Power to the profession! What happens when users can vote to change your product

Theme: Governance | Design making

The Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework is a widely-used definition of the common digital, data and technology roles in the UK government, and the technical skills they require.

It's also a democratic product. Anyone in the Digital and Data profession can propose changes to the framework, and these are voted on by representatives from nearly 30 organisations to decide which will happen. But are we really empowering our users, or have we over-politicised the product?

In this session you'll learn what it takes to run a democratic process that decides your roadmap, the benefits, risks and unexpected outcomes that have emerged, and whether you should try giving more power to the people you're serving.

Participant takeaways:

• what it takes to design and run a democratic process that governs your product roadmap
• what really happens when (some) users of your product can vote on how to change it
• approaches to co-designing with subject matter experts who are also users
• a proposed framework to decide whether this level of direct democracy might be suitable for your product or service