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Summary
Over the last 5 years, design as a profession has become more established in the public sector. What does it mean to professionalize design? And how does community play a part? Jaskiran Kang, Head of Service Design at TPXImpact shares her experience moving into government from the private sector, leading design at the Department for Education, and building community to further design practice.
Key Insights
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Jas’s personal background influenced her strong motivation to impact public services such as education and food through design.
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Community and networking in government design are often accidental but essential escapes from professional isolation.
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Leadership buy-in and protected time are crucial for nurturing and sustaining professional design communities in the public sector.
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Formalizing recruitment via consistent job descriptions, interview questions, and portfolio assessments improves designer onboarding and growth.
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Calling design priorities 'imperatives' helps translate design goals into business-aligned language to secure seriousness and support.
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Design strategy in government must be robust to provide stability amid changing policies and leadership.
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Professionalizing design means recognizing designers' competence upfront, empowering autonomy, and focusing leadership on growth and retention.
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Capability frameworks paired with openness are essential to help designers understand growth paths while encouraging personal exploration.
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Working in the open and sharing templates (like job descriptions on GitHub) fosters wider public sector collaboration and evolution.
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Embedding service design early in policy decisions alongside policymakers could transform public services by centering user needs.
Notable Quotes
"I was very content and happy to just be in private sector. I didn’t really ask for a lot."
"Lou made the call out for good designers to come and join government and that was the eye-opening moment for me."
"Sometimes you need to pull your head out the water and have that safe space because you can’t really go openly and talk about some of these problems."
"It’s only ever about people and skills, working across silos and verticals, believing in opening up and unlocking talent."
"I wanted to have a conversation about how do we set people up for success and how do we get people to do their best work."
"It is imperative. If the department is dead serious about actually delivering the services and the strategy, then we must do this."
"Having protected time to come together and focus on the profession is so critical—otherwise life just gets on top of you."
"A designer applying for a job has already proven themselves competent—I want to give them empowerment and autonomy."
"Making things open makes things better, it’s a core design principle for UK government."
"What if service designers sat alongside policymakers early in decision making? That would be awesome."
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