Design Authority

What is the Design Authority

The Design Authority is a team within the Chief Minister’s Department, created to help the different parts of the States of Jersey work in complementary ways. The Design Authority uses enterprise architecture to define the overall structure and operations for the States of Jersey in the same way a town’s planning authority sets out the vision for the evolution of a town or city. For example, town planners set out the building codes that must be adhered to and the common services such as roads, water and electricity supplies. The Design Authority defines the 'building codes' (principles, guidelines and standards) for the technology and ensures that common services (infrastructure, systems, data, applications) are reused across the States of Jersey.

Why do we need a Design Authority

Historically, the States of Jersey has operated as a set of independent organisations, each focused on their specialist area of service delivery (in health, education, social security, tax to name a few). Savings and efficiencies have also focused at the department level. Over time, this has led to a situation where many identical, or very similar, functions are regularly being performed across the States of Jersey in slightly different ways, supported by different technology solutions from different suppliers. This is expensive and inefficient. For example, a large number of departments hold information about their citizens – each in a different database, with no ability to check the quality and consistency between databases. This means when a function like means-testing (or eligibility) is undertaken, not only is it likely that each department will perform this function in a different way, but based on different information. For a citizen, this means an eligibility test they undertake in one department can provide a different result to one taken in another.

Benefits of having a Design Authority?

The Design Authority provide design assurance and advice on projects to ensure they:

• are delivered in line with the States of Jersey’s Digital Design Principles and support the eGovernment vision for the States of Jersey
• use existing systems and solutions where possible to increase quality and efficiency, and to reduce costs
• are delivered in a consistent way that facilitates technology and data reuse in the future

Challenges we faced

The need for an enterprise architecture function was identified as part of an external audit conducted by KPMG. The States of Jersey have established the Design Authority to meet this requirement. This introduces a completely different way of working for States of Jersey, and many of the ideas and techniques to successful adoption require co-operation across government. It takes time to achieve this level of transformational change, and to ensure that the value of the Design Authority is fully understood and utilised.

What’s next?

The States of Jersey are working to recruit a permanent team for the Design Authority and embed this new way of working into all the departments within the States of Jersey. The team are working with the project teams within the eGov and other areas to ensure that the technical solutions support the Enterprise Architecture.

Business Owner

Ian Webb - Director Information Services

The team

• Ed Williams - Head of Design Authority and Chief Architect
• Damian Bevan - Technical Architect
• Stephen Atherley - Data Architect
• Graham Patterson - Enterprise Architect