Cabinet Office Digital Handbook
Welcome to the CO Digital Handbook, your comprehensive guide navigating the digital landscape within the Cabinet Office. The handbook contains our principles, policies, standards, strategies, guidance, and blueprints. It serves as your definitive guide to ensuring our digital initiatives are compliant with regulations, aligned with governmental policies, and reflective of the best practices in the industry.
This handbook serves as the foundation of our digital transformation efforts, ensuring that we approach our digital initiatives with clarity, consistency, and a shared vision.
Purpose
The CO Digital Handbook is designed to:
- Provide clear and actionable guidance on our digital practices.
- Ensure consistency and alignment across all digital projects.
- Foster a culture of transparency, innovation, and inclusivity.
- Support our mission to deliver efficient, effective, and user-centric digital services.
The CO Digital Handbook embodies our commitment to excellence and our dedication to providing good digital services to the Cabinet Office.
Let’s embrace digital transformation together!
Type of Artefacts in Digital Handbook
| Artefact | Definition | Purpose | Adherence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Principle | A fundamental proposition serving as the foundation for the design of an architecture. | To ensure that the architecture aligns with the organisation’s goals, strategies, and standards, and inform the development of policies and standards. | Advisory |
| Regulation | A rule or directive made and maintained by an authority. | To ensure compliance with laws, protect public welfare, maintain standards, and ensure fairness. | Mandatory within specified scope |
| Policy | A formal binding directive outlining intentions and direction of an organisation. | To provide a framework for decision-making and establish overall principles and guidelines to follow. | Mandatory within specified scope |
| Standard | Specific, detailed rules that must be followed to comply with a policy. | To ensure consistency and quality across various processes and activities within an organisation. | Mandatory within specified scope |
| Strategy | A plan of action designed to achieve a specific goal or set of goals. | To provide clear direction and actionable steps to reach desired outcomes, guide decision-making, and align efforts. | Mandatory within specified scope |
| Guidance | Advice, recommendations, or best practices to aid implementation. | To support the application of policies and standards, clarify expectations, and provide practical instructions. | Recommended |
| Blueprint & patterns | Reusable component, architecture and tools. | To provide a clear and structured framework for building and managing digital systems, ensuring alignment with business objectives and technical requirements. | Recommended |
When applying the above governance artefacts, it is crucial to understand their applicable scope. For instance, government service standards primarily pertain to bespoke digital services and do not fully extend to purchased technologies.
How to add a page to Digital Handbook
Submission template
When you create a new Markdown file follow this pattern and then make a pull request:
---
title: Thing you're writing a standard about
last_reviewed_on: yyyy-mm-dd
review_in: 6 months
---
# <%= current_page.data.title %>
Introduction of a couple of paragraphs to explain why the thing you're
writing a standard about is important.
## User needs
Why do we do this thing? Who is it helping?
## Principles
What broad approaches do we follow when we do this thing?
## Tools
What specific bits of software (commercial or open source) do
we use to help us do this thing?