Government Digital Strategy: quarterly progress report April 2014

Question 1

Foreword

Accepted Answer

2014 is the year of delivering on digital, across government.

We began with 2 events in January, Sprint 14 and Sprint GO. These brought together teams from around government, people who are redesigning services or publishing through GOV.UK, to share their experiences. Departments have also been running their own Sprint events; Sprint DWP was held in February and MoJ ran Sprint Justice in March.

Those events showcased the work we’re continuing to do on the 25 exemplar service transformations. 2 exemplars, Waste Carrier Registration and View Driving Record, went into public beta at the end of March. This quarter, we assessed 19 services against the service standard and published the results online. We make things open, it makes them better.

More than half of the 320 agencies and arm’s length bodies (ALB) have transitioned their websites to GOV.UK. This is a huge achievement by teams around government. We had planned to complete the transition of agency and ALB sites to GOV.UK by the summer. However, looking at the needs of some specialist users and the information we need to transition from the more complex sites, we’ve found that the original timetable could compromise users’ experience of GOV.UK. By the end of July, we’ll have moved three quarters of the sites to GOV.UK, and then we’ll develop additional features (like new ‘finder’ tools) for the remaining sites. That will help us maintain a high-quality user experience, and should let us complete the transition process by the end of this year.

We’ve continued building trust in GOV.UK by reporting several misleading websites that charge for services that are free on GOV.UK to regulatory bodies. Negotiations with leading search engine providers has meant that they’ve removed a number of these websites’ ads from their search results.

The Identity Assurance team began testing a private beta of the service with 2,000 users. That marks a big step towards releasing a service which will let us know that users are who they say they are when they sign in to digital services.

Some of our most important and visible work has been around recruitment. We’ve helped place interim and full time staff that have digital and technical skills in several departments and the GDS recruitment hub filled 12 senior level technology and digital positions this quarter, including Chief Technology Officers for HMRC and ONS.

Finally, we published the new Government Digital Inclusion Strategy just a few weeks ago. This will help make sure that nobody is left behind in the move to a digital by default government.

We’re changing how government works. A big part of this change is having digital people working across the civil service, sharing their experiences with each other. Another part of that change is making sure we stay focussed on meeting the needs of users. That’s how we’ll continue to create digital services so good that people prefer to use them.

Question 2

What we’ve done so far across government

Accepted Answer

Between January and March, we launched:

a new version of the induction and development programme for service managers, including an open programme of specialist modules that their teams can also attend
the private beta of our identity assurance hub, which is now being used by 2,000 invited people

We moved:

We ran:

Sprint 14 and Sprint Go events, which gave teams working on service transformation and GOV.UK transition projects opportunities to share what they’ve learned
training for over 180 lead and content editors from 70 organisations on user needs, web writing, GOV.UK style and publisher tools
exemplar capability reviews to help identify and apply the right digital skills and approaches across departments

We also:

finalised the draft of our cross-government digital inclusion strategy
began publishing our Digital by Default Service Standard assessment reports
took action against misleading websites which charge a fee to handle services that are available direct from GOV.UK
signed a memorandum of understanding with the Israeli government on working together on digital government to help citizens, businesses and our respective economies

Question 3

What’s coming up next

Accepted Answer

Between April and June, we plan to:

make 4 more exemplars live (patents renewal, claim Carers Allowance, electoral registration and lasting power of attorney) and take 4 more to public beta (PAYE for employees, digital Self Assessment, digital tax account and visas)
continue to move the HMRC website and a further 80 agency and ALB websites across to GOV.UK
improve GOV.UK for specialist users by improving site search and navigation, to respond to the increase in content volume and diversity

We’ll introduce:

digital inclusion to departments and partners, working with the UK digital skills alliance Go ON UK
the first version of a digital inclusion scale in the Government Service Design Manual
map all exemplar services against the scale to help service managers understand how their users’ digital skills compare to those needed to use the digital service
an updated technology curriculum with more user friendly ways to find training

We’ll create and run a:

Sprint Beta event, to continue sharing the learning from exemplar transformation work across government
user research lab at GDS

We’ll continue to:

raise awareness among users that GOV.UK is the best place to find government services
monitor adverts on search engines for misleading claims about government services and work with search engine providers to contest these

Question 4

GOV.UK

Accepted Answer

Moving agencies and ALBs to GOV.UK

To support the transition of agencies and ALB’ websites to GOV.UK, GDS is providing user needs and content training to these organisations. During January, February and March, we trained over 180 content leads and editors and we’ve now trained around 230 editors in total, covering 70 agencies. GDS is starting to build a community to share experience and learning; in January we held Sprint Go, the first event to bring editors together, and we’re building a network to support the wider group.

At the end of February, UK Visas and Immigration’s (UKVI) web service moved to GOV.UK. This is the biggest agency to transition. It moved over at midday, and by the end of the day it was already in the top ten pages on GOV.UK.

By the end of April 160 sites will have moved across to GOV.UK - a significant achievement by all concerned. We had hoped to complete the move of all 330 agency and ALB websites across to GOV.UK by the end of July. We are still on track to achieve this for over 75% of the sites. However for around 70 of the more complex websites we’ve decided we want to take more time to transition. This will mean that we meet specialist users’ needs fully. It will also allow us to build additional functionality (like new ‘finder’ tools and a better organisation homepage template) so we maintain a high-quality user experience. We now expect to move all these sites across to GOV.UK by the end of December 2014.

As more websites move to GOV.UK, usage figures will rise. At the end of February, GOV.UK achieved its highest ever weekly number of unique visitors (8.9 million).

In December, we added a new action to the Government Digital Strategy: action 16. It said we’d start work to make information on GOV.UK usable by everyone. We’ve now made it possible for others to use GOV.UK data on grants, loans and other support available to businesses. We’ve done this by adding an API to the tool, which helps various pieces of software talk to each other. At present this is a beta release (a fully working version of the service available to our users, but which may be changed in response to user feedback).

As more sites with specialist content migrate to GOV.UK, GDS has also been trialling navigation improvements to meet specialist user needs eg users who work in the oil and gas industries.

FCO ran a hack day which provided insights on what can be achieved with the datasets it currently releases publicly and how this data can be improved.

ONS sponsored National Hack the Government, an annual hack day run by Rewired State. Developers used a beta API service and data explorer launched at the end of 2013 to access ONS data. One of the aims was to encourage better use of open government data and improveme of public services.

Contesting misleading websites

GDS has been reviewing the growing problem of misleading websites charging a fee for handling government services.

We’ve identified a list of the largest unofficial websites offering access to government services. Where they weren’t offering extra services for the fee charged, we’ve reported them to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

We’ve also been sharing the results of our review with Google who has taken down a number of these websites’ adverts from its search result pages. Google has said it will continue to remove misleading adverts in future and close down the accounts of repeat offenders.

We’ll also work with other organisations like the ASA, National Trading Standards Board, other search engine providers and the National Trading Standards Crime Centre to continue fighting the problem.

Question 5

Service transformation

Accepted Answer

Sprint 14 Film

Departments are working with us to redesign and improve 25 of the most important and highly used services to make them digital by default. These services range from registering to vote or applying for EU farming subsidies, to applying for benefits or arranging a prison visit. Some services have mainly individual users, others have business users.

We call these ‘exemplar services’ because we want departments to learn from them about what they need to do to make transformation work effectively. Then we want to use this learning to improve digital capability across the civil service.

We regularly report on what we’ve achieved on our transformation dashboard. By the end of March, 2 services will be in discovery, 6 in alpha, 16 in beta, and elements of 1 will be live.

Update on exemplar projects

As mentioned in the last quarterly report, Home Office replaced the Criminal Record Check service exemplar with Passports in December. The service will move to alpha phase in March, when we’ll prototype service design based on user needs and test with a small group of users or stakeholders to get early feedback.

16 exemplar services are in beta, where they continue to be tested with users and improved based on feedback. These include electoral registration, waste carrier registration, lasting power of attorney, view driving record, pay as you earn (PAYE) for employees, and digital self-assessment for both individuals and businesses. Beta build has started on redundancy payments and Home Office released the private beta service for visas.

GDS tracks use of these services through the performance platform. In February, a month after it went into public beta, over 80,000 applications were made on the student finance service, handling full-time higher education loan and grant applications for 2014/15. HMRC launched a new service for business tax. It also started a private beta of a new PAYE tax platform and digital self-assessment. These services are being used by around 2,000 invited users who are also using the beta identity assurance service.

What we’re learning from exemplar projects

We want to make sure we learn from this transformation work. We’re looking at how organisational structures and culture need to adapt and staff skills improve. To do this, GDS developed an approach to assess capability within exemplar departments. We’ll use this to shape the way capability is built in the future, both in the teams and departments involved and potentially more widely across the civil service. We have completed 15 reviews of exemplar services so far.

3 departments, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Home Office, are helping to pilot new guidance on governance for agile service work. This guidance covers principles, processes, case studies and a range of resources like documents, data models and plans.

Sprint 14 gave people working on digital transformation projects a chance to meet each other and share what they’ve learned. One of the criteria of the Digital by Default Service Standard is that a service should be capable of being successfully tested from beginning to end with the minister responsible for it. Ministers attended and gave live demonstrations of a number of the redesigned services.

Departments are active in sharing learning too: the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) ran Sprint Justice in March, demonstrating its exemplar work achievements to MoJ staff, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and digital leaders. Though this event was aimed at civil servants, the media was also invited to highlight MoJ’s digital work and attract talented specialists to apply to the team. Similarly, Sprint DWP highlighted the the Department of Work and Pension’s work on service transformation and building digital skills.

Other transformation projects

Service transformation continues to take place in addition to the exemplar projects.

DVLA used expertise developed through its exemplar projects on other services. It released new versions of the tax disc, Statutory Off Road Notification (SORN) and vehicle enquiries services into public beta having passed the service standard assessment. It created these services in just 7 weeks at a cost of £240,000 - less than half the original financial estimate.

The Department for Education (DfE) developed its academies online conversion tool in line with the Service Standard and launched a beta service during the quarter.

The first phase of the Energy Savings Advice Service (ESAS), the energy grants calculator, is now live on GOV.UK.

Question 6

Achieving the Digital by Default Service Standard

Accepted Answer

The Government Service Design Manual, published in April 2013, provides departments with information and guidance to help them achieve the Digital by Default Service Standard.

All new and redesigned services handling over 100,000 transactions each year must meet all the points in the Service Standard from April 2014. The first assessment after the Service Standard goes live will be held on 3 April.

GDS also developed a process for departments to self-assess smaller services likely to handle fewer than 100,000 transactions per year, and we began training departmental assessors to do this.

GDS did user research and analytics analysis to see how the service manual is being used. Users want access to more reusable resources, case studies about how other services are being built and clearer guidance linking to the service standard criteria. We’ve now got a plan to make this happen.

Service assessments

Assessments against the Standard are already taking place for new services being linked to from GOV.UK. From August 2013 till now, assessments have looked at how each service:

fits with user needs
is able to develop and improve
complies with information security requirements

19 assessments took place between January and March. The assessment reports are now on GOV.UK. This isn’t just about openness for the sake of public accountability. Publishing the reports is a valuable way for service teams to learn from each other, and to raise awareness of the Service Standard itself.

Question 7

Helping more people use digital services

Accepted Answer

We want those who are able to use our digital services to do so. To design services that work for users, we need to understand who can use digital services, who can’t, and what else we need to provide for people who aren’t online.

To persuade people who are already online to use government digital services, we need to publicise them, and improve the quality of the services to make them clearly preferable to the alternatives. We also need to work with a range of other organisations to help people currently offline to gain the basic digital skills they need to go online safely.

Increasing digital take-up

GDS has continued our user research, concentrating on how to get first time users to use digital services, and why some users revert to non-digital channels. We’re also undertaking a full review of existing guidance on increasing digital take-up (including case studies) as we want to make sure it meets service managers’ needs.

DWP has been working with carers’ groups to increase awareness of the new Carers Allowance digital service, and has already raised take-up from 20% to 45% over the past 5 months.

Environment Agency’s waste carrier registration service, which is targeted at business users, has achieved 96% digital take-up since it was launched in public beta in January 2014.

Assisted digital

The assisted digital team at GDS helped exemplar departments establish the assisted digital requirements for their services. They’ve been gathering and assessing information that departments already held on assisted digital users, identifying and filling data gaps through further user research. They have also been getting advice from our external stakeholder group on specific service support proposals that departments are working on.

GDS is reviewing and improving the assisted digital elements of the Service Standard, including guidance for service managers and assessors.

We wanted to understand the needs of assisted digital users, so we’ve done field research with users and external providers of support services. This work is being shared with the digital inclusion team.

We’ve been using this research and data to understand where users of different services have common assisted digital needs, eg for telephone support or home visits, and the scale of the support required. We are now discussing with departments how to meet these shared needs, including through commissioning support from the private, voluntary and public sector. We’re also drafting criteria for a minimum service standard for all assisted digital services.

Digital inclusion

In January, GDS published and consulted on a digital inclusion checklist - a guide for organisations helping people go online. The tagline was ‘if we do these things, we’re doing digital inclusion’.

Feedback on the checklist helped inform the digital inclusion strategy published on 14 April 2014. The strategy explains what departments, partners and GDS will do to help people go online. GDS worked with departmental colleagues and partners across the private, voluntary and public sectors to develop this strategy. This included working with Go ON UK, who will co-ordinate activity across the private and voluntary sector to support the strategy.

Currently about 20% of the adult population lacks basic digital skills. The digital inclusion strategy aims to reduce the number of people offline by 25% every 2 years, meaning that, by 2020, fewer than 4.7 million people will lack basic digital skills and the ability to go online.

Question 8

Digital capability and leadership

Accepted Answer

The Civil Service Capabilities Plan, published in April 2013, identified building digital capability as 1 of 4 priorities across government. When we say ‘digital capability’, we mean having civil servants who truly understand the internet and technology, and how they can be used to make government policy and digital services better.

Cabinet Office support across government

GDS provided support by:

building a picture of current and projected demand across departments to help decide the best approaches to recruit people we need, for example, we ran a cross-government recruitment campaign when a number of departments wanted to recruit Chief Digital Officers
helping fill senior level technology and digital positions across government, 14 departments and arm’s length bodies lodged over 60 permanent and interim recruitment requests for assistance or advice with the Recruitment Hub between January and March (at Senior Civil Servant level, 7 interims and 5 permanent/fixed term members of staff were appointed)
working through our Digital and Technology Benches we approve people that departments can call on at short notice for interim specialist digital support - we placed a further 9 people this quarter and added another 8 people to our bench (meaning that around 40 people are now carrying out these roles with a further 25 now available if required)
working with a growing range of Civil Service professions to get digital skills in their training and development programmes, for example, helping communications to review digital communications training
providing specialist training, for example, we’ve adapted the Service Manager Induction and Development Programme by splitting it into induction modules aimed solely at service managers, and an open programme of more specialist modules which their teams can also attend
training lead and content editors in agencies and ALB’s to support the process of moving their websites to GOV.UK
contributing to broader leadership training initiatives for Senior Civil Servants, we’ve worked with Civil Service Learning to cover digital in its various leadership development programmes, and are ready to run the first 2 digital masterclasses for Senior Civil Servants (on the digital landscape and on prototyping services as part of agile approaches)
working with the Fast Stream team to assess and identify digital postings for the Generalist Fast Stream programme (around an eighth of postings last year were high in digital content)
reviewing the Technology in Business (TiB) Fast Stream, so it includes both digital and technology skills to support digital by default service delivery, we’ve surveyed and interviewed current TiB fast streamers, Technology Leaders and industry leaders (BT, Sky, Deloitte and IBM) who have similar talent management schemes

The best way for civil servants to understand and embrace the opportunities of digital in the workplace is to learn by doing.

GDS launched a simple guide that lists the open internet tools that departments are already successfully using. The guide links to guidance, examples of how and where the tools are used and to free, reliable, online training resources. Since the alpha version of the guide was published in November 2013, its had around 23,000 unique visitors.

Users responded to a user survey on the guide. More than two-thirds found the guide useful, would use it again and would recommend it to their colleagues.

Access to technology remains a major barrier for many users as they were unable to watch the videos and access the links. Significant numbers of civil servants in major departments still don’t have access to the internet and social media at work. These restrictions conflict with the Civil Service Reform Plan aims for government to work digitally. They also hinder us in educating civil servants on digital and how it can help in their work.

GDS will continue to work to remove these barriers and extend the use of the open internet tools across government. Technology Leaders are looking at these barriers and why they still exist. They’re taking steps to remove technology and security restrictions. Once this has been done, Digital Leaders and Civil Service HR team will discuss with relevant Permanent Secretaries how any outstanding cultural and managerial barriers can be addressed.

What departments are doing to build capability

More departments have made progress in building capability.

HM Revenue and Customs

HMRC has started building its first Digital Centre in its Longbenton offices in Newcastle. HMRC staff and technology suppliers will work together in the Digital Centre to identify user needs, test new services with real users, and keep improving them once they’re released to the public. The centre will provide high quality and low cost technology services to HMRC using a blend of in-house, partner, SME and academic resources. HMRC have been working with GDS on the scope of the centre and support with recruitment.

Department for Work and Pensions

DWP are setting up a Digital Academy to train digital specialists to support their service transformation programmes with support from GDS. We’re looking at how the materials it is developing can be shared with other parts of government.

HM Treasury

HMT ran digital drop-in sessions in February (with more planned for April) to help staff find out how to build digital into their work. It ran a staff survey to establish their perception of their own digital skills, and any blockers to wider use of digital. It developed a ‘digital toolkit’, containing tips, guidance and best practice on using digital. They’re currently planning on setting up a network of senior Digital Ambassadors to lead digital strategy work across the department.

Department for Energy and Climate Change

DECC ran a series of team briefings to raise awareness of what digital by default means. The results from a recent pulse survey showed an improvement in levels of digital understanding in the department. It also published a video interview with its Digital Leader on the DECC intranet.

Department for International Development

DFID ran Digital for Development events in March. The events showed how DFID is using innovative technology and helped staff understand how to use digital tools to help with their work. It published its first annual report covering progress on its digital strategy. DFID board members had bespoke digital communications coaching.

Department for Education

DfE conducted a skills audit within the IT and digital teams, to help decide better ways of working and identify gaps in its digital capability. It set up a divisional digital liaison community across DfE.

Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

BIS publicised and promoted the use of digital across the department and partner organisations through a digital newsletter. It ran digital surgeries giving internal updates on BIS digital services and the Digital Policy Working Group. It ran targeted events in January, bringing together partner organisations to discuss digital transformation, and in March on Service Standard assessments.

Cabinet Office

Cabinet Office set up a Digital Governance team to lead on the digital strategy with members from all levels of the department. It ran a well received Digital Fortnight in February. Events included demonstrations of live projects and practical sessions on using digital tools. These were supported by intranet pages with useful tools, information, jargon-buster, blogs and presentations.

Cabinet Office are recruiting for a new Digital Delivery Team to support the Digital Leader. The team will track digital projects throughout the department to avoid duplication and support new user-focused value-for-money projects.

Department of Health

DH published an overview of its digital capability strategy, developed with input from GDS, Civil Service Learning (CSL) and heads of profession.

Almost 100 people, ranging from administrative officer to senior civil servants, became DH Digital Champions and took part in a one day ‘digital summit’. The champions committed to:

1 year of targeted training and development
become beta testers of new services
be ambassadors of ‘digital first’ working in their teams
act as first points of contact for digital service or product development

DH’s Permanent Secretary, its 5 directors general and the Chief Medical Officer all signed up to a 6 month programme of 1 to 1 coaching. They’ll provide a lead from the top of the organisation on agile, audience focused solutions.

DH’s digital team worked with the wider Communications Division and with policymakers and operations to improve and promote its Digital Policymaking Toolkit and work on future policy standards.

Foreign Office

FCO set up their Digital Transformation Unit. The unit will:

provide and support more digital services
look at how digital tools and technology can improve foreign policy work
further improve the quality and creativity of digital communications
increase digital capability through relevant training and guidance

Home Office

Home Office developed talent and digital awareness by introducing shadowing and on the job training for staff from a variety of business areas. It worked with business owners to help them understand digital and worked closely with those developing new digital services.

Office for National Statistics

During February ONS ran their first Digital Festival, bringing together internal and external experts to help improve digital skills, knowledge and confidence across the organisation.

Question 9

Digital working across departments

Accepted Answer

There are a number of initiatives that support digital where the government is establishing or sharing common approaches across departments. GDS and the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) lead on much of this activity, and they also support departmentally-led work where requested.

Technology Leadership

The Technology Leaders Network met a further 3 times and they:

updated the Technology Operating Model to incorporate Information Assurance
discussed contract data and open internet access
heard from Crown Commercial Representatives

OCTO has started work with a small number of departments to understand the data government holds about citizens and how it is used. This will make us more open by enabling us to share that data with those citizens. It should also identify efficiency benefits for government, as opportunities to reduce duplication and make data-holding systems open source (whilst protecting individuals’ privacy) become available.

Identity Assurance

The Identity Assurance Programme worked with central government departments and agencies, as well as other public service providers, to plan their use of the new identity assurance service.

In February, HMRC’s PAYE service started using the new Identity Assurance hub in private beta. The service will be available to a small group of volunteer users, while HMRC tests and develops it for larger numbers of people to use. Users of the service will sign in using identity assurance. GDS will be adding more services and users gradually as we continue to get the service ready for wider use.

GDS continued its intensive programme of user research, in particular working with less confident users. We’re also looking at how identity assurance works when people use a public service online on behalf of an organisation or another person. We also published a new guide on identity proofing (requirements needed to validate and verify individuals’ identity).

Buying digital services

The Crown Commercial Service Digital Service framework went live in November 2013, with 175 suppliers across the 8 digital capabilities listed. 83% of the suppliers are SMEs.

This is open to all public sector customers, and is the first managed service from Crown Commercial Service for central government customers. It started 20 further competitions; 7 of these have so far been awarded, 4 to SMEs.

GDS is updating and refreshing the second Digital Service Framework which will go live in autumn 2014. We’ll make some improvements, based on user and supplier feedback, but it will be similar to the first version.

Common digital platforms

These continue to be developed and extended.

The Performance Platform has grown rapidly in breadth and depth since December. There is a new dashboard providing performance data for GOV.UK and a detailed dashboard has been released for the carer’s allowance service.

The Transactions Explorer has published its fifth update of top line service performance data. The explorer provides important information for the transformation exemplars, where GDS is helping departments to identify future savings.

The public challenge around selecting open standards for document formats resulted in more than 500 responses from the public, businesses and international organisations. Francis Maude announced proposals at Sprint 14. GDS published details about these on the Standards Hub to get feedback.

Government IT systems

GDS is developing a common, cross-government approach to the things that everyone uses like desktops, hosting, etc (we’re calling this Common Technology Services, or CTS). Our aim is to show a different way of designing and providing technology to the Civil Service. We want users to have modern, flexible technology services that are at least as good as those they use at home. These services will also be cheaper than the services currently in place.

Our first step in doing this is the Cabinet Office Technology Transformation Programme. We’ve been learning from users to come up with our solution. We’ve found out that there isn’t a system that suits everyone. We’ll be giving teams and users a choice about the applications and devices they feel would make them most productive. We’re working with CESG on security accreditation for collaborative tools to help us work better across different teams, starting with Google Apps. We’ll be doing the same for other products, including Box, Trello, and Salesforce.

We’ve also worked closely with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to improve their approach to IT provision. DCMS and GDS will change the way this is done, led by user needs and provided through disaggregated, flexible contracts and central services. Prototyping began in March 2014.

DH Digital team has been working on a range of tools to make the working lives of its civil servants much more efficient. They include a new intranet which will:

link most of the day to day business systems
provide a shared space to co-ordinate media activity across press offices
give policymakers access to a text crunching tool for running a qualitative consultation

DH will be sharing these tools as widely as possible with its ALBs and across government.

DFID is taking part in the Cabinet Office Grants Efficiency Project, looking into options for a digital by default process for finding, applying for, managing and disbursing government grants and funds.

Crown Hosting Service (CHS) has started working with departments on an outline business case to establish a CHS which targets changes to legacy hosting requirements.

Supplier submissions for G-Cloud 5 were sought from February. The services covered are for cloud-based services (hosting, software, advice and implementation).

Question 10

Digital and policy-making

Accepted Answer

In January, the Open Policy Making team organised an event bringing departmental Heads of Policy Profession together with Digital Leaders. They discussed opportunities to use digital tools to improve open policymaking and make links between policymaking and service design stronger.

The Open Policy Making team have worked with GDS to identify policy exemplars that can be used to identify new approaches to improve open policy making. They also launched a beta version of an Open Policy portal.

Departments already use digital tools to engage with the public and to improve policy-making. For example:

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