Looking ahead to 2019
I can’t wait to see what we will achieve together in 2019
dxw achieved some big milestones in 2018. We’re now 10 years old and for the first time, the team is well over 50 people. We’ve expanded our strategic offer so we not only research and develop great services but also make sure organisations create an environment for them to succeed.
In 2019, we’ll continue to grow and do more of the kind of projects that improve people’s lives and make things easier for public sector workers. You’ll be hearing much more from us as we talk about what we’re doing and the impact of our work.
An expanding team
We’re recruiting
We’ve welcomed lots of new faces to the dxw team, thanks to the work we’ve been doing for organisations like Ofsted, the Department for Education, Hackney Council and Metropolitan Thames Valley.
We’ll carry on recruiting in 2019, as we grow our multidisciplinary teams. As I write, we’re looking to fill seven great new roles. Many of our opportunities this year will be outside of London as we build our presence in the North
We want a diverse range of people to join us. That’s important and hugely valuable to us – we know that diverse teams build better products and services. We’ll get on with the full launch of our returners programme and expand the number of trainee and junior roles we offer.
We want to give more local young people the chance of a digital career. It’s a personal passion of mine. We’re working with Hackney Council and Amazon on their digital apprentice programme, and will be linking up directly with schools and colleges.
Leeds
One of the highlights of 2018 was the expansion into our Leeds office. We now have a small but growing team and will be shipping our first project in the spring for Ofsted in Manchester. We’ll be moving to our permanent home in the city soon and will carry on recruiting throughout the year.
Team building
As we grow, our values remain central to everything we do. We’ll be investing more in learning and development for the team. We want people to have careers with dxw, not just a job. Our clients will benefit too as we continue to bring them the latest thinking.
We’ll make sure our team members take advantage of their conference perk – an opportunity to go and do, learn or experience something different. Last year choices varied from a food conference in Birmingham to Tech Inclusion, San Francisco.
Our work
Education
We’ve consolidated our position in the UK’s education sector. The Teaching Vacancies service is now rolling out nationally. Today the service has over 600 live jobs and that’s growing all the time as more schools sign up. The roll-out will be complete by March and will unlock millions in savings. We’ll keep iterating and adding new features, and are helping embed the team and working practices needed to operate a national service.
We’ll carry on working closely with DfE’s Digital team this year to help the organisation transform from a policy-making body to one that delivers services to schools, teachers and parents. We’re just starting out with Ofsted on a two-year partnership to make it easier for parents to make informed choices about which school to choose for their families.
International
As part of our work on the Global Digital Market, we’ve been doing international research on how governments purchase goods and services. The UK’s approach to agile procurement has inspired overseas governments to remodel how they work in their local markets, and the playbook we produced is now being used by policy-makers across the globe.
Local government
We’re expanding our offer to local government and putting more focus on helping local authorities build capability. And we’re developing our own products to help local authorities and housing associations benefit from ‘government as a platform’ services like GOV.UK Pay.
We’re continuing to work closely with Hackney Council and Metropolitan Thames Valley, building on the work we did with them last year on reporting social housing repairs.
Hosting
dxw is established as one of the leading UK WordPress agencies. We have a roster of clients who rely on us for secure WordPress hosting and development, like NHS England, the Government Digital Service and the Judiciary.
We’ll be expanding our hosting and support service beyond WordPress as more clients take advantage of our secure container hosting. That means we can host and support the services we build, and operate them securely as clients build their own operations capability.
Our partners
As we’ve taken on more large-scale services, we’ve been working with an impressive group of associates and partners. We’ll be doing more of that this year, so we can offer clients access to world-leading specialists. It also means we get to learn from some of the best in the business.
Our partners include Sarah Richards’ Content Design London, pioneers of service design Livework, on the technical side, GoFreerange, and Oxford Insights. We’re looking forward to working with them all again in 2019.
New opportunities
After ten years, we have a pedigree as a public sector specialist. Working with our partners means we can offer an even wider range of specialist services to clients and scale effectively.
In 2019, we’ll be bringing our specialism and experience to more organisations and different parts of the public sector. Expect to see more dxw teams working in local government, health and housing.
Dealing with uncertainty
Putting politics to one side, we know the impact Brexit is having on the people we work with. While time and effort is directed at EU exit, organisations are having to make hard choices and teams are under a lot of pressure.
We’ll do everything we can to support our friends in the public sector through the next few months. I can’t wait to see what we will achieve together in 2019.