Bring back the 'service owners'

A service designer's view on what good leadership looks like when driving digital transformation

By Ben Rose, Client Partner, GAIN Experience.

"The digital landscape has changed beyond all recognition since government first announced its ambition to deliver 'digital by default' public services." 

This is the opening line advertising the upcoming conference Think Digital Government, which I will be attending as part of the GAIN cohort. The event has an impressive roster of brilliant speakers from across the public sector, and reading the names and titles I wondered - "How many of these people have been, or currently are, a 'service owner'?”

Genuinely, I'm interested because over the last 4-5 years of working with the likes of DWP, Homes England, DFE, and DFT I didn't come across one service owner. As a role, it seems to have disappeared, and when we're talking about good leadership in digital transformation, that's a bit of a problem. And that's coming from a service designer with lots of experience of both:

1. 'On the ground service design' - as part of an agile team in a Discovery/Alpha/Beta, designing a specific service or product to meet a user need and policy intent.

2. Strategic 'service design' - where a lead or very senior service designer sits across a programme of work, overseeing multiple services and products, encouraging teams to break silos, and reporting up to exec level.

So what is a service owner, and why are they important?

2011-2018ish: the rise of the ‘service owner’

The introduction of the service owner (SO) role was a cornerstone of the UK Government’s ‘Digital by Default’ revolution. Orchestrated by the Government Digital Service (GDS) in 2011, this shift moved government away from ‘IT projects’ (which often had a start and end date but failed to meet evolving needs) toward the idea of ‘services’ (which are ongoing and centred around users).

The service owner is the single point of accountability for a government service. Usually at deputy director level, the things 'within their gift' were:

• End-to-End Accountability - they are responsible for the service across all channels and touchpoints, not just the website. So the phone lines, paper forms, and back-office processing.

• Decision Making - they have the authority to make high-level strategic decisions, such as pivoting the service’s direction based on user research.

• Empowerment - they bridge the gap between ‘policy’ (what the law says) and ‘delivery’ (how the service actually works), ensuring the two are aligned.

• Budget & Performance - they own the budget and are accountable for the service's performance against the GDS Service Standards.

When I moved back to public sector work in 2016 (having been part of the early GDS days in 2013-14) every project I worked on between 2016 and roughly 2019 (no matter how small, or whether a service existed yet or not) had a service owner.

I was heavily involved in projects that only succeeded because of the service owner; that DD who held accountability over the service, and bridged that often treacherous gap between policy and digital transformation teams. They attended meetings on the ground, and were actually there, day to day amongst the delivery teams. There was one project which involved creating an entirely new service from scratch that went on to win awards, where I've never had such access to someone of DD level on a daily basis, or who actually understood the value of service design and UCD, and could also talk the technical lingo. But this person is rare.

I also worked on projects at discovery stage where a service didn't even exist yet, with civil servants who had never done the SO role before but had the title thrust upon them. They rose to the challenge, and with some coaching and upskilling from those more versed in GDS, did a great job in terms of what you would expect in a digital leadership position, however fresh to it, and alongside their day job.

I could list countless other examples, but the point is these years, from my perspective, were the golden age of service owners. As more and more services became digital by default, I will hang my hat on the fact that if there was a great (or even good) service owner on these projects, they were far more likely to succeed.

2018ish-now: where have they all gone?

In the old days (and when I say old I mean pre 2018 ish) there was a role on a lot of projects within government called the ‘transformation manager’. Often provided by agencies and consultancies, they were a bit like a DM, PM, and PO all rolled into one. Generalists by design, usually tasked with supporting the SO if they hadn't done the role before. They have since died out, replaced, or evolved; however you want to look at it, by the discipline of product management. Which I think is where the SO role started to waver.

Service owner was the catch-all for leadership. But as the UK government matured its digital capability, it adopted more industry-standard Silicon Valley roles. Much of the ‘doing’ has shifted to product managers, often supplied by consultancies, with the actual decisions then thrust upon their civil service counterpart, the product owner. Often, they were not of a senior enough grade to be able to make those decisions, so had to escalate upwards. All of which, of course, takes time.

You can predict the overlap and the confusion. In many departments, the distinction between a senior product manager and a service owner has become blurry, leading some organisations to merge the responsibilities or favour the more ‘tech-native’ product manager title. Which in my opinion is a different role entirely to the one a service owner should be doing. Because POs and PMs are often not senior enough in the department to be in charge of the budget, and make strategic decisions, or possess the chutzpah needed to manage policy demands vs user centred design, or have a direct line to the Secretary of State.

2026 and beyond

So how do we bring service owners back?

In my last few projects before moving away from service design and into sales and client services, I tried to position myself as a sort of ‘strategic design architect’. Or  Map Maker. I made all sorts of maps, depending on the audience. For the executive level, who made the decisions but weren't close enough as a service owner should be, this was key to giving them all the cards they needed to make those decisions. Just to be able to see all their services on a page at a high level, how their ecosystem worked and fitted together, along with interdependencies and commonalities across different products, made a huge difference in how they were able to lead and make decisions.

Sometimes they made good decisions, and sometimes not so good, but I’d done my job as an advisor (and map maker). I’ve discovered that much of service design is about using storytelling and maps to humanise problems and services, whilst doing all you can to encourage them to ‘own’ the service they have accountability for. Government needs maps, because in so many ways, it is still lost. 

But I was just one designer showing them the big picture in a way they could understand more easily. For the renaissance of the service owner to truly happen, it will need more of the same gall that saw GDS establish the digital by default mantra in the first place.