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.

Suggested activities to apply this criterion

‘Build once, use many times’

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.

Design for a common, seamless experience

Adopt open standards where appropriate: Consider how reuse and open standards can support other services across government. Where appropriate, design and build with them to bring the service to more platforms, improve data sharing capability, prevent vendor lock-in and create familiarity for users.

Reuse data where possible

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’).

Next page: Criterion 7 – Do no harm

Connect with the digital community

Share, build or learn digital experience and skills with training and events, and collaborate with peers across government.