The Words We Use In Digital Governments

Over the last few months I’ve been talking to people across the public service in various roles, looking at how we can more effectively embed and operationalize design at scale.

I’ve heard a recurring and fundamental issue across the board. No one knows what the hell we’re really talking about. Agile, UX, scrum, DevOps, service design, lean. These are foreign words to the traditional practices of public administration, and no one really knows what they mean.

“Digital government” needs to signal change, but we can’t forget about the…