Digital Transformation at Scale

The service standard formalised how the GDS would apply one of its two levers of influence: domain power. As a team, the GDS had the final say about what was good enough to go on GOV.UK. As GOV.UK was the single domain for government, if you couldn’t get on GOV.UK, you effectively couldn’t run an online government service. Provided your digital team is in charge of a single domain, this domain power is a valuable lever for changing an organisation’s behaviour. However, a service standard does not have to be based around domain power. It could easily be used as a gatekeeper for determining which teams are entitled to draw down on a specific source of internal funding, for example.