Corporate report

Department of Health's actions in response to the Government Digital Strategy

Updated 16 January 2015

This was published under the 2010 to 2015 Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government

Action 1: Departmental and transactional agency boards will include an active digital leader

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

The Department of Health (DH) is committed to stewarding a ‘digital first’ health and care system and to becoming itself a digital first department of state. The departmental digital leader works directly on this agenda with 2 director general board members.

Progress during 2013

The digital leader is directly responsible for the delivery of the department’s digital strategy. This is a core workstream within the ‘Our DH’ transformation programme, part of Civil Service Reform.

The DH executive board is fully engaged and highly supportive of the strategy and real progress is being made towards a digital first culture within the organisation. Structural changes have been made within the department to reflect this.

The digital leader attends a cross-arm’s length body (ALB) board that identifies digital and technology priorities across the health and care system. They have also established a specific ALB digital leaders network with full representation from across the health and care system.

Planned activities in 2014

DH will continue to develop the work of the ALBs’ digital leaders’ network. DH will formalise a shared approach to forward planning for digital across DH and its ALBs, encouraging greater transparency and earlier engagement. This will also support greater collaboration, and increased shared knowledge and skills among the digital teams.

Progress during 2014

Will Cavendish, Director General of Innovation, Growth and Technology, replaced Rachel Neaman as the DH digital leader in July.

DH’s digital team delivered coaching sessions to the permanent secretary and directors-general on a range of topics including the Digital by Default Service Standard.

Some of the department’s larger ALBs also appointed new senior digital leads within their organisations, including NHS England (Helen Rowntree), Public Health England (Diarmaid Crean) and NHS Blood and Transplant (Ceri Rose).

The department also revised its governance arrangements for major digital and technology programmes in health and social care and established the National Information Board (NIB) which sets strategic direction for the health and care system on technology and information. NIB comprises senior leaders across DH’s ALBs, as well as representatives from the department and other interested lay people.

Planned activities in 2015

The NIB will consult and engage on a number of issues integral to achieving excellent delivery of digital health services.

Action 2: Services handling over 100,000 transactions each year will be redesigned, operated and improved by a suitably skilled, experienced and empowered service manager

Service managers will be in place for new and redesigned transactions from April 2013.

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

The Department of Health does not currently directly deliver services handling over 100,000 transactions to the public. Should this change in future, it will put in place the necessary service managers to design and operate them.

Progress during 2013

DH has completed an audit across the department and its ALBs that identified transactional services that the department funds and manages via the Transactions Explorer.

A new team is being established within the wider digital team to focus on the redevelopment of DH-owned transactional services. The digital services team will include service managers, product managers and user experience specialists among others. Digital portfolio managers have been recruited to ensure full visibility of the digital plans and activities of its ALBs and to support them with their plans for service redesign.

Planned activities in 2014

DH will be recruiting the additional digital specialists to the team (service managers, product managers, user experience specialists, etc).

DH will ensure that all transactional services handling over 100,000 transactions a year are redesigned in line with the Digital by Default Service Standard. DH will provide support to its ALBs to transform their transactional services and help them through the standard assessment process. DH will conduct further work to identify offline transactions within the departments and its ALBs that could be redesigned as digital first transactions.

DH will ensure that the service managers will attend specialist training provided by Government Digital Service.

Progress during 2014

DH began to redesign 3 of its major transactions: NHS Choose and Book, Organ donation registration and Blood donation appointment booking. Blood donation appointment booking passed its live service assessment in October.

Planned activities in 2015

DH will ensure that a trained service manager is in place for all redesigned services. It expects NHS Business Services Authority to start its digital transformation programme, identifying services for redesign.

Action 3: All departments will ensure that they have appropriate digital capability in-house, including specialist skills

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

To help staff get the digital skills they need, DH will work with Heads of Profession and Civil Service Learning and ensure that the department’s 2013 learning and development strategy reflects the digital ambitions in the Civil Service Capabilities Plan. The department will develop a programme of internal digital masterclasses to share experiences, knowledge and best practice. It will review its in-house capability to develop and manage digital products, revising existing and creating new roles as required.

Progress during 2013

DH digital team ran a series of successful pilot workshops for the communications division, and an ambitious digital capability programme for the department as a whole was developed. This follows a department-wide digital skills audit and a benchmarking exercise with pilot groups of staff.

Phase 1 of the capability programme focuses on creating the digital leadership within DH required to drive through a digital first culture. The programme also includes:

• one-to-one executive coaching for the permanent secretary and director generals
• the creation of a DH Digital Champions group with representation from each division
• a digital induction for fast-streamers

This work is being led by the digital team with input from the learning and development team.

Planned activities in 2014

The second phase of the digital capability programme will focus on mainstreaming digital skills for all DH staff. The DH Capabilities Plan being developed by the Learning and Development team will support this work. The programme will include:

• segmenting the level of digital skills required by specific groups of staff based on the recent skills audit and benchmarking exercise
• holding workshops and master classes based on this need
• incorporating digital into the corporate induction process for new staff
• an updated version of the digital toolkit for policy officials following extensive testing
• a digital online manual for all DH staff, similar in style to the Government Service Design Manual

Progress during 2014

The DH digital team published the department’s digital strategy on capability and in late summer published an update on progress. In 2013 the Annual Skills Review identified 59% of staff self-reporting as lacking basic digital skills. In 2014 that number fell to 17% of staff.

DH established a Digital Champions programme in January with a pilot group of 70 members of staff to:

• engage staff through hands-on involvement testing alpha and beta products
• involve them in trials of early technology
• provide ‘un-conference’ style learning and engagement events, including the annual Digital Champions Summit
• devolve responsibility to them to train their teams on basic digital skills and the Digital by Default Service Standards

DH also coached the permanent secretary, directors-general and the chief medical officer on a range of different topics. Several ALBs also instituted a similar programme.

In November DH launched its digital passport, which sets a minimum standard of digital capability within DH, aligned with level 7 on the digital inclusion scale.

Planned activities in 2015

DH will:

• run a further Digital Champions cohort of 100 staff
• build digital requirements into job adverts and job descriptions for new members of staff, ensure they are covered in recruitment and performance management processes, and redesign the induction process for new staff to include digital skills and delivery
• develop digital skills of both communications and policy staff
• assess all DH staff against level 7 of the digital inclusion scale, seeing a further reduction in those not reaching the minimum standard
• have at least 2,000 staff achieving its digital passport

Action 4: Cabinet Office will support improved digital capability across departments

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

The Department of Health will work with Cabinet Office and GDS to ensure it has the digital capability it requires for the future.

Progress during 2013

DH has created a new Informatics and Digital Services division to bring together information and digital strategy and policy, digital leadership, service design and delivery, and portfolio management for DH and its ALBs. The division includes new roles such as product managers and user experience specialists.

DH has also created a digital strategy delivery team focusing specifically on commitments in the digital strategy and it has recruited the first Fast Streamer into a digital role in the department.

Planned activities in 2014

DH will recruit the additional service managers and digital specialists required for the team and will look to share resources and roles with ALBs where appropriate. DH will continue to assess digital capability needs to ensure it has the skills it needs.

Progress during 2014

In September DH launched its revised PolicyKit, an online policy-making resource for policy professionals. The department worked closely with the Open Policy Making team at Cabinet Office to ensure best practice, knowledge and expertise was shared across government.

DH also increased its engagement with the GDS’s service management community, with its first trainees from across the ALBs joining in 2014.

Planned activities in 2015

DH will continue to work with Cabinet Office to build digital skills and cross-government knowledge, and will ensure that DH staff benefit from initiatives it runs.

Action 5: For transactional departments, 3 exemplar services will be selected

Redesign starting April 2013, implemented by March 2015 (to be included in relevant business plans). Following this, departments will redesign all services handling over 100,000 transactions each year

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

DH does not currently directly deliver services handling over 100,000 transactions to the public. Should this change in future, it will ensure these services are designed to meet the Digital by Default Service Standard.

Progress during 2013

DH does not have any exemplar services, but several large transactional services managed by its ALBs have been identified. The new portfolio managers are supporting these teams to understand the Digital by Default Service Standard and the implications of this for their projects.

Compliance with the standard has been incorporated in the DH approvals processes and into all related guidance to ensure it is fully understood by all areas of the business, including technology, procurement and policy partners.

Planned activities in 2014

DH will review all its services against the Digital by Default Service Standard and identify any that require redesign. This will also extend to offline services and will identify any that would benefit from a digital redesign.

Progress during 2014

Although DH is not one of the transactional departments, it adopted this model and developed exemplars in line with the Digital by Default Service Standard. Among internal services where DH took this approach was the department’s new intranet. This was used to demonstrate the benefits of user research, testing and iterative development. It made savings of 90% against the previous model and raised staff satisfaction from 27% to over 80%.

Planned activities in 2015

DH will continue to follow the exemplar approach of service redesign and will make this the norm as expectations and capability increase.

Action 6: From April 2014, all new or redesigned transactional services will meet the Digital by Default Service Standard

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

DH does not currently directly transactional services to the public. Should this change in future, it will ensure these services are designed to meet the Digital by Default Service Standard.

Progress during 2013

DH has worked with internal teams and with all its ALBs to promote the Digital by Default Service Standard and has ensured that all proposals for new or redesigned services provide details of how they will meet it. Early engagement with ALBs on this means that it has been factored in at the beginning of the process for all new projects. There will be a requirement for all teams working on smaller transactions or web applications to demonstrate progress against the standard where appropriate. It is incorporated into the DH approvals process.

Planned activities in 2014

DH will carry out internal assessments of new or redesigned services, including NHS services, against the Digital by Default Service Standard. This will be done as part of the DH approvals process and will incorporate lessons learnt from the exemplar services into plans for any new services.

Progress during 2014

Most health transactional services are provided by DH’s ALBs. All proposed spend on new or redesigned services is assessed against the service standards, with regular checkpoints put in place to ensure that these are being met.

DH set an example by volunteering to have its own internal services checked against the service standards, with the new intranet becoming the first civil-service-facing product to pass the service standard assessment in October.

The digital team trained each director-general on the standard itself, common pitfalls, and areas that commonly require greater input from the digital team.

Planned activities in 2015

The digital services portfolio in DH will be brought together with the department’s informatics portfolio to ensure that all services reflect a consistent approach to assurance, incorporating the Digital by Default Service Standard at each checkpoint.

Action 7: Corporate publishing activities of all 24 central government departments will move onto GOV.UK by March 2013, with agency and arm’s length bodies’ online publishing to follow by July 2014

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

The Department of Health will move its corporate publishing activities to GOV.UK in March 2013. Those of its ALBs that are scheduled to move to GOV.UK will do so at the same time.

Progress during 2013

The DH corporate website moved to GOV.UK in March 2013, saving the department more than £800,000 per year in platform costs. New web hosting and development suppliers for all its remaining sub-sites have been procured and an additional 30 of these sites have closed or migrated to GOV.UK.

Only 3 health and care ALBs are due to migrate to the new platform. Public Health England (PHE), a new organisation as of April 2013, went live on GOV.UK along with DH. DH has been working closely with PHE and GDS to rationalise the large web estate it inherited from the legacy organisations from which it was formed. The other health ALBs due to move to GOV.UK are fully engaged with GDS in the transition process and are fully on track to migrate.

Planned activities in 2014

DH will continue to work closely with GDS to understand how people are using health content on GOV.UK, what their needs are, and to identify better ways of presenting information including news and press releases. The department will continue to rationalise the legacy DH web estate, including the migration of existing blogs to the GDS shared blogging platform, and will look at further options for digital engagement using the GOV.UK platform.

DH will support its ALBs with their transition to GOV.UK and hold discussions on the relationship GOV.UK should have with the citizen-facing website for health.

Progress during 2014

All agreed agencies and ALBs moved to GOV.UK by the end of the year.

Planned activities in 2015

Public Health England, which brought together more than 180 websites and online tools, will continue to rationalise its web estate, improve the user experience and achieve efficiencies.

The main citizen-facing content for health is delivered by NHS Choices. In 2015, DH expects the team in NHS England to review the proposition and priorities for a national health and social care website.

Action 8: Departments will raise awareness of their digital services so that more people know about them and use them

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

DH does not currently directly deliver transactional services to the public. However, the department will work with the health and care system to raise awareness of Digital First across the NHS and the creation of the new integrated customer service platform for citizens.

Progress during 2013

Channel shift has been built into plans for all new services that are being commissioned across DH and the health and care system. The potential savings are now being outlined as part of the business case approvals process. The partnership between NHS Blood and Transplant, GDS and DH on organ donation has also shown the impact that responding to the results of A/B testing can have in pushing people towards a service when they’re already online.

Planned activities in 2014

DH and its ALBs are committed to ensuring a digital first health and care system and to encouraging he public, patients and users of services to use digital services.

All new or redesigned services will be provided in a way that encourages channel shift. DH will work with its ALBs to gather and publish data on the expected savings from this approach.

The DH digital leader sits on the programme board for the new Health and Social Care Digital Services programme to ensure full alignment with GDS principles and the Digital by Default Service Standard.

Progress during 2014

DH supported GDS in raising awareness of fraud and misleading websites. They worked with GDS and the NHS Business Services Authority to promote GOV.UK as the start point for all transactions (in particular, to renew their European Health Insurance Card). This is in response to a number of misleading websites that charge people for this service. DH acted to remove fake Facebook accounts and websites that claimed to be official government sites and charged for the service.

Planned activities in 2015

With the publication of ‘Personalised Health and Care 2020: a framework for action’, DH committed to giving citizens a single point of access to all transaction services for all care services, including booking appointments and online repeat prescriptions. NHS England, with Health and Social Care Information Centre, will publish proposals by June 2015 to consolidate NHS e-Referrals, appointment booking and repeat prescription ordering with NHS Choices.

Action 9: We will take a cross-government approach to assisted digital

This means that people who have rarely or never been online will be able to access services offline, and we will provide additional ways for them to use the digital services.

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

DH is committed to ensuring the accessibility of all its digital channels and where necessary producing alternative formats of policy and corporate material for those unable to access them online. The department will also support the NHS to partner with organisations that help those that are unable to use digital channels to manage their health to do so, in line with the cross-government approach to assisted digital.

Progress during 2013

DH and the health and care system are fully represented on the cross-government Digital Inclusion Sub-Group. The department’s policy is for digital first, rather than by default. Face-to-face contact with its health and care professionals when appropriate will remain an essential, core part of its care.

DH has acknowledged that there is a large overlap between those who are digitally excluded and those most in need of NHS services. To address this NHS England has launched a Widening Digital Participation Project to address the need for assisted digital and increased digital health literacy. The tender was won by the Tinder Foundation (formerly UK Online Centres) who will focus on engaging 100,000 people who are most affected by digital and health inequalities, of whom 50,000 will be trained in using health information online.

It is estimated that the additional NHS healthcare costs associated with inequalities is in excess of £5.5 billion a year. Through this project, the department aims to both reduce health inequalities and generate economic savings.

Planned activities in 2014

Assisted digital and consideration of people of who has never or rarely been online will continue to be central to the department’s approach to digital. DH will assess the success of the Widening Digital Participation project, which is designed to be fully scalable and depending on the evaluation will either continue with it or identify new ways of reaching the digitally excluded.

DH will continue to be part of the cross-government Digital Inclusion group. DH will ensure its own and its ALBs’ new or redesigned services meet the assisted digital aspect of the Digital by Default Service Standard.

The Widening Digital Participation Project will build a sustainable Digital Health Information (DHI) Network of 400 centres which can be mobilised rapidly to reach 100,000 people by March 2014. This network can be scaled to reach more people in future years, depending on available funding. It will also target ultra-specialist groups who face the biggest barriers to digital inclusion and good health, including homeless people, sex workers, gypsy, traveller and black and minority ethnic communities.

Progress during 2014

DH fully supports the cross-government approach to assisted digital. It is currently auditing all existing services to ensure that all digital inclusion needs are accounted for.

Planned activities in 2015

DH will provide assisted digital support for all new or redesigned services, drawing on best practice at the time.

Action 10: Cabinet Office will offer leaner and more lightweight tendering processes, as close to the best practice in industry as our regulatory requirements allow

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

DH will actively seek opportunities to make use of small and medium-sized enterprises and CloudStore when procuring digital products and services wherever possible.

Progress during 2013

DH has shifted its approach to digital and IT procurement to G-Cloud first and has completed several successful procurements via G-Cloud, including for hosting, application development and various discovery and alpha stages of larger projects. DH has also produced internal guidance on G-Cloud engagement for other areas of the organisation. It has has incorporated this into the DH spend controls guidance, as well as encouraging its ALBs to follow this approach.

Planned activities in 2014

DH will continue with its G-Cloud first approach to procurement of digital services, and work with its ALBs to integrate this approach into their work. The department will also aim to be early adopters of the new Digital Services framework.

Progress during 2014

DH’s digital team completed the department’s first procurement through the Digital Services framework (DSF) at the beginning of August. All new digital products within the department are procured through G-Cloud or the DSF, including hosting, application development and discovery and alpha stages of larger projects.

The digital team provided masterclasses on the use of both G-Cloud and the DSF for procurement leads across DH and its ALBs.

Planned activities in 2015

DH Digital will continue to work with internal procurement and finance teams to align agile development processes with internal approval and procurement systems. It has also joined cross-government groups for key suppliers with Crown Commercial Service to improve the way Cabinet Office leads procurement.

Action 11: Cabinet Office will lead in the definition and delivery of a new suite of common technology platforms which will underpin the new generation of digital by default services

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

DH will ensure that the need to consider Open Source is embedded in its procedures and processes, achieving level 4 in Open Source Maturity by April 2014. It will reuse existing solutions before building tailored solutions, and ensure that commissioning processes enable the use of open source and common platform solutions.

Progress during 2013

DH has commissioned a number of products with a shared platform approach in mind. The department has developed a monitoring and reporting dashboard for all communications work, including crisis communications, which uses the GOV.UK application programming interface (API) to pull live data on website visitors and integrates with news and social media activity. This will be scalable and reusable across its ALBs and other departments. DH has also worked with the Health and Social Care Information Centre to develop a prototype for data visualisation that was built on existing technology for a fraction of the cost of building something from scratch.

Planned activities in 2014

DH will launch an intranet beta for the department and develop tools to allow automated text analysis to help analyse consultation responses and other text data. The department will continue to work with its ALBs to identify further options for shared platforms to increase efficiency and reduce duplication across the health and care system. The Health and Social Care Digital Services project (including the next generation of NHS Choices) will provide common platforms for the system as a whole.

Progress during 2014

DH continued to support Cabinet Office in the delivery of new technology platforms. DH’s new intranet and engagement websites were developed in Wordpress, with as much shareable code as possible, with a view to these assets being reused across government. All appropriate intranet code was shared on Github, and more sensitive documentation shared with other government departments internally. DH encouraged the reuse of platforms through its work with its ALBs.

Planned activities in 2015

In the publication of ‘Personalised Health and Care 2020: a framework for action’, DH proposed that NHS Choices will be developed to provide a core common platform for all care providers. The platform will be capable of customisation to reflect the specific needs of different localities and communities.

Action 12: Cabinet Office will continue to work with departments to remove legislative barriers which unnecessarily prevent the development of straightforward and convenient digital services

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

DH does not currently directly deliver transactional services to the public. Should it do so in future, it will work with Cabinet Office to remove any legislative barriers which unnecessarily prevent the development of straightforward and convenient digital services.

Progress during 2013

DH is working with the Head of Data Sharing Policy in Cabinet Office’s Government Innovation Group to identify any potential legislative barriers that will affect digital services across the health and care system.

Planned activities in 2014

DH will continue to support this work and if any legislative barriers are identified it will work with Cabinet Office to remove them.

Progress during 2014

DH is not aware of any legislative barriers to current development of digital services.

Planned activities in 2015

DH will work with Cabinet Office to remove any legislative barriers which might emerge as service redesign progresses.

Action 13: Departments will supply a consistent set of management information (as defined by the Cabinet Office) for their transactional services

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

DH will report against all relevant data sets from April 2013. It will also systematically use digital data and insight to inform policymaking by using specialist techniques such as influencer mapping, and by developing the capability of its staff to do this for themselves.

Progress during 2013

DH and its ALBs are now reporting against all the relevant data sets for transactions and these are live on the Transactions Explorer. There has been a roll-out of monitoring dashboards for owned and earned media across communications which are used by the press team to monitor current or emerging stories. They’re also used by the wider communications division to manage crisis communications with its ALBs. DH is using digital data and improved management information to understand more about its users’ needs and to evaluate the impact of the work across the department.

Planned activities in 2014

DH will provide quarterly data for all transactions from the department and all its ALBs. The collection and reporting of this data will be a condition for approval of digital spend by DH.

The use of monitoring dashboards will be rolled out further across DH to policy teams, and particularly its Digital Champions network. DH will continue to use digital data to build a clear view of user need and the performance of the department.

Progress during 2014

DH provided quarterly data for all transactions from DH and its ALBs and now reports on almost 100 different services.

DH is reviewing all services provided by the department to ensure that it also reports on all fully offline transactions.

Planned activities in 2015

DH will continue to provide any required management information.

Action 14: Policy teams will use digital tools and techniques to engage with and consult the public

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

DH will use digital tools and techniques to engage with and consult the public by:

• creating a new minimum digital standard for all formal consultations
• using stakeholder and influencer mapping, social media monitoring, crowd-sourcing ideas and opinion, and online metrics to inform policy development, engage different audiences and evaluate effectiveness
• developing a toolkit to help policymakers identify the most appropriate digital tools and techniques for each stage of the policy cycle

Progress during 2013

This has been a priority for DH as a policymaking department and the digital team has partnered with the Policy Improvement team to act on this commitment.

An alpha of a digital toolkit for policy officials was launched at Civil Service Live in July 2013 and has undergone thorough user testing within DH. New policies and guidance have been developed based on feedback.

Although not yet fully consistent across DH, digital is seen as a fundamental part of open policymaking and there are many excellent case studies of digital engagement within the policymaking process, most recently work on the Vulnerable Older People plan and the G8 Dementia Summit.

Planned activities in 2014

DH will move to a new set of policy standards, underpinned by digital. The department will launch an updated version of the digital toolkit for policy officials, produced in collaboration with the Policy Improvement team, by April 2014.

DH has widened the scope of the work on consultations to develop a minimum standard for consultations that makes digital central to the process rather than a minimum standard for the end digital product. This solution will include automated text analysis to help analyse consultation responses.

Progress during 2014

DH has been one of the departments leading the digital-first approach to policymaking. The digital team worked with the department’s Policy Improvement Team to embed the use of digital tools and techniques by policy officials. This helped deliver more open, inclusive and transparent policymaking, supported by digitally-gathered and analysed evidence.

In September, DH redesigned and re-launched PolicyKit, the definitive online policy-making resource for DH policy professionals.

DH began the discovery phase of a project to review methods for communicating, engaging and gathering responses to consultations with the public. It worked with Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Cabinet Office Open Policy Making team to develop automated ways to analyse unstructured data and natural language in consultation responses. It piloted a range of tools with consultation teams within DH to test their effectiveness against traditional (manual) methods of analysis and evaluation.

DH’s digital team was nominated for a Civil Service Award for bringing transparency and community engagement to the G8 Dementia Summit in December 2013.

Planned activities in 2015

DH will complete evaluation of online consultation platforms and agree a way forward with policy professionals, as well as continue its work to increase access to qualitative and quantitative data for policymakers and analysts.

Action 15: Collaborate with partners across public, private and voluntary sectors to help people go online

Action 15 was added to the Digital Strategy in December 2013, so reporting on departments’ actions will begin with 2014.

Progress during 2014

DH is an active member of the Digital Inclusion subgroup and works closely with GDS and Open Government Data to further this agenda.

DH encouraged digital inclusion work amongst its ALBs. For example, NHS England, whose ongoing training programme to teach citizens to use the internet to manage their own care (the Widening Digital Participation programme) is continuing at pace. Around 36,000 people were trained and a new training module focusing on health transactions was released.

Planned activities in 2015

DH’s digital team will work with DH’s learning and development teams, as well as heads of profession and directors across the department, to support all staff members to reach level 7 on the digital inclusion scale during 2015. Currently, only 17% of staff self-report that they reach this standard.

DH will complete an audit of the department’s services, mapping user skills and the skills required to complete these services against the digital inclusion scale, so it can better identify users’ digital inclusion or support needs.

Action 16: Help third party organisations create new services and better information access for their own users by opening up government data and transactions

Action 16 was added to the Digital Strategy in December 2013, so reporting on departments’ actions will begin with 2014.

Progress during 2014

DH’s revised digital strategy commits the department to acting with simplicity, evidence and openness in all the work DH does for the public, its stakeholders and staff.

The GOV.UK Transactions Explorer gives a high-level view of the services the department currently provides.

Planned activities in 2015

We expect several of DH’s major transactions to develop APIs to provide live data feeds to performance dashboards.