Open Belgium

Written by Tom Janssens on 11 March 2016

I was honoured to share insight into the 10 design principles behind the Open Police platform at Open Belgium on 29 February 2016.

A unique event

Open Belgium is an annual event gathering of industry, research, government and citizen stakeholders. It's a one-day community driven conference with talks, discussions, panels, workshops organized by Open Knowledge Belgium

The theme is simple: Make Belgian knowledge open, usable, used and useful.

Open Police

Website screenshot shown on different devices

Our Open Police platform is specifically built for the websites of the Belgian Local Police, it:

  • aims to be a high level blueprint for the design of government web technology
  • is purely built on an Open Source software stack
  • leverages open data streams
  • provides resources that others can use
  • is developed on a result basis using an agile development methodology
  • focusses on proof through doing and constant testing

Design Principles

My presentation highlighted the 10 design principles behind our Open Police platform:

  1. Start with user needs
  2. Do less
  3. Design with data
  4. Do the hard word to make it simple
  5. Iterate. Then iterate again
  6. Build for inclusion
  7. Build digital services, not websites
  8. Understand context
  9. Be consistent
  10. Make things open

These principles are inspired by the UK's Government Digital Services Design Principles.

Presentation

Buzz