Ramping up our comms about GOV.UK
We’ve been doing lots of targeted comms about the move of the DH website to GOV.UK over the past six months and now with just 5 weeks to go we’ve really started going to town on it Last week I …
Digital policy engagement session at Sprint 13
The Department of Health digital team were very pleased to be asked to lead the digital policy engagement session at Sprint 13, the recent showcase for the best in digital across government. You can watch the video of the full session …
Just 10 weeks to go until DH moves to GOV.UK
The countdown has begun. There are now just 10 weeks to go until we switch off www.dh.gov.uk and move over to the single government website GOV.UK. Our scheduled go-live date is Tuesday 26 March and with Christmas behind us it …
The DH digital strategy
We've just published our digital strategy. It sets out how the Department of Health will give its staff the knowledge, skills, tools and confidence to embrace digital in an increasingly digital world. It's been quite a task to produce it and …
Digital by default requires a concerted culture change
This article by Rachel Neaman, the DH digital leader, originally appeared on the Guardian's Public Leaders Network: Government is not just about large-scale services. What does going digital mean for departments that focus instead on policy making or administration? My own …
How the CQC is helping people find good care
We work closely with our Arms Length Bodies (ALBs) and are encouraging them to share their examples of using digital tools and techniques. In this post, Ingrid from CQC tells us how they are improving their offer through the use …
Testing our response to a social media crisis
Last week a group of DH staff took part in the social simulator organised by Steph Grey from Helpful technology The idea was to test how we reacted in a crisis, and ready us to be able to respond well …
Explaining accessibility through a jam jar
When I mention accessibility in relation to digital communications, most people ask “what does that mean?” or “what do I need to do?” I explain that we need to make a product or a service available to the widest audience …
So how is GOV.UK being received at DH?
After a few months of increasing our communications to DH colleagues about the move to GOV.UK (which we talked about in an earlier blog), we thought we’d share the feedback we’ve been getting. In recent weeks, we have done quite …
5 open policymaking examples
I've been enjoying reading all the posts about open policymaking over on the Demsoc blog. We've thought quite a lot about digital engagement at the Department of Health, and how we can use tools and techniques to invite people into …