Spearheaded by DEFRA’s Ned Gartside, with Transform in a supporting role, the Greener Services Principles are guidance to help digital teams be more sustainable and planet-centred in their approach. No set of guidelines exists within government covering all the disciplines involved in the delivery of services, and the aim of the Greener Service Principles is to fill that void. The initiative has made significant progress in the past year, so we caught up with both Ned, and Transform’s Director of Service Design, Dave Jackson, who has been working with Ned on the Greener Service Principles for the past 2 years, ahead of the workshop they’ll be delivering on the 19th of September at the Service Design in Government conference in Edinburgh.
What is the ‘When and how might we consider environmental impacts in a service project lifecycle?’ SDinGov workshop about?
Ned Gartside: Essentially, the workshop will invite participants to consider the question of what actions those of us working on digital service projects can take to reduce the environmental impacts of what we design and deliver. And we hope the ‘Greener Service Principles’ will act as a suitable guide to answering that tricky question!
In the session we’ll invite attendees to consider a recent or current project and, in groups, imagine how easy or difficult it would be to apply one or more of these principles. Where might the opportunities be? What about challenges, and what might block us from applying the principles? Which disciplines need to be involved in conversations and decision making,and where might there be synergies with other project goals and objectives?
Dave Jackson: Planet Centred Design in government is still a grassroots movement, and the principles are a continual work in progress, while we find the best way to help digital colleagues across government do things in a better way. We know a lot of people within the UX community are passionate about sustainability, but they don’t always know that they can make a difference. This workshop should help them.
We’re expecting a mix of people who attended last year and fresh faces, so we’ll briefly cover an introduction to the principles before diving into the interactive part of the workshop.
What was the thinking behind this workshop and what do you hope to get out of it?
Ned: For us, the workshop is a big opportunity to gather together a group of bright and engaged people and create the space, for a couple of hours, for them to focus on the challenge of how we can deliver more sustainable services. From experience, these sorts of sessions tend to generate really interesting and thought-provoking discussions and we are able to gather a lot of ideas for how we can iterate and evolve the principles. As they are still a prototype at this stage, this sort of feedback is incredibly valuable!
We hope that the attendees will simultaneously get value from the workshop; this is why we have a pledge at the end of the session, where participants have the choice to note down an action focused on sustainability that they feel they could take when they return to their jobs. Whether that’s having a conversation or doing something specific on a service that they're currently involved with - even if it’s one small thing that they take away and apply, that’s a win for us.
Dave: It’s going to be a very collaborative workshop where people will be working with each other, talking through their projects and challenges, looking at the greener service principles, and where they could potentially apply them.
We’re keen for our participants to keep us advised on their greener services journey so we can keep learning and evolving the guidance.
Why is SDinGov a great forum for this workshop?
Ned: SDinGov is such a great forum because it attracts full big-picture thinkers: yes, there are many with the job title of ‘service designer’ who attend, but also those working in policy design, user research, product management and leadership roles. What seems to unite this crowd is the question of how we think holistically about delivering better outcomes for citizens. These strategic thinkers are well placed to ask questions about how we deliver services with lower environmental footprints.
Dave: The audience. We will have a lot of passionate designers and researchers in the room that work in digital spaces across the public sector. These are the people with the power to make change, and that’s key.
We’re aware of the headwinds digital teams face and that when under pressure they'll focus on the mandatory (such as accessibility compliance, DPIAs, GDS assessments), with other requirements pushed to the backlog or descoped.
Digital teams should place Planet Centred thinking at the start the design process, as they do with accessibility and mobile, it should not be an add on picked up later in a project. For the Greener Service Principles to be part of this early thought process, we need to provide clear guidance on what to do.
Although the existing government Service Standard lends itself to a crossover between good UX and planet-centred design, it needs to be more explicit and elaborate on what digital teams should be doing.
What’s the role of SDinGov in influencing sustainable design in projects?
Ned: Service Design in Government is a unique conference given its close focus on services in the public sector, and for that reason it those passionate on the topic from across the globe. This means it’s a great forum for sharing and discussing the latest thinking, challenges and approaches being adopted in the UK and beyond.
Considering sustainability in the design and delivery of services has not really been a major concern until recently, but I did a talk at SDinGov 2023 on the topic which generated quite a lot of interest. SDinGov feels like really fertile ground for having big-thinking conversation around ethics and design, whether that be inclusivity and social impacts or environmental aspects.
The more people you have in the room that are interested in finding a solution to the different questions that sustainability poses, as well as the broader impacts in terms of behaviours and behaviour change, the better, and SDinGov plays a role in bringing those people together.
Why is now a good time to start considering environmental impact in government service design?
Ned: They say: "The best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago. The next best time is now.” The same applies to sustainability in general. The reality is,time is running short and we need to do everything within our powers to drive awareness and action going forwards.
In the wake of the Paris goals that were set at the United Nations Climate Conference in 2015, many organisations set targets to reduce their carbon footprints to ‘net-zero’ by 2050. In 2024, we find ourselves at a point where some big players like airlines and large tech firms are now discarding these targets. In the case of the latter Artificial Intelligence is proving too big a business opportunity to turn down, and a rush to construct a new generation of data centres is driving emissions steeply upwards.
We need to be clear what the environmental costs are associated with technology and the services that rely on it, and then what we can do to reduce these and maximise any environmental benefits being brought. In many cases, I think we still struggle to call an apple an apple - we label things that are marginally-less-bad than they were previously as ‘sustainable’.That in itself can be a problem as there is a danger we become complacent and fail to understand the kinds of changes that are ultimately required to deliver a liveable planet for future generations.
Dave: We've got a planet crisis, so the sooner the better. Unfortunately, making planet centred design a mandated requirement in government is taking time. I have no doubt it will come, but in the interim it's about empowering people to take initiative. It sounds somewhat obvious, but if every digital team did one thing to make their services more sustainable, we’d take a huge step forward. We hope this workshop will help the 40 participants do just that. If they have one success, then hopefully that will lead to another, they will share their experiences with colleagues, take planet centred wins to new projects, helping greener service thinking become part of the design process.
If you reflect on the past year, since SDinGov 2023, what are the changes or new initiative you’re proud to bring to SDinGov 2024?
Ned: On a personal level, looking back on the talk I gave at the conference in 2023, I feel that some of the ways I framed things were in a way quite naive. As a service designer, still relatively new to the topic of digital sustainability, I was slightly scrabbling around in the dark, and the talk reflected that fact. I am proud that I did give the talk, as it led to conversations and connections that have really helped move things along in the intervening 12 months.
We have had a number of workshops and other conferences where the work has been presented, and cross-government collaboration on this topic has really flourished.In government, there are now a number of working groups that are addressing the various challenges of more sustainable services, whether that’s measurement, training, contracts and procurement or standards and guidance. Though it’s early days with some of this work it is also really exciting and it will be interesting to showcase the journey that the Greener Service Principles have been on at the workshop at SDinGov.
Dave: 2023 was about building awareness with Ned introducing the principles (at SDinGov and beyond). This year, we’re more focussed on action and getting people to bake the principles into their working process.
Since 2023, the Greener Services Principles have also updated to version 0.4, and we’ll be launching a web-based version at the event that people can use to inform greener thinking in their work.
What would you like to see in SDinGov 2025?
Ned: My main focus at DEFRA in the next year will be working with a couple of big projects to baseline their current environmental impacts and then seeing what we can do to reduce these.It would be great to be able to share some case studies like these, some success stories of real impact at SDinGov 2025. Equally, it would be amazing to hear other departments, local authorities or public sector organisations both in the UK and beyond share their stories about bringing the environmental lens to the design and delivery of services too!
Dave: It would be brilliant to have conversations with people who attended in 2024 and made a pledge to reflect on their wins and challenges. Naturally, we want to hear good news, but we know well the path to greener services isn’t easy, so we want to understand why something didn’t work, to enable us to build better guidance going forward.