Blog posts by Harry Metcalfe

  • Results: the DOS Armchair Audit

    The results are now in, and make for sobering reading…

  • The Great British Digital Outcomes Armchair Audit

    The Digital Outcomes and Specialists (DOS) framework launched in April 2016, replacing the Digital Services Framework (DSF). Both are attempts to make it easier to pay people to make new digital services for the public sector. The DSF was not very successful. DOS’s design is much better aligned with the way projects are delivered, and […]

  • What do we do to make dxw a great place to work?

    I’m really chuffed that we won the Best Place to Work (SME) award at the Digital Tech Leaders Awards last week. At the awards dinner, one of our dining companions asked why dxw is a good place to work. I think the answer has two parts. The principles I believe that a team does its […]

  • Bridging the geek/policy wonk divide

    Last week I was at One Team Government, an event to bring together digital teams and policy folk to talk about how to make government more effective. I went to a fascinating session, suggested by @jargonautical, about the digital geek/policy wonk divide. It’s a pattern I’ve often seen, especially in security and assurance work. People […]

  • Changes to the way we charge for GovPress hosting

    From the end of this month, we’ll start generating GovPress invoices automatically, based on the usage data that your hosted service generates. This will start to affect invoices from 1st June onwards. We’ve been working on this change for a while, and are excited to tell you about the improvements this will bring. Why are we […]

  • Why we’re moving to a four-day week for client work

    From the new year, dxw will be working on client projects from Monday-Thursday each week and using Friday for company-focussed work. We’ll start the first sprint of the new year on January 4th, so our first company Friday will be the 6th. We’ve been thinking about this change for a long time, and we think […]