A couple of months back, my colleague Mary McMahon and I wrote about our work to bring in this new Service Standard point and supporting process into the department.
In that post we explored the idea that, as digital services have increasingly become a key part of how Government delivers outcomes for citizens, businesses and the environment, so has our responsibility to reduce the negative environmental and social impacts connected to the technology we build and run.
Our new standard pointEntitled ‘Deliver a sustainable service’, our new standard point asks service teams to evidence how their design and technology choices are helping to contribute towards various environmental and social objectives laid out in the Defra Outcomes Framework.
These could include reducing waste and maximising use of resources, lowering greenhouse gas emissions, building digital services that are resilient to climate change, or delivering on social value.
Modern digital services, when designed to be efficient and appropriately resourced, often bring win-wins between sustainability and a range of other priorities, such as cost, performance, usability, inclusivity and the time they take to develop.
Engagement with service projects and ‘delivery groups’ so farSince the introduction of the 15th point, we have been engaging Defra colleagues in a number of ways:
We have now had a number of Defra services pass through the formal Service Assessment process, which means that they have been given a red, amber or green rating for how far they have taken meaningful action on environmental and social sustainability, considering their context and constraints they face. These services have ranged from those helping businesses to check the availability of water resources in a particular area, through to enabling vets and farmers to co-ordinate and track vaccinations for cattle against tuberculosis, to transforming the way that customer advice and support is provided by the Animal and Plant Health Agency. We’ve been advising services that are at the start of their journeys how they can embed consideration of sustainability alongside the array of other project priorities. This happens at the ‘Discovery Workshops’ that the Defra Service Assessment team regularly conduct with projects, before they move into the prototyping phase during Alpha. We’ve been working with other projects in Defra that are already beyond Service Assessments in their lifecycle but have been ‘early adopters’ of sustainability best practice, to document their great work. Particular mentions go to the ‘Fish Exports’ Service, which enables the export of fish out the UK, and DASH (The Data Analytics and Science Hub), which is a hub to enable collaboration between scientists and data analysts across the department. We’ve also been engaging with Delivery Groups in Defra on how sustainability can be embedded at their level. Introduced last year, Delivery Groups focus on a key area of Defra’s work (such as farming, or circular economy) and co-ordinate the services that sit beneath each, aiming to strengthen collaboration between digital, operational and policy staff. Factoring in sustainability means considering it in selection of suppliers, strategies for data capture and sharing, and choices of common technologies and platforms that will be shared by multiple services. What have we learned?Despite being a new requirement for services, many teams have enthusiastically embraced the new sustainability point:
Our new end-to-end sustainability process, designed to fit in with the existing Service Assessment process, and take teams on a journey, is largely workable and practical for teams. There are plenty of improvements we can make, and we are iterating those based on feedback! Including the 15th point for sustainability gives many teams the opportunity to showcase great work they have already been doing to save energy, carbon and other resources, that otherwise can go unacknowledged. It also allows highlighting of work which has prioritised other factors, such as cost, efficiency, and performance benefits, but has also reduced resource consumption. We have seen that the 15th point has prompted some fresh thinking on sustainability - ranging from how multimedia (photos, videos) are used, where data is stored and transferred, through to how older physical devices can be supported (and their replacement avoided). The 15th point provides a useful prompt for discussions on timelines for delivering services with stakeholders, and balancing delivering functional software in the short term versus where certain approaches might create technical debt or require ‘rework’ in the medium and longer term. The Delivery Groups are also clearly enabling real sustainability benefits, chiefly from the sharing of common tools and platforms, components approaches, data sets, between a number of services. Together these shared elements and approaches can mean significant resource and carbon savings relative to each service developing their own approaches from scratch. This brings co-benefits in terms of time to deliver, consistency of experience for users.Yet there remain a few significant challenges
Quantifying environmental impacts, whether carbon, or more so water use, remains a very significant challenge, for a variety of reasons. We are working towards more appropriate tooling, methods, and getting a number of case studies in place. The pace of change with Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies has significant implications for the design and delivery of government services generally, as well as for sustainability impacts. Evolving guidance on how teams can factor in the environmental impacts of agentic, generative and predictive AI will be crucial as we move forward! Links to further guidanceFor those who may be unsure how to get started in including the sustainability standard in the design and development of their particular digital service, we’ve created some resources, guidance and supporting materials.
In particular, the Defra Digital Service Manual, which contains guidance on approaching the sustainable design and development of services, including the 15th Standard point itself and on the process that service should follow.
More informationNed Gartside is a Sustainable Design Lead in Defra Digital Data Technology and Security.
Ned’s ‘Delivering more sustainable services: introducing a 15th Service Standard point in Defra’ session takes place on Tuesday 30th June, 10am. Register for the session here.
The Government Digital and Data community's annual Services Week runs from 29 June to 3 July. Services Week is for all civil servants and public sector employees from any sectors and backgrounds.
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seen at 14:39, 29 June in Defra digital, data and technology.