Criterion 6. Don’t reinvent the wheel

Criterion 6 – Don’t reinvent the wheel

Drawing on other agencies’ experiences and adopting common platforms, patterns and standards will deliver value for government and familiarity to users.

Your responsibilities

To successfully meet this criterion, agencies will need to:

‘build once, use many times’
design for a common, seamless experience

reuse data where possible.

When to apply

Apply Criterion 6 during the Discovery and Alpha phases to capture potential solutions, new and existing, that the service could use to solve problems.

Foster a culture of sharing experiences with other agencies, build on the learnings taken from them and align to common platforms, patterns and standards throughout the Service design and delivery process.

Questions for consideration

What could be aligned with on the Australian Government Architecture?
What platforms, patterns and standards could the service reuse?
What are the alternatives to building from scratch?
Which agencies run similar services that could be built upon?
How can new or bespoke components be made for future reuse?
What data do we already collect, and can it be repurposed?

How to apply criterion 6

Apply reuse in decision-making: Use the Australian Government Architecture to understand the tools, capabilities, policies and standards for building government services. Identify and document how they are applied in decision-making.
Apply learnings from predecessors: Reach out to teams and agencies for their experiences and lessons creating similar services and how to apply them to other services.
Review existing data: Review the data already collected and how it can be reused in the service. Where appropriate, consider if safe, ethical data-sharing arrangements under the Data Availability and Transparency Act Scheme can be employed. Actions to leverage ethical, data-driven decision making can be found in Criteria 5 (‘Build Trust in Design’) and Criteria 7 (‘Do No Harm’).

Guidance to not reinvent the wheel

To meet criteria 6 of the Digital Service Standard refer to the Digital Access Standard. The Digital Access standard is an extension of criteria 6 of the Digital Service Standard.

Digital Service Standard