Communicating via the walls

Good culture evolves from the bottom up, Stephen Foreshew-Cain told us the other day. So does bad culture. And culture can be influenced from the top, for good or ill.

Mr Foreshew-Cain is the executive director of the Government Digital Service (GDS), where "we don’t always get it right, but one thing we’ve found that does work is communicating via the walls", he says. "Communicating via the walls" means pinning posters up, reminding the staff to be bold, for example.

RIP IDA – in search of a rôle

No need to say it, it goes without saying, it should be obvious to all but,

just in case it isn't obvious to all,

IDA is dead.

IDA, now known as "GOV.UK Verify (RIP)",

is the Cabinet Office Identity Assurance programme.

And it's dead.

"If Verify is the answer, what was the question?"

As noted on 26 May 2016, GOV.UK Verify (RIP) will not replace the Government Gateway. GOV.UK Verify (RIP) won't be any use to hundreds of millions of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs's annual transactions, worth hundreds of billions of pounds. HMRC are developing their own successor to the Government Gateway.

Nor will GOV.UK Verify (RIP) help with age verification. All those transactions where we have to prove our age in order to be eligible? We'll have to find some other way to do it, even if we have one or more GOV.UK Verify (RIP) accounts.

The huge prize of inserting GOV.UK Verify (RIP) into the nation's payment systems has also eluded the Government Digital Service (GDS). If payments depended on GOV.UK Verify (RIP), the UK would be reduced to a barter economy in no time.

What does that leave for GOV.UK Verify (RIP)?

Matt Hancock: 83 + 83 = 71

"We recently [6 April 2016] completed the process of connecting certified companies to GOV.UK Verify [RIP] under the new framework for certified companies". So says Pete Gale of the Government Digital Service (GDS) in a blog post on 15 June 2016, Improving the experience of verifying with certified companies.

"As a user researcher, my main focus in this process was how we ensure that these companies provide services that meet the needs of our users", he goes on, and adds "this presented some interesting challenges for us ...".

"Interesting challenges"? How did that go?

Very well, apparently: "It’s been hard work, but we’re really happy with what we’ve achieved".

Suppose we test that judgement.

Discovery: the UK is not a Scandinavian country

Those were heady days, 16 months ago, "Who sets the gauge rules the world". Ruling the world seemed a possibility for the Government Digital Service (GDS).