Why we built a user research manual (and why it matters more than you think)
Jason Stockwell, Research Operations, reflects on the work done to develop a user research manual for Defra and the importance of consistency across user research.
Reflections on Civil Service Live 2025
Suzy Robinson, Head of Delivery Management (interim), shares her experiences at Civil Service Live 2025 and what she’s learned from attending Civil Service Live over the past few years.
Building a shared understanding of services
Lucy Hartley, Head of Service Strategy, Ownership and Performance, and Lisa Jeffery, Design Manager, reflect on the work being done to build a shared understanding of services within Defra’s Digital, Data, Technology and Security teams.
How our digital teams supported innovation in flood risk services
Helen Eden, Programme Delivery Manager for Flood at Defra, celebrates the success of our Flood Digital Team, who have been recognised for their innovative work in delivering crucial flood risk information to help protect communities across the UK and plan for the future.
GenAI and software development: a new paradigm
Tim Howard, Deputy Director for Major Projects, Cross-Cutting Technical Services, reflects on his experience of integrating generative AI into software development workflows.
Rolling out digital delivery at scale in Defra
Deputy Director for Digital Delivery Richard Baines reflects on designing environments for digital delivery. Moving away from hierarchical culture and change frameworks, he outlines Defra’s emerging ‘outcome delivery groups’ model and how it’s being rolled out across the group. If …
Solving problems, sharing knowledge: Defra’s content community resources
Ayesha Tinsley explains how her team improved the content community’s resources board, in the last in our series on Defra content community projects.
Using hypotheses to improve our content review process
Content designer Lauren Stopps writes about a project to improve the content team’s internal review process.
Designing a style guide for Defra content designers
Senior content designer Louisa Mallon describes how her team planned and created a Defra style guide.
What a content designer does in alpha
Kaitlin D’Avella explains what content designers do in the alpha stage of a project.