tips and and sort of my uh guidelines for for applying the standard based on my own experiences um at the end I had a recap and takeaways in Q&A but as I say this time we can have

(02:54) questions at the end we could have questions as we go feel free to feel free to stop me uh the raised hand I often miss so maybe just shout out or suture you will probably say there's a hand raised um yeah so had this sort of quick introduction at Drupal South so I neglected to talk about this when we were going around the table but you know have been doing sort of Drupal projects for probably since about 2012 um and sort of delivering Drupal um or site digital programs for you know a lot longer um I could say how long but it'll

(03:28) be showing my age so I won't do that but probably more than 20 years um uh in terms of sort of a basis to provide some of the tips and techniques that that I'll get into um I am active in some very large digital programs um as many people uh in Salsa are Govc CMS is sort of a prime um prime part of what we're doing um also involved in New South Wales 1CX um program uh Victoria's single digital presence uh and also WA's wa.gov.

(04:02) au so you know a lot of sort of experience there in terms of um you know application of digital at scale um and I do sort of oversee where required um sourced large projects and large accounts as needed and as people need support um when we're when we're at the Drupal South um I sort of made mention of the sort of football match that was on round one that night um I am a member of uh of Richmond 29 year member and that happened to be round one um the Thursday night uh of when I presented so when I looked at the game and we beat we

(04:38) beat Colton so that was good so yeah sort of context on on digital standards just sort of sort of uh framing them um you know I think we could easily say you know what's the point um you know why have why have a standard uh amongst many reasons um to ensure user-friendly accessible secure and efficient services are designed and built um to provide a framework for design and deliver delivery decisions and particularly in government um to promote cohesion and connection um in government so we could say you know all

(05:21) these things are are kind of easy right um and I guess you know without a standard they're particularly not easy even with a standard you know the aspiration is easy to say but it's sort of harder to realize and even with a standard you know these are tricky problems um but I guess you know armed with a with a standard and some guidelines we have some chance of successful delivery and achieving the sort of objectives that I that I led off with um without guidelines and principles we're really flying blind and essentially making up

(05:54) as we go along and we obviously don't want to do that so how do we apply the standards um and that's like I mentioned you know what I really want to explore in this um presentation yes so what I I thought it would be interesting to take a little bit of a look at um other world efforts worldwide um you know what are other countries doing um so I had a bit of a look at this it's not a sort of an exhaustive search um but my quick analysis discovered the um UK effort the UK GDS or government digital service um the

(06:36) principles are listed here you'll see 1 to 10 um I didn't deep dive into these in the in Drupal South because we're sort of limited on time we could i don't think it really matters that much and I'll I'll explain why that is when I get to the to comparing this against the um the Australian DSS 2.0 standard but just to know um secondly there's a standard um from from Scotland um the Scottish approach to service design uniquely named but anyway there Scottish does um Scotland does have a approach to this and and the UN also has

(07:08) a um approach to this too and I think Siobhan you you worked on some UN projects if I if I reme remember correctly but anyway they you know they have yeah they have some guidelines here in terms of the UN DPE so that was kind of interesting um Canada has their own digital service standard um the US has their US digital services playbook and the DTA has the DFSS 2.

(07:35) 0 and and like I mentioned that you know I'll dive deep into the principles of the DSS and and discuss and provide some tips tips on on how to use them based on my my experience but I guess you know I started thinking about these these things and you know the principles are listed here but you know how are they similar how are they different I thought that might just be interesting to have a just sort of an understanding of um don't get too worried about all the detail in this slide but essentially what I tried to do was take each of the

(08:06) criteria that we saw um across each of the worldwide efforts and and try to look for common commonality or equivalence even um and so I sort of had these groupings on the left hand side and you know it shows each of the six standards um you know across the top and you know the the group the clustering of green is is um is what I was really looking at or or or even the non-clustering so without needing to go into all the details some of the principles were exactly the And um so we saw from the from the UN standard we've

(08:39) got you know do no harm here and that and similar in the DTA standard do no harm and then in terms of um very very similar or all standards had start with the user needs citizen participation start with the need understand user needs etc etc and similarly with um you know default to open and the like so these are ones that are almost identical principle at least in name then there was sort of very common principles clustered together so that's where these sections have sort of lots of green and you know hardly any white

(09:15) space so again like having a look at this sort of encouraged me because I just thought okay well if we have a really good understanding of the sort of Australian DSS 2.0 zero then just because they're so similar then we'll have an understanding at least a rudimentary understanding of of the other standards that are applicable around the world and hopefully that you know stands to reason because I'd be worried if the standards were sort of all over the place but given they are aligned um diving deep into the Australian standard is is is contextual

(09:46) for you know the other standards and and stuff going on around the world um I gave this slide just just for people just to understand where you know where does the digital service standard fit in with the sort of wider ecosystem of digital digital policy um and we step back uh there is this digital experience policy and underneath that digital experience policy is is these four standards one of those being the digital service standard um in terms of what these other four standards are I will dive deep into the digital service

(10:24) standard as I mentioned but a digital inclusion standard um is about delivery of inclusive and accessible experiences the digital access standard is about minimizing and consolidating um access points and the digital performance standard is about understanding and improving performance and again we've got these sort of guiding principles or tenants of each of these standard and again there there's overlap and and blurriness which I actually think is a good thing um amongst these standards so again diving deep into DSS gives us some appreciation

(10:56) of these other standards and how they may be applicable to to projects and and and building out of services so like I mentioned um wanted to sort of dive with that sort of context I wanted to dive deep into the into the basic tenants of the DSS 2.0 um before we get there a bit of background on the on the DSS and um where it's come from or where we are today so the DSS or digital service standard um has been around since December 2015 um the original standard had 13 criteria um in recent times and I know Siobhan

(11:39) you you you did some research into this and there's actually a blog article on on the SA website so that's another context for for people to know but the most upto-date version 2.0 Zero has a refined set of criteria um and there's 10 criteria and they really have a sort of increased emphasis on accessibility security collaboration um and service connection and just to mention you know we've done many many projects in Salsa and and sometimes um the RFQ RFI sort of mandates you know that the project should be delivered to

(12:15) the DSS standard and I always like you know when that's mentioned because we've got sort of a framework of delivery even when it's not mentioned you know there's just basic sensible things around a around a service standard so you know that's in our thoughts as well when when we deliver projects for for salsa Siobhan's got his hand up oh sorry good well yeah for those of you who interested in the article that I wrote I did a comparison between um 1.0 and 2.

(12:48) 0 So I could put a link uh I could send link sushi maybe drop it in the chat at some point anyone interested in reading yeah perfect and you know obviously at the end this is interactive so you you're expert on that sort of uh uh whatever difference and and feel free to you know field some questions um in in terms of diving into these 10 criteria so we will sort of tackle um each one of these criteria in turn as we go and again um I try to sort of give best best practice and tips tips for application u based on my own experience with each one

(13:23) of these and we'll get into that um how how I dived into this um just so you'll see this per each criteria um I did start off with a with a quote per criteria and I hope they're not too cheesy i didn't make it too big deal of them and and we'll see that but I did use a quote and and really was my attempt to sort of contextualize the principle of crit or criteria um then what I have per criteria is this what section and this is largely lifted um directly from the standard um it describes sort of what is expected but

(14:00) and you can see this yourself if you open up the the standard and have a look at it and read it um and I've got some links at the end um to the standard um what I found though is it's a little bit lacking in the how um so yeah do do A B C and D but but how and and I guess that's where I put these sort of how pro tips in um so what what I tried to do there is based on my own and and salsa experience in delivering um digital service um explain describe like how to apply or maybe when to apply or other situational

(14:38) based um considerations um and really it was my intention um to have some useful takeaways um so when others are building digital services they've got some sort of practical tips um to consider not necessarily do but at least consider and and and it's based on what what I've seen work well um with each one of these criteria what I also tried to do at the end was provide a why statement for each criteria and this is sort of to further contextualize the the the how and the why of principle so why it would be really important to consider the to the

(15:14) principle again sort of further contextualize so we'll get into these um criteria um first one is to have a clear intent so in terms of the what um if you open up the standard and you know have a bit of a look at it you'll see things like you know develop a business case for change um survey the policy landscape etc similar things that you see in under this what column here and I'm left with at least I was left with so how h how do you do that it's great to say what but how do you do it so I guess this is where the sort of um uh practical tips

(15:53) come in um things that I've seen work well um and feel free to stop me here now or later we could drill in I can explain my you know where I've seen these and provide examples if you want but just really really important to agree um success criteria entrench the success criteria in the project don't just have them as discovery deliverables but refer to these as principles and criteria ongoing ensure outcomes of the project are solving problems and it's really important and maybe people have seen this but it's really important not to jump too quickly

(16:36) to technical solutions um you know prototypes yes but if we too quickly jump to solutions we can often miss context and we can narrow down the opportunity and in worst case may even result in a service that that just completely misses the mark also the the intent should be an ongoing point of reference use in the project and I guess we can say well okay great A B and C this is how but why being clear on the intent helps us orientate the service and provides a reference point for the decisions criteria number two know your

(17:18) user so what does this criteria involve again in the standard you'll see things like understand your users and test and validate designs and these are all probably common sense principles but I'm left with or how do you do that or how what's some practical ways to make this happen oops so things that I've at least seen well work well in the projects I've been involved with the programs I've been involved with is you know identify user personas um primary personas secondary personas and you can have other personas

(17:53) as well um document them use them in conceptual discussions use scaled user centered design and user research um I've seen sort of programs or projects that have have used very very elaborate and complex even expensive for one of a better word um user research exercises um and I've seen some user research done in in projects and and I've seen no user research done in projects so I guess each can have their place um scale to what's needed um and largely it's a function of complexity um of function um rarely would I advocate no user

(18:36) research in fact I would never advocate that um at a minimum the project team needed to do user research and if you if the project can um afford or it's justified to have independent use of research or research with actual users I certainly would be looking at that um ongoing validate assumptions with conceptual designs um and ideally do user test these with with a cohort of representative users use clickable prototypes um and early beta releases these types of things are are really effective at sort of validating

(19:09) assumptions um and to ensure you actually build for for actual users and again we can say why do we do this the importance of knowing your user oh actually yes what happened in the in the um pres in Drupal South um we had a keynote speaker from Nicola N she presented on human humanizing technology um I'd really encourage anyone to have a look at this if you haven't seen it it's actually um the two uh keynotes are already available as videos on the site now along with uh presentations like Nigel and others and mine will be later

(19:51) nicola presented this humanizing technology and she sort of oh explained you know the risk of not sort of having the user front and center is is systems that are just so convoluted and hard to use and I thought her her uh mapping this to humanizing technology was a really really interesting listen and you know as I say I'd really encourage people to have a look at that um so back to the why of know your user look the service needs to be designed with the user in mind only then will it be high value to not build with

(20:27) user input risks internal assumptions being wrong and a compromised service criteria number three uh leave no one behind so from the standard you'll see um understand the diversity of users understand relevant legislations and standards um again sort of common sense type things um in terms of how uh things that I've seen be particularly effective um use discovery and alpha phases to try to further discover personas continually ask who have we missed so I was speaking about the primary and secondary um personas in the

(21:08) last in the last criteria but you know often there's tertiary criteria and and and personas I should say and others and if we don't consider in pract in a practical sense everyone we may have missed some one in the service and it won't be uh inclusive consider cultural language and social economic factors in the service design use accessibility tools during design and build commission independent accessibility audits ideally um ensure accessibility content accessible content is being used so again why we need to consider

(21:50) all users to ensure the service is inclusive and accessible um this was also borne out in a really great presentation that Adrian from DSS um did in and this is also a day one presentation and it's up on the Drupal South site right now as a video um uh I'm a little bit biased in this because we did the project with Adrian and the DSS uh team along with um uh another agency Jude who did some of the governance work but Adrian presented on um how to make documents like uber accessible and it was really really interesting um sort of the uh the logic

(22:28) and the and the rationale that was used by DSS it actually followed some of this uh uh digital experience policy um and some of the standards we're talking about today but he gave some really really practical examples of making like Uber accessible documents and um he also had this really interesting um generated OSLAN um avatar for one of a better word so I think he just essentially showed a demo of feeding some sort of script straight into a an avatar and it and it presented the sort of sign language sort

(23:02) of on the fly so really really interesting and I'd encourage anyone to have a look at that um criteria number four is connect services um so again in terms of what you'll see in the standard um this one is actually pretty light um hope no one from the DTA is listening but anyway I found it pretty light it basically said oh just designed to be interoperable and and join up services i thought okay well probably really need some pro tips here um so at least in my experience um discovery is the prime time for thinking

(23:38) about connection opportunities and if and how to leverage existing IP tools approaches it's a classic sort of start broad um narrow later um but always have an eye for how could we connect how would our service connect how could we connect to other services to achieve what we're trying to trying to do oh I was just going to mention I think another perspective from working in APS is also just you know the interoperability of other systems and solutions that other agencies produce so larger agencies DSS and others produce

(24:15) systems um you can connect with them so the open data is probably a good one but other areas there but there are systems that um other agencies can leverage and the idea there is that with especially with the departments where things have been built already don't reinvent the wheel necessarily but also consider where other systems can connect rather than having to build your own system um or leverage what connections are available uh externally so and that's where it's talking about join up services as well yeah very good point uh

(24:45) in fact uh some of these points I've got down here so glad we're sort of thinking alike here and obviously yours is based on real world world experience um so so excellent so further things from my side um proving connection opportunity you can prove connection opportunities into sort of beta build um use proof proof of integration acceptance criteria tackle the most risky and complex stuff first can be can be one strategy I've seen work well um it's not universal but I've seen it work well to your point Akil um consider if you can supply open

(25:21) data as part of your service or use open data in your service like essentially what you were going what you're talking about um also to be practical and in particular to operationalize some of these things owning the service and its SLA is critical in in connected services a service product owner who's responsible for the service quality is is really really key so you know we can not think about that during the build and and maybe it's appropriate but when it gets put into operation you know as someone accountable for the service

(25:56) quality is is really really important um again why um I think we sort of touched on this but as much as possible we need to aim to make government function as one connecting services can make this happen and and kills probably exactly to what you were talking about um criteria number five in the standard is uh build trust in the design um and in the standard we'll see like adopt transparent data handling maintain a reliable service these types of things um and again how would we practically do this one thing that I've seen and just

(26:39) thought through is you know a users digital rights uh not are not only a production thing um when we talk about making alpha concepts or beta releases and these types of things you know often we show real data and representative data and these types of things and and we just have to consider users digital rights in those processes um maybe they're only released to cap uh selected audience captive audience but at the same time you know users have digital rights so need to be uh aware of what's being uh put into those

(27:13) demonstrators make a privacy and data use policy clearly available um in particular in a production sense but if it makes sense prior to that then then yes um consider optin and opt out user journeys typically in complex projects we have a solution design um and this needs to be ideally um security first um and the service we build should be secure by design uh SAS had built lots of systems in government I guess where you know essential aid or ISMAP are in scope um and they have their own more stringent sort of security considerations again we

(27:56) have to be security first and we need to execute the security formalizations and and make sure we're secure ongoing so why a useful inclusive and transparent service will build users trust and confidence and you know the opposite I probably don't really want to think about but certainly it won't it'll be it'll be antitrust and and representational damaging if if if some of these principles are not not applied criteria number six is don't reinvent the wheel so I was putting it to the audience in Drupal South like we've all

(28:33) heard don't reinvent the wheel right and no one sort of said uh you know like um I've not heard that of course they didn't we all know that um I was tempted to talk about an interesting um tangential point where a friend of mine is actually reinventing the wheel and it sounds really really strange but if you look at his um thing called um he's got this disability robot and he's actually needs to build special wheels on the robot cuz it's for stair climbing for um for for disabled people so uh I'll send you the link after this but

(29:08) it's really really interesting what he's done um but anyway back to on point so don't reinvent the wheel why if you look at the standard um you'll see build once use many design for reuse reuse data etc so again you know how do we do this my recommendations would be to have a consolidation consolidation mindset from the start and I this is you know one of these tips it's probably more a philosophy than a than a tip um but I think if we have that as a mindset it does help um as a point of reference or a principle um in the project um the

(29:48) design and the project to build the roll out um reuse opportunityities can be explored in discovery and alpha phases um continually brainstorm for reuse i think often we sort of fixate on what we need to do in a service or the project and you know reuse is thought about a little bit at the start and sort of neglect it um and it you know that can that can be related to budget or time frame which I guess is my next point um which is share and if time and budget allows build for the greater good um this is a topic we talk often about in Salsa in

(30:26) particular around share and give back and civic theme and other things that we've built and I know Fiona on here is in in the throws of this um particularly with civic theme but um I guess you know it we've probably all seen this but it can be really really hard in a project um where you know the project manager from the from the agency government agency side has direct accountability for the project budget um and and the time frame and so suggesting that we need need to build for the greater good can be a complicated conversation but

(31:00) really uh it is incumbent on government to to share so if we can have that conversation and have some sort of pathway to to build for the greater good not just for the project um it really can benefit the taxpayer um uh in particular for re reuse consolidation sharing efficiency all those types of things and obviously that's in a context wider than a particular project or services being built um in terms of don't reinvent the wheel the principle um we touched on the use of open standards and I mentioned sharing but to make it real contributing

(31:39) contribute where possible so this could be to open source projects and the light in particular Drupal or modules that you contri contribute so again we ask why um really it comes down to to deliver value for government and familiarity to users by sort of reuse and contribution and sharing and all those great things number seven uh do no harm so from the standard you'll see um protects users digital rights and it's it's got a higher overlap in my opinion with uh you know criteria number five or four I can't remember which one but the one

(32:17) around digital user rights and um understand privacy um when we do these things we do no harm but how do we practically ensure that we do no harm um I mentioned in the previous one where the user digital rights are not only a live thing but they also need consider eration um when we're in our alpha phases and our um alpha designs and our beta builds and these types of things so you know do no harm also applies not only to life but in those phases as well give special consideration to users facing greater personal

(32:54) risk undertake a privacy impact assessment obtain consent where required this is really important um and have a clear data use policy um communicate show it make it accessible to everyone why is this to protect all users from adverse consequences number criteria number eight is innovate with purpose from the standard we'll see um consider emerging tech um and if you're considering emerging tech consider interoperability and backward compatibility um be aware of new tech these types of things um so how do we do this and how do we be practical with it

(33:45) because it's very very tempting to use new tech or latest shiny thing um but anyway in terms of trying to control that um map innovation and new technology to a product service success criteria it it'll just provide more focus on what really matters prove approaches and the application of new technology um and this can be done in discovery um it can be done in alpha and can be done in in beta builds um and the like consider innovation spikes with with innovation spikes maybe many people have used this but at least

(34:26) from what I've seen you can control the amount of innovation investment um and you can have a sort of a I don't know a risk based approach to explore to exploring novel approaches and the application of new technology um and I guess innovation spikes can provide guard rails for the innovation investment and I guess the idea is to help balance create creativity um and exploration with the sort of core of getting the service built or the project um executed maintain a solution blueprint documenting innovation ideas in this and what I've seen well is

(35:06) not only can you document what's been tried and used and and probably applied but it's also sometimes valuable to document what's been tried and discarded or maybe maybe document just that that's only been conceptually identified just to have a val have a record of innovation is is valuable for for a project and in particular beyond and can help justify why certain decisions are made in particular with the application of a new new innovation new technologies and these types of things um and again why do this um a clear intent helps

(35:42) justify new approaches if we innovate with a purpose we balance creative thought opportunities and the and the core build and the delivery of the service criteria number nine is monitor your service and from the service uh from the standard I should say you'll you'll see things like setting up a baseline of metrics and measuring these metrics and you know this is fundamentally a good practice but how how do you do it um what I've seen well is use discovery to start thinking about how how you might monitor even those metrics um that you

(36:23) might want to capture and in particular collect metrics that matter have a reason for reporting on a on a particular metric uh report on the metrics don't just collect them reporting drives better service quality and improved services what we measure we can uh understand and we can improve so I guess it's the fundamental principle of having having metrics and having monitoring they need to be reported um in a digestible way so they can be used so you know that's a challenge of projects so why we want quality of service to be

(37:05) owned we need monitoring and metrics to drive ownership i mean I was talking before about having a service owner particularly in in a live situation so having measurement uh assigns capability responsibility improvement even with the with the service owner so only when we measure what matters can we sort of improve our improve our service via ownership and and continuous improvement criteria 10 is keep it relevant um again in the in the standard we'll see improve the service across its life relate assessments there's things

(37:42) in there um again how how to practically do this my tips would be test relevance early use beta to test the effectiveness of the service again put service relevance in the remmit of the service owner I've sort of touched on that a few times um have a service roadmap um we don't need to sort of implement everything on the road map but if we roll out MVP services and have a sort of a some stepping stone or some guiding principles to sort of increase the um the service its feature set or its quality then that's always a good thing

(38:21) own the own the SLA again the service owner comes into play here particularly in live situations and all this results in a in a in a managed or a in better service quality so again why services relevant services remade fit remain fit for purpose even as the purpose changes and this is important because you know service firstly envisaged at a point in time can be different can have different relevance from a service in a year's time so if we're sort of always considering its relevance or its purpose then we've got

(38:58) some way to make the service sort of flexible um and adaptable to changing requirements so those were the 10 um principles of the DSS 2.0 hopefully you sort of understand a little bit more about it now or it's uh and some of the tips are you know are takeaways so when I was sort of at the conference I was just sort of suggesting that you know if nothing else um I would encourage people to um consider each of the 10 criteria on your next digital projects or build of a service determine if any of the pro tips uh are applicable um totally happy to

(39:39) share further into my experience compare notes etc but you know I've got some um pro tips there so have a look at those unpack those i think they're you know they're sort of well founded or they're certainly founded on on on my experience so um hopefully they're sort of useful um and I guess having maybe take a look at the why statements um and ask ask the applicability question again of each of those why statements and cuz I've asked this a few times tonight why do that i guess I started off suggesting that

(40:15) building digital services which are userfriendly accessible secure and efficient is difficult and it is but if we have a core set of principles to apply we may have a tiny chance of realizing cohesion and connection in government or at least playing our bit part in making it happen these are the links to the digital experience policy uh the four standards that I mentioned and the first one is the digital service standards so if you uh click in here you'll see sort of some of those things not my pro tips of course but you'll see you know part of

(40:52) the other context that I shared there is such a thing as a digital services checklist and when I first saw this I know K and I looked at it and others in Salsa looked at this oh beauty we've got a checklist here what what I saw in this checklist is really the um uh the what it's a checklist of the what statements it's not really the how statements so I'm sort of offering my own pro tips and how statements as a have a look at the checklist by all means but I think you'll sort of see you know do A do B do C without sort of

(41:20) necessarily how do you do those there are there are other references on the uh on the digital.gov website so I don't want to sort of talk it down too much but all I'll say is you know this the checklist there have a look at that have a look at the other references and I guess my pro tips can be contribution to you know how to make this all happen um I had the Q&A but I'm happy I'm happy for Q&A now if anyone's got any questions and I know Siobhan's got background on this as we mentioned K's got some practical experience we could

(41:52) discuss generally with you but thanks for listening and I I I guess I I said this at the conference um you know I'm I'm absolutely genuine in my offer to talk about this and share my experience so if anyone wants to reach out um beyond this talk anyone's listening to this talk later and wants to wants to reach me talk about this sort of stuff um feel free the Paul comment that I would make is like I know that This is being created for government and we think about it for government but it's gold right like it's

(42:29) really should be beyond government yeah absolutely the you know in your experience Julie you know self-evident that the the principles that we're talking here are not necessarily rocket science they're wellfounded guidelines of how to execute successfully in a digital program service etc etc etc of course that's not that's not just the unique domain of government that's just good practice of a digital roll out so absolutely it provides a good framework though as well right which is what I what I did when I moved to the

(43:07) Australian Psychological Society and and realized that there was not maybe I shouldn't have said the name of the place there was not great depth of knowledge or understanding about web and digital right so to to get my stakeholders up to speed you know this is I did a similar recording yeah I mean yeah and and and I explained like like not everything is going to be fit for purpose we're not going to be able to do everything as a small organization but here is all the thinking here's the framework we can cherrypick

(43:41) you know what we feel we can use to help the the new the new platform yeah I was just going to make the comment on that Julia like you know you had your experience i'm absolutely certain that's not a unique experience that it was sort of quite immature and therefore the application of these principles is you know could really really be really really helpful um and you also made a good point and I think someone asked me a question uh in the conference around um uh how are they measured how are they enforced and I said uh it we've tried to

(44:15) get to the bottom of that it's been a little bit uh unclear how that is but I think we should not focus on that but more focus on these these are really really wellounded principles apply them to any project or every project but not everything not every principle needs to be applied in its theoretical sense to every project we need to sort of scale them to the complexity the cost the budget of the project but they're all wellounded so at least should be considered one-on-one and applied as appropriate yeah I think the other thing

(44:47) is that they bring what I call a skills and expertise vibe into the ecosystem and when I look at work that's done in other countries you know like through my experience of at Splash Awards Australia New Zealand you know work is just so much more advanced and I think that that is because of this sort of type of framework right and and the expectations of the level that we're performing at you know the kind of work that we're delivering cool i I one of the things I started off with is say "Hey this might not be uh

(45:30) the most valuable stuff to the the developers in the room." So does anyone developer want to sort of give their own take on um you know I'm in the code all day but this is still valuable to me or not I'm just interested in that right i could um I could put in a few points here um so for developers um so for example like if you are already on gosp you have a site hosted there it already takes care of uh some of the DSS points for example security um and uh and monitoring right so some things will be covered there um another

(46:09) thing is like if you choose a a good theme a Drupal theme it will take care of a a good subset of the um the VSSs points so So for example in in the article that I wrote um which which Sushi would paste in the YouTube description eventually um I talk about civic theme and and what it covers as it relates to DSS so civic beam does cover a good subset of the technical points at least and I'm not going to list all of them now it's quite a lot but if you read the article you'll get you'll see what those points are so yeah so

(46:46) choosing a good hosting and choosing a good theme would would cover a good percentage of the um CSS points and I think I think on that Shan it's really relevant because when we start speaking about whole of government solutions be it GUMS SAS or be it you know civic theme as standard based building blocks you would hope that those things are aggregating the best of the best practices right and the best practices are almost inherently aligned with you know solid principles and so these things come together in a way that you

(47:19) know every project or every service build doesn't doesn't have to build from first principles all these principles in that they they've got some building blocks that have already inherently do some of these things which is a good thing yeah correct so like if you if you put a site on go CMSS a new site on go CMS today and install the theme for example you already cover like maybe 60 70% of it out of the box right it's a good starting point yeah which you know eight years ago whatever when CMS was in visit um Sharon and everyone at

(47:55) department of finance it's part of what they're trying to do right like consolidation application of best practice etc etc etc make things more efficient streamlined cheaper yeah yeah if if there other developers that want to jump in feel free to do that otherwise as I say I could speak for all day about it but there's lots of interesting other interesting things to speak about but um Oh my my friend's my friend's invention the name was escaping me you have a look look at this up or all or be lived he'll be he'll be happy

(48:35) that I promoted it all be lived it's a stair climbing robot for this disabled people and he had to he had to invite this he had to invent this special wheel because the robot itself had to had to not scuff floors up and it has to move in all sorts of different directions so he had a wheel that could move in all sorts of different directions so he had a 3D printer that made his own wheel or be lift have a look at it he'll be happy that I promoted it uh Paul Damian has his hand up oh sorry i didn't see yeah thanks i I just had a a question i

(49:07) I'm not very experienced i um in project delivery space but um I mostly work in kind of what we call SLAs or maintenance on websites i just had a question um um say you have a successful delivery of a project but kind of over time um the project deviates in the standards do you have any um experience in getting projects back on track or to get them to align more with standards i don't have any specific examples but yeah it's an excellent segue Damian because I was about to mention that as well one of the things that you got to

(49:54) be aware of is that people often think of these standards from the big bang the beginning of the project but many of these things should be an ongoing whether it's quarterly or regular cadence to review to your point whether it's accessibility whether it's um any one of these there are more that are more relevant for the kind of maintenance side of the DSS than others but most of these um you can review you can actually review all of them at say quarterly or six monthly and at minimum every year um you know look at the

(50:24) intent because as you point out there are deviations within the site content structure IA and things do fracture change and um and evolve over I would also add that um performance and monitoring is also one of the things so if your site starts to stray and it goes outside of the threshold it would be a sign that you been training to Yeah number Yeah number nine is the key one I think it is really it's it's a very great question and you know I guess in the presentation I was sort of putting the impulse on the service owner to to

(51:03) own the SLA um you know as as particularly when the service is in production right and it's probably just an extension of that responsibility to sort of own the service quality be it accessibility whatever it might be but these principles absolutely you know are ongoing into production situation and they need they need a level of governance otherwise things can unravel quickly more questions any other question anything else that anybody wants to talk about i want to know about the or lift or can you buy it uh he's got he's got an abs

(51:44) well six months ago he had a working prototype um I don't think it's commercialized yet but he's This talks a lot about the Orbee lift that since Victor will be very happy um he's my old flat mate by the way when I lived in Sydney we lived together for eight years but anyway um he's put a lot of lot of effort into this and um yeah can't buy but he's Yeah that's what I was going to say he's got a lot of relationships with um universities and people in the disability sector so a lot of interest and uh much of the stuff he's done is

(52:21) patented so he's got a pathway to to to commercialization is he in Melbourne or Sydney sydney okay yeah but we'll talk about it offline yeah yeah probably not for the video content here but I'm glad I got the plug in um I don't know if this is for the video either Suchi because we've sort of had an agenda tonight but I'm interested in anyone that did go to Drupal South and what they might have liked and disliked i mean like I said I had a look at Nigel's presentation um offline like last night and I really like that Nigel

(52:52) so I've got a lot of questions for you on that but we don't need to record it I guess stop the recording for now