Turnbull's digital transformation team discovers user testing

Australia's Digital Transformation Office (DTO) has done something, again.

After a couple of weeks in which its blog has gone largely silent and its Twitter feed has been reduced to retweets of other agencies news, a new post has appeared offering truly transformational advice: do stuff differently for different audiences.

User research, the post says, is likely to reveal that “As you start talking with your users you’ll often discover significantly different needs.”

“One group of users may need similar information to another, but in much greater detail,” the post continues. “In certain circumstances your user research may tell you that you need to write the same content twice: one version for a general audience and another for technical users.”

The post goes on to praise the work of IP Australia, which has a portal for IP professionals and an FAQ for Joe Public.

Vulture South thinks there are two things to take away from the post: The Australian Public Service must be pretty clueless about online service delivery if it needs advice this simple; and The DTO might actually have learned from the agency on which it is modelled, the UK's Government Digital Service (GDS) . We suggest that outcome as the GDS famously created a new immigration portal for individuals, but forgot that immigration professionals need online tools too. Perhaps the DTO will avoid similar SNAFUs?

The GDS certainly has plenty of SNAFUs the DTO will do well to avoid: our latest scoop from Vulture Central paints an ugly picture of an agency run by mates and failing to meet its objectives. ®