Our services

Service definition document
G-Cloud 13 (May 2022)

This document outlines the cloud services that Goldstone provides, as well as background information about us.

We design services to improve people's lives

Goldstone is a user-centred design and transformation agency formed with one mission: to make public services better.

We have a foundation grounded in over 75 years of collective experience in the public and private sector.

We work closely with our clients to understand the needs of their users, their staff and their suppliers.

We’re transparent, always working in the open, sharing knowledge, research and code to create better public services and servants.

Our ethos is that the team has a potential that is greater than each of its individuals.
We believe in the power of coaching and in generosity, delivery, kindness and public good.

Our services

We’ve spent more than a decade working in the public sector. We helped to create both the Government Digital Service and GOV.UK, which have since become ambassadors for user-centred digital transformation to governments around the world.

We offer a range of services across a broad spectrum of digital, data and technology requirements, from discovery through to live services.

Delivery and transformation services

We work in close collaboration with you to create and implement new processes, culture and experiences that utilise digital technologies that meet their user and business needs. Services include:

Baseline and audit pre-discovery work

Strategy development

Business case creation

Delivery of discovery, alpha, beta and live phases

Value for money and impact assessments

End-to-end service design, on and offline

Resource and capability development

User-centred design services

Using data and research, we help you to design pages, services, platforms and systems that are user-centred. Services include:

User research and testing

Content design

Content strategy

Information architecture design

Interaction design

User experience design

Prototyping and creating proofs of concepts

Creating design principles and visual design systems

Data services

We use data science to help you to become more data-driven, using insight and intelligence more cost-effectively. Services include:

Big data and advanced analytics on the cloud

Analytics utilising SQL, NoSQL and graph technologies

Predictive modelling, R, Spark, Python, SAS as a cloud service

Data mining on Big data cloud architectures, Spark, AWS, Hadoop

Deep learning, AI, cognitive and machine learning algorithms development

Natural Language Processing (NLP) and text analytics

Technology and development services

We help you to explore cloud-based and digital technical architecture and solution design options for your organisation. Our experienced technical and solution architects, and developers have knowledge of current best- practice approaches and will work with you to create tailormade, fully implementable architecture and development plans. Services include:

Discovery phase of existing estate

Integrating with modern and legacy systems

Experience replacing or re-platforming legacy systems

Fully implementable, clean and simple architecture plan

Evidence based technical architecture

Front and backend development

Capability and training services

We help you build and improve your internal change capability, supporting the planning and project management of internal change capability programmes, and guiding the implementation of new delivery models (like agile). We focus on designing processes that work in your environment and ensuring sustainable change is fully embedded. Services include:

Coaching senior leaders in how to manage change

Redesigning working methods and practices

Reviewing the roles and responsibilities within teams

Managing services for governance and control

Planning, evaluating and managing capability

One-off reviews to assess effectiveness of delivery approach

Design and delivery of training for digital, data and technology teams

Design and delivery of training for marketing, communications and press office teams

Marketing and communications services

We deliver expert content creation to support strategic communications, thought leadership, marketing and brand communications. Our team of highly experienced journalists, writers and strategists produce:

Blogs

Articles

Publications

Editorial services

Copywriting services

Translation services

Social media content (print, audio, visual, animated)

Content plans

Tone of voice guidelines

Our experience

We’ve helped the UK government on its digital transformation journey since the Government Digital Service was created in 2012.

We made a significant contribution to the creation of GOV.UK where our team members supported departments and agencies move onto the single domain, taking a user-centred approach to the design of digital content and services.

All of our team members are familiar with the government service manual and the digital service standard, and equivalent policies in local government and health.

We’ve led projects from discovery through to live, and are expert practitioners in passing service assessments.

Although we major in agile delivery, we have good experience of landing agile projects in waterfall organisations.

We are a technology agnostic organisation and have worked on a wide range of digital services and content management systems, including GOV.UK Whitehall, Wordpress, Drupal and Wagtail.

We’ve also pioneered the government’s new approach to account management and personalisation when at the Department for International Trade. Read more about our work there on the Digital Trade blog.

We have experience of working with clients across public, private and third sectors including:

Government Digital Service

Central Digital and Data Office

Cabinet Office

Department for International Trade

UK Trade and Investment

Trade Remedies Authority

UK Export Finance

Home Office

Police ICT company

Ministry of Defence

Military Aviation Authority

Veterans UK

Defence Science and Technology Laboratories

NHS Test and Trace

UK Health Security Agency

Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency

NHS Improvement
Association for Clinical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine

HM Treasury

Crown Commercial Service

Department for Education

Education and Skills Agency

Open University

Ofqual

Ofstead

Standards and Testing Agency

Lewes District Council

Eastbourne Borough Council

Eastbourne Homes

Croydon Council

Redbridge Council

Metropolitan Police Service

National Police Improvement Agency

Sussex Police

College of Policing

Police Federation of England and Wales

Crest Advisory

Victim Support

Barnardos

Change Grow Live

Vodafone Group

BT

Mars

Digital Detox

Valtech UK

B&Q

How we’ll collaborate with you

We always take a research-led approach to our work. That means we will always design with people. Internally to a project, we use short design sprints to ensure your stakeholders get involved in the design process. Externally, we test the concepts we design with users in your target audiences. .

With your team, we’ll form a blended high performing, multi-disciplinary team. We do this by following these principles:

build an exceptional digital experience

believe in the process; design, test and iterate

embrace automation, data and performance

embed traceability to value from the start

Team activities tackle:

Ambiguity (inception/product planning/backlog refinement): driving out ambiguity so that the team has a shared understanding of the problem

Uncertainty (daily stand ups/sprint planning/usability testing): doing the right thing by meeting regularly, testing often with users and working in the open

Happiness (retrospectives): regularly reviewing how a new team is working together, looking back over activity from the previous period

Progress (show and tells): showing the output of the team to a wider audience on a regular basis brings success and challenge out in the open

Achieving value for money

Understanding the need for the public sector to offer taxpayer value, we use the National Audit Office’s 3Es criteria for maintaining and achieving value for money during our projects:

1. Economy, meaning:

we’ll reuse artefacts or systems (such as the GOV.UK style guide) wherever possible because they’ve been tested with users for usability and accessibility

we use our associate network to flex and adapt to your requirements, as required

we remain flexible throughout the project, agreeing changes to scope based on research findings (and within the budget)

2. Efficiency, meaning:

we use agile methods to collaborate with you

use components of Scrum, Kanban, Lean and other agile frameworks including

daily stand-ups to manage risks and dependencies

releasing prototypes and content quickly, making changes based on ﬁndings from user research, analysis and service metrics

Kanban boards to identify blockers, visualise work and make progress transparent

fortnightly sprint cycles with retrospectives, show-and-tells and weeknotes - to share knowledge, communicate progress, get instant feedback and eliminate waste

use workshops and conversations to reach agreement and consensus rather than documents

3. Effectiveness, meaning:

we’ll test ideas with real users

we’ll form a single delivery team, which means you’ll benefit from long-term working with us in the short-term

you can benefit from our relationships in, and knowledge of the public sector

you’ll benefit from our experienced team who have worked on many high profile change and transformation projects in the public sector

Managing the budget and compliance

We can work on or off-site to suit the needs of your team and project. We comply at all times with your vetting and security requirements.

We offer phone, web and email support, which can include 24/7 for an additional charge. We can use your existing communications tools, or make recommendations.

Ordering and invoicing

Orders can be placed via GCloud on a call-off or competitive basis, or through other procurement methods (such as Digital Outcomes).

Invoices are raised against purchase orders typically fortnightly or monthly to remain in-step with our fortnightly agile sprint process.

We maintain and share with you a burn rate against the purchase order value and project spend overall, on a monthly basis so you can keep track of activities against spend.

We are open to offering discounts where a project meets our corporate objectives, organisational values and charitable ambition.

Security and vetting

Goldstone team members are vetted to Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) although several have Security Check (SC) and Counter Terrorism Check (CTC). Included in the BPSS is a current Disclosure and Barring Service certificate.

Our contracts require our workers and employees to comply with the government’s security, data and intellectual property requirements. That means:

devices feature full disc encryption and virus/malware protection

two-factor authentication is used

passwords are not shared across devices

We have data protection, GDPR cyber security policies in place, which staff and workers are obliged to follow.

We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Intermediaries Legislation (IR35) compliance

We regularly review a sample of our contracts to ensure the work practices are unlikely to breach the requirements of IR35. We also conduct spot-checks using an independent assessment service, to provide added protection for our clients and workers.

Talk to us

We’re always here to answer questions or to discuss the needs of your project.

talktous@goldstoneassociates.co.uk

01323 400402

www.goldstoneassociates.co.uk