Introducing…
Hi, I’m Alex and I’m starting at dxw as the new account manager.
I’ve come over from the web team in Parliament where I’ve been working on projects including open data standards for Hansard and MPs biographies and social media and online presentation for the House of Lords select committees. I’ve also previously worked as a web and print copy editor in the charity sector, written about quantified self and diabetes and working on organising this year’s CommsCamp London, as well as volunteering at GovCamp and TeaCamp.
It is an incredibly exciting time to be working in digital in the public sector. The new(ish) service design manual from GDS for government services is absolutely exemplary and sums up so many points of good practice that it should be a non-negotiable starting point for any government service.
The manual also codes agile techniques into how government builds digital, and events like AgileTea and the agile sessions that ran at GovCamp and CommsCamp show that there is a huge amount of interest that is spilling out into the commercial sector. It’s not hard to see why: agile projects are cheaper, more responsive to user needs and more appropriate for building a website than waterfall approaches could ever be. One of the projects that I’m going to be taking on is how to structure our agile offering for the commercial sector, based on the phases approach (discovery/alpha/beta/live) and the tackling the familiarity barrier that can often prevent people from implementing agile or going to a sort of halfway point that can bring more trouble than it fixes. I’ll blog a bit more about this later once we’ve got the details worked out.
I think websites in the public sector should just be excellent. There shouldn’t be any excuses for sites that don’t meet the needs of users; sites should bring the best and the easiest technology to the most people. That’s one of the main reasons that I’m excited to work here: the work that dxw is doing at the moment all flows from the same principles of doing right by your users. If those sound like ideals that you’re keen to work by, then we have roles available and we’d love to hear from you!
In the meantime, I’m keen to meet up with old faces and new. Drop me a line – @blangry / @thedxw or alex {a t} dxw.com