FREE Toolkit - Create Digital Services for the Public & Private Sectors

A problem exists, organizations within government and the private sector are challenged to create single-page applications, in accelerated production. Issues that occur in a real-world environment, are not security compliant, and as usual, it all needs to be faster and lower cost.

There is a need to reduce legacy technologies, bringing resilience and an open-source approach to empower organizations to set up IT how they want, around their evolving IT strategy. So, that is exactly what we decided to create...an adaptable, flexible, easy-to-use Service Development Toolkit for free on GitHub, to meet this need.

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Free, really?

Yes, a FREE service development Toolkit for all kinds of teams, that will help create digital services in the public or private sector.  Who is it meant for, you may ask? A government IT leader like a Senior Director, or Product Manager, or a CTO, CIO, or Chief Digital Officer and their teams to simplify, reduce costs, and align with IT strategies.

The goal is to make the components as easy to use as possible, serving the wide & incredibly diverse needs within public and private sector communities. This was developed to serve the greater good—a software solution that benefits governments, business executives, and citizens by reducing costs and increasing consistencies. Why? Because we give a damn about doing the right thing!

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Colouring inside the lines

There are many valuable benefits to a service development Toolkit! One key benefit is the ability to build-in accessibility guardrails. These guardrails are sometimes referred to as Rules as Code, the set up of parameters within digital development solutions where individuals with access are able to run “what if” scenarios for variations within the technical limits, legislation, regulation, standards, and policy defined by their administrators.

Guardrails in action can be demonstrated as an example with a climate-based tool, where a government Act or Legislation is set up in a new project build, as a rule, to ensure emissions are calculated the way policy is intended consistently by all users or varied sources.

By writing rules as code, in the logical flow, these coded rules can bring clarity and transparency to the desired solution by converting complicated legal and legislative language into simple to understand logical sequences. Ultimately, making rules easier to understand and interpret, improving the quality of the outcome.

These guardrails can be applied to digital services without the need for a person to interpret them. Automated or semi-automated digital services could be built that can deliver a result, explain how the rules were applied to achieve the result, and all inputs and evidence for that result could be available to citizens openly and transparently.

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Focusing on content first

Today, accessibility is no longer a nice-to-have. The ToolKit uses Progressive Enhancement to help teams create sustainable, resilient, and accessible products. Creating accessible services as easily as possible, each component is built with a strong HTML 5 foundation, with CSS and JavaScript layered on top as experience enhancements for devices that can accommodate them. This Toolkit makes sure that no matter where your users are, they can always access the services they need.

The approach starts with a good foundation. This focuses on content first, ensuring that content can be accessed by anyone, anywhere, on any device. People can see a different version of service when: they have a bad internet connection, as an example, are on an older device, or have voluntarily blocked JavaScript.

The service development ToolKit brings best practices to data intake applications built with React.

Quickly and easily, a content-first approach delivers accessible form-based applications that are themeable and focused on minimizing resource size. It consists of a component library for themed, accessible, progressively enhanced components, and a form-builder application to help create progressively enhanced forms with good UI principles.

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How hard is it to implement?

Turns out it's actually straightforward and painless to incorporate. It's just a matter of using components designed with accessibility in mind. Getting started is done in four simple steps.

To offer a little more visibility into the installation and how simple it is:

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Installing the Toolkit example

1. Install the package using your preferred package manager: npm i @button-inc/mydepartment-theme OR yarn add @button-inc/mydepartment-theme

2. Import the components you need using the following syntax: import { Button } from @button-inc/mydepartment-theme OR import Button from @button-inc/mydepartment-theme/Button

3. Include the component in your code: <Button>Click Me!</Button>

4. Use the Toolkit

Let’s start the conversation, and discuss getting your organization on the Button Toolkit, for free. Contact us today for more detail.

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