It's time we patched the team

In our journey to launch the GX Foundry we've learned a ton from government digital teams around the world—because they’ve generously published pieces about their efforts. In fact, for 2024 we're shamelessly stealing one idea from the U.K.'s Government Digital Service.

We're adopting a "mission patch" practice in which notable projects get a unique patch (actually sticker) design, and every person that contributed to the project will get the sticker as each effort wraps up. We'll also establish a "mission wall" where a large version of the patch is mounted permanently for all to see, including future hires, our colleagues, and visitors.

Lots of great ideas for mission sticker practices from the GDS were written up in this great Medium post from 2018.

Our intentions

• Establish a culture of delivery

• Celebrate our wins

• Highlight teamwork

• Tell our stories and the stories of our clients

• Remind ourselves of how our work connects with the vital public services our clients provide every day

To kickstart this new practice we're retroactively creating mission patches for about 20 notable projects from 2023. We’ll use a standardized design to speed up development for the past year’s missions, but future designs will be created by the project teams with unique elements.

We’re going with an hexagonal design so the stickers can fit together on walls, on laptop lids, on doors, etc. Plus, if we continue with that external shape, future patches can “snap in” to a growing collection of accomplishments.

As things come together over the next few weeks, we’ll come back here to post some photos and explain a bit about our methods for creating the stickers. After all, we have to allow others to shamelessly steal our work, too. :-)