Introducing the Service and Digital Toolkit
Teams across the GC are working hard to improve their services, meet user needs, and make the most of digital tools, but navigating evolving digital standards, policies, and priorities isn’t easy. At CDS, we’ve experienced these challenges first-hand.
Our mission is to help departments improve service delivery by leveraging digital tools effectively. To support this, we’ve created a Service and Digital Toolkit (SDT) — a curated collection of resources, including practical guidance, case studies, and best practices, to help teams tackle common service challenges. The toolkit directly aligns with the Policy on Service and Digital and the Digital Standards Playbook, to help teams create digital services that are agile, open, and designed with people at the centre.
The Service and Digital Toolkit provides:
- Valuable insights on service design and delivery improvement, especially if you’re seeking tools that enable agile service delivery, like the Digital Product Maturity Model.
- Documentation on user-centered service design practices, standards, and tools, including interaction design and content design.
Resources for building accessible services, including best practices for plain language and a case study on updating GC Notify’s accessibility statements.
By bringing together practical and bilingual guidance grounded in real experiences and learnings from CDS and its partners, the toolkit can help your team navigate challenges, adopt modern ways of working, and design user-centered services that are accessible and informed by the GC’s Digital Standards Playbook.
How did we curate the toolkit?
Unlike a static set of best practices, the toolkit is a living resource that focuses on the ‘how,’ and provides adaptable guidance that public servants can shape to fit their own contexts across the GC. Rather than prescribing a one-size-fits-all approach, we want to help empower users to take what’s useful, apply it in their own way, and drive meaningful change within their teams.
We designed the toolkit to be easy to access, navigate, and share, with structured guidance on topics like agile service delivery, user-centred design, and accessibility.
It also includes a variety of resources, from guides and templates to case studies, frameworks, and practical tools, designed to help teams answer key questions, such as:
- How can I design or improve a service that meets the Digital Standards Playbook?
- What resources can support my team in making a case for change?
- What practical tools can help streamline my workflow?
Tell us what you think
As we’re still in the early stages of developing the Service and Digital Toolkit, we want to ensure it meets your needs in your specific context, with your current goals. That’s why we’re inviting you to share your questions, feedback, and ideas (via email).
We’d love to learn what kinds of resources are most useful to you and your team, and what your main challenges are when it comes to finding tools to help improve service design and delivery.