“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.”
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