Corporate report

MOJ'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 Ministry of Justice (MOJ) has established the Director General, Transforming Justice as digital leader to champion digital transformation at board level. The digital services division will lead on implementing the strategy, supported by the digital leader and digital transformation board.

Progress during 2013

The digital leadership role was transferred following the successful launch of the MOJ digital strategy, a digital services team and the first 6 months of operation. Board-level digital leadership has been maintained, with the Director General, Corporate Services coming into the role as digital begins to mainstream within the department.

Planned activities in 2014

MOJ will maintain board-level digital leadership on the main departmental board and will seek to extend this to agency boards before the end of 2014.

Progress during 2014

MOJ’s digital leader, Matthew Coats, sat on the departmental board with the chief digital officer, Paul Shetler, reporting to him directly. In April 2014 this board-level digital leadership was extended to agency groups through the formation of the Digital Steering Group (DSG). DSG received considerable senior level interest and provided a strategic forum for senior civil servants (SCS) with digital responsibilities. This will help increase visibility of digital across the department.

Planned activities in 2015

Matthew Coats, the director general for MOJ corporate services and the chief executive of the Legal Aid Agency (LAA), will continue as MOJ’s digital leader, sitting on the departmental board.

The director-level departmental Digital Steering Group will play an increased role in promoting digital work across MOJ and in supporting implementation of the digital strategy.

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)

MOJ will establish service managers who oversee the design, delivery and ongoing management of each service. By March 2013 we will recruit 5 service managers with proven experience of delivering effective digital services.

Progress during 2013

MOJ successfully recruited 5 specialist digital product/service managers leading on exemplar and information transformation projects. The agency also embedded agile as a discipline for the digital programme while building knowledge and capability across the business.

Planned activities in 2014

MOJ will nominate people from the department to undergo service manager training and take ongoing responsibility for service management as products move into live service. This will free up core transformation resource for the second wave of development and building wider capability.

Progress during 2014

MOJ increased capability by appointing 5 service managers into the main areas of the business:

• National Offender Management Service (NOMS)
• HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) Crime
• HM Courts and Tribunals Service Civil/Family/Tribunals
• LAA and arm’s length bodies (ALBs)
• headquarter services

This enabled product and delivery managers to focus on product delivery within their teams, freeing up resources to deliver products in an agile 20-week framework.

Planned activities in 2015

MOJ will have 3 SCS-level service managers (for LAA, NOMS and HMCTS) and 5 Band A service managers supporting the SCSs and serving the rest of MOJ. This commitment reflects the scale of transformation it is planning across the department. It will look at how to build senior digital delivery capability in MOJ’s agencies over the coming year.

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

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

MOJ will bring digital skills in-house to establish its digital services division by April 2013 and make stronger links with specialists outside government. During 2013 to 2014 it will extend digital leadership and capabilities at director and deputy director levels and establish a network of digital champions at band A. It will also connect staff, users and partners with each other and the information and tools they need to deliver digital solutions and support flexible working through more effective use of digital technology.

Progress during 2013

MOJ’s digital services division is well established and well supported by the department, having more than doubled in size in 2013. The full range of digital skills and expertise is represented across the team, and it has attracted some of the best and brightest talent. More widely, it has established a Digital Steering Group at senior civil service level for all senior leaders involved in the digital sphere, with a network of digital champions being established to help build capability.

The department has:

• successfully opened up access to social media across MOJ
• introduced open policymaking
• continued to lead the way on the deployment of digital technology for more dynamic working practices

Planned activities in 2014

MOJ will:

• continue to grow its digital services division to meet the demands of the transformation agenda
• begin to identify opportunities to build specialist capability in-house, seeking out internal candidates with the right basic skills and knowledge to fill specialist roles in the future
• continue to build its digital champions network, increasing awareness, knowledge and capability across the business with the aim of being able to define the MOJ as a department that is digital by default
• develop its working environment into a more flexible and dynamic space, drawing on industry insight and experience

Progress during 2014

The digital services division grew from a team of fewer than 40 people to more than 140, almost all of whom are digital specialists. MOJ established a Manchester office, spreading the digital agenda wider across the department in the process.

MOJ also:

• continued to build specialist digital capability through a combination of recruiting digital specialists and in-house training schemes
• recruiting developers through a graduate development scheme
• started to bring talent in on a longer-term basis by incorporating Fast Stream project managers and other civil servants and by training Fast Streamers to address capability shortfalls under MOJ recruitment guidance

The Digital Services Tribunals team helped train HMCTS.net developers in Ruby development, supporting specialist capability across the MOJ.

Planned activities in 2015

In 2014 MOJ started advertising every post currently filled by a contractor and will continue to do so in 2015 until its digital service is fully staffed by civil servants.. Initiatives such as the digital services division’s relationship with The Makers Academy will ensure that the number of civil servants with digital skills will grow in 2015.

In 2015, MOJ Technology will be centralised within MOJ’s headquarters and specialist digital teams will be introduced into NOMS and HMCTS. This approach will also be followed with MOJ’s other agencies and ALBs of MOJ, including the LAA.

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

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

MOJ will use training programmes run by Government Digital Service (GDS) and its own capability-building programmes. It will work with GDS in establishing its new digital services division. With Cabinet Office support, MOJ will enable ICT, information assurance and procurement to adopt a more flexible way of working to support digital transformation.

Progress during 2013

MOJ has supported Cabinet Office in developing digital capability across departments.

Planned activities in 2014

MOJ will continue to support Cabinet Office in developing digital capability across departments.

Progress during 2014

Cabinet Office continued to help develop digital capability in MOJ by:

• providing liaison managers, joint working and specialist advisory resources
• giving advice and support through digital project controls and approvals processes
• supporting recruitment, by giving access to the GDS bench and other recruitment solutions

To encourage digital capability across departments MOJ ran initiatives such as workshops and placing staff within policy teams. It aimed to test what worked best, with a view to scaling up the most successful approaches. The digital services division continued work with the MOJ Policy Excellence Group and their policy hub. Digital staff at the policy hub work alongside those from communications, analytical service and policy to devise innovative solutions to policy issues with a focus on digital.

Planned activities in 2015

MOJ Digital Services is playing an important role in building digital capability for non-specialists across MOJ.

In 2015, initiatives such as the MOJ Staff Capability Project and the Justice Lab will allow the MOJ digital services team to increase digital capability in the operational and policy professions.

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

Redesign is starting in April 2013 and will be implemented by March 2015 (details to be included in relevant business plans). Following this, departments will redesign all services that handle more than 100,000 transactions each year.

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

MOJ will deliver 4 exemplar digital services by March 2015:

• prisoner visits booking
• civil claims (money claims, possession claims)
• fee payment (starting with employment tribunal fees)
• digital transformation of the Office of the Public Guardian (starting with applications for Lasting power of attorney)

MOJ will digitally redesign all other services, prioritising those handling more than 100,000 transactions per year.

Progress during 2013

MOJ has made good progress on the exemplar programme, launching the first beta exemplar service across government with the Office of the Public Guardian’s lasting power of attorney tool. Fifteen of its services are being transformed, with 5 in discovery, 3 in alpha and 7 in public beta. Altogether these cover 4.5 million transactions and more than 12 million page views per year.

Planned activities in 2014

MOJ’s first services will transition from beta phase into fully live sites, and it will begin decommissioning legacy applications and infrastructure. The department will continue to create and develop exemplars in line with delivery plans, and will accelerate beta testing. It will have a range of new services in alpha and beta phases, and will establish a proportionate, effective support model for transformed services.

Progress during 2014

MOJ’s 4 exemplars are all live. It continued to carry out internal assessments on services and products handling fewer than 100,000 transactions each year, and on internal facing products to ensure they’re also produced to a high standard.

Planned activities in 2015

MOJ Digital Services will prioritise:

• services supporting the digital justice system
• the redesign and transformation of those services handling more than 100,000 transactions each year that offer the greatest value to users and the department

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)

MOJ will digitally redesign all its services to meet the new Digital by Default Service Standard. It will adopt agile development to design, deliver and continuously improve digital services at pace, applying user insight at every stage.

Progress during 2013

MOJ has used its strong working relationship with GDS to ensure all the services it works on meet the Digital by Default Service Standard, adopting agile as the sole approach for the digital portfolio. The department continuously iterated its services in public beta based on real service user feedback, and used the strength of ‘demonstrating by doing’ to build support for the approach. MOJ built capability by establishing a dedicated user research team, and has conducted extensive user testing throughout the product development cycle.

Planned activities in 2014

MOJ will ensure its services continue to meet the Digital by Default Service Standard, and factor its requirements into delivery and development processes. This will include making formal assessments before launching live services in the forthcoming year. The department will:

• scale up user testing capacity by designating a user-testing environment in its working space
• continue to iterate frequently and improve live products based on user feedback
• be responsive to changes in policy that require changes in tools and services

Progress during 2014

MOJ continued to use the Digital by Default Service Standard as a framework to develop existing exemplars and new transactional services. The department took responsibility for the self-certification of services handling fewer than 100,000 transaction each year.

Its projects were based on user-led approaches, supported through agile user research in prototyping, iterative development and user testing. For products in beta, it explored what live support looked like, allowing iteration against ongoing user needs and adaption where needed.

Planned activities in 2015

MOJ Digital Services will assess all internal services against the service standard before any service goes live.

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)

MOJ will transition its corporate and specialist content to GOV.UK by April 2013 and April 2014 respectively. It will ensure that content is rewritten and repurposed to meet clearly identified user needs and presented in user-friendly formats.

Progress during 2013

MOJ has successfully moved the vast majority of its corporate and specialist content to GOV.UK. Agency and ALB transition processes are now underway though this process is likely to be completed after April 2014.

Planned activities in 2014

MOJ will complete the transition of agency and ALB content to GOV.UK and decommission the MOJ website.

Progress during 2014

All core content of agency and ALB websites were moved to GOV.UK by the end of December.

Some specialist content couldn’t be moved because a content format hadn’t yet been developed for them. This included procedure committee rules, some courts information and prison services orders and instructions, among others.

Planned activities in 2015

MOJ will move remaining specialist content to GOV.UK.

MOJ’s digital services division is building Wordpress websites and considering other solutions for the 12 organisations exempt from the transition process.

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)

MOJ will drive awareness and encourage channel shift through more consistent and sustained communication, and by collaborating with partners and stakeholders. Using digital channels, in particular social media, will allow it to communicate more effectively with all its audiences.

Progress during 2013

MOJ has promoted awareness of digital services by:

• actively publicising its services through a range of channels
• using promotion and signposting where traditional routes into services exist (eg distributing prisoner visit booking promotional material in prisons)
• building service promotion into its visibility and engagement strategy and making effective use of positive coverage in social media

Planned activities in 2014

MOJ will drive forward channel shift with a comprehensive campaign around the range of services. It will release some services into public beta and make others live in the coming year. It will continue to make services so good that people choose to use them.

Progress during 2014

MOJ worked to encourage users to move from traditional to digital channels when using government services. For example, around 35% of users booking a prison visit opted to use digital channels in December, up from 19.2% in August.

Planned activities in 2015

MOJ will continue to improve awareness of the services it offers by working with the press and by participating in events such as Hackathons and a 2015 Sprint Justice event.

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)

MOJ will provide other ways for people to access digital services if they aren’t able to do so independently. It will look to work with a range of external partners to ensure that the right level of support is provided, and focus it on those who need the most help.

Progress during 2013

MOJ provided assisted digital access for services in public beta by maximising the use of existing call centres. The department took account of, and planned for, assisted digital as a key requirement in the product development cycle.

Planned activities in 2014

MOJ will continue to ensure that appropriate assisted digital is provided for all its services in public beta or live and will continue to take a strategic approach to the development of those services through wider engagement.

Progress during 2014

MOJ continued to explore needs and how assisted digital might be provided for offline users of its exemplar services.

It participated in meetings of the digital leaders’ assisted digital sub-committee and worked closely with GDS to set up an assisted digital procurement framework. All 4 MOJ exemplars worked on developing assisted digital support. The Prison visit booking team completed their assessment of assisted digital needs and published their assisted digital survey methodology.

Planned activities in 2015

MOJ will continue to support and influence the work of the assisted digital cross-government group.

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)

MOJ will access a wider range of suppliers, with an emphasis on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and run leaner, faster tendering processes. It will also prioritise the use of open source technologies.

Progress during 2013

MOJ consistently used G-Cloud frameworks for procurement activity and almost exclusively sourced from SMEs. It began to develop a procurement strategy focused on call-off capacity to significantly reduce lead times.

Planned activities in 2014

MOJ will continue to find the most efficient routes possible to procurement, working collaboratively and constructively with procurement colleagues to identify these.

Progress during 2014

MOJ continued to work closely with procurement to improve tendering processes for digital services, and embedded a procurement specialist within digital services.

Planned activities in 2015

MOJ’s digital service division will continue to work with GDS, the Crown Commercial Service and its own commercial and contract management team to increase the pace and efficiency of procurement.

It will also work with those same parties to contribute to the development of cross-government procurement frameworks, ensuring they are fit for purpose to support agile service delivery.

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)

MOJ will identify, develop and use common components and services. Its services will be built in a modular fashion, with ‘loosely coupled but tightly integrated’ modules, to allow us to take full advantage of platforms developed by Cabinet Office as they emerge.

Progress during 2013

MOJ has already benefitted from the common component approach, with a high degree of potential reuse opportunities across the range of services currently being transformed. The department worked closely with GDS to ensure that it has identified commonality more widely across government. It worked directly with Drivers and Vehicle Licensing Agency and Home Office, police and the Crown Prosecution Service on a range of opportunities for sharing components and code.

Planned activities in 2014

MOJ will maximise the benefits of common component use as more services move through the product cycle. It anticipates that there will be reusable payment, calendar, booking, document submission, authentication and other components featuring across a range of services this year.

Progress during 2014

MOJ recognised the benefits of common component use as more services moved through the product cycle (such as those listed above). It built an authentication component with future compatibility with GOV.UK Verify which was used in its exemplars.

Prison visit booking code was used elsewhere in government to build booking systems. The Court finder team collaborated with HMCTS on an open platform of information about courts.

Planned activities in 2015

MOJ Technology’s Future IT Sourcing Programme will be completed, paving the way for a single technology platform in MOJ.

MOJ Digital Services will support service transformation by building interoperable products and components.

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)

MOJ will identify and remove legislative barriers to digitising services. In practice this could mean reviewing current restrictive interpretations of laws or amending legislation that prevents us from developing straightforward, convenient digital services. As legislation can take time to change, in the interim MOJ will get on with delivering partial digital solutions, but always with a view to realising the full potential for digitisation later.

Progress during 2013

MOJ continued to design services to deliver a fully digital solution wherever possible. Some barriers remain and the department has sought to ensure that all aspects of services that can be digital are made digital. The department has begun developing a strategy to address legislative barriers in a more comprehensive fashion and will seek cross-departmental views as the work develops.

Planned activities in 2014

MOJ will deliver against the agreed strategy, conducting a legislative review as a crucial part of early discovery work. The department will also conduct an open policymaking exercise with MOJ service users, stakeholders and the wider public. This will begin to build a picture of the relevant practical, legal and political considerations of the legislative and regulatory barriers to wholly digital services. As a department with a high volume of transactions in the legal sphere, MOJ believes that there is great scope for reform.

Progress during 2014

MOJ’s digital services team began a feasibility study into changing legislation both across government and in MOJ, to enable the introduction of end-to-end digital products. To do this, it recruited policy professionals with strong digital skills to lead on the required changes to policy process and legislation.

Planned activities in 2015

MOJ Digital Services is conducting a review of all relevant legislation that may hinder the introduction of end-to-end digital products.

The team aims to increase cross-departmental work on these barriers and to be ready to introduce legislation at the beginning of the next parliament.

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)

MOJ will take steps to measure performance and deliver real-time management information. It will work with its business to identify how it can apply this to existing services and build automated data collection into all of its new services.

Progress during 2013

MOJ adopted comprehensive and consistent analytics on all its services. It used agile methods to identify opportunities for getting better, more relevant, targeted management information around the use of services for the benefit of its organisations. It built capability in business analysis and has been engaging with the business to build effective cost models to define the benefits of digital transformation.

Planned activities in 2014

MOJ will * continue to use analytics on all services * maximise benefits to the business from service transformation * develop a performance and analytics dashboard for all its services

The department will help services define metrics that allow it to understand the service transformation and channel shift that building digital services creates. Then it can identify necessary policy changes and cost savings, backed up with evidence gathered through iterative development of the service.

Progress during 2014

MOJ began developing analytics in exemplar services, both before and during public use, to measure performance and identify areas for further development. It worked with GDS Performance Platform colleagues to improve the way management information was reported across all contact channels. The Prison visits booking team built a dashboard to showcase performance against the agreed service standards (the 3-day turnaround from submitting the request to staff confirmation) for all prisons. The Court finder team worked on a combination analysis and feedback system to inform senior managers of service feedback. This is not just a digital tool but also examines live service delivery.

Planned activities in 2015

MOJ Digital Services will continue to work with the GDS Performance Platform team to improve the way management information is reported across all contact channels.

The team will also continue the process of building dashboards to show the scope and status of all digital products.

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

Departmental digital strategy commitments (December 2012)

MOJ will open up policymaking and engagement by giving more access to social media and encouraging its effective use. It will make full use of digital technology to become more transparent, make data more accessible and improve performance, accountability and service.

Progress during 2013

MOJ conducted a range of open policymaking exercises in 2013, employing a number of different tools and techniques. The department established an open policymaking group to provide co-ordination and guidance, so that the benefits of open policymaking are fully realised.

Planned activities in 2014

MOJ will continue to use open policymaking with stakeholders and the general public. It will also continue to drive forward the openness and transparency agenda, looking at new and informative ways to provide data.

Progress during 2014

MOJ launched its Open Policy Making Hub of Expertise, bringing together different areas of business to add value to policymaking processes. It aims to put user needs at the heart of MOJ’s work, and to make the policymaking process more open, transparent and collaborative.

MOJ’s digital services team engaged directly with the public through a variety of digital tools. Zendesk was used to integrate feedback across prison visit bookings, civil claims and Court finder services. The Lasting Power of Attorney team put a feedback process in place for users to provide their views directly to the team.

Planned activities in 2015

MOJ Digital Services will break down barriers between policy, operations and digital services to ensure that user needs are at the heart of MOJ’s work.

MOJ Digital Services will support open policymaking in MOJ, to ensure that user needs are used to inform policymaking.

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

MOJ helped people get online through talk-through digital inclusion services available on prison visits booking and civil claims. It planned them for employment tribunal applications. These services were made accessible over the phone to improve users’ online confidence in digital services. After talking through the service, digital inclusion service scripts directed users to third party services to improve their skills long term. This was done even in cases where the service is unlikely to be repeated and so MOJ was unlikely to see a direct return from this action. This contributes to improving lifelong digital inclusion for all who use its services. MOJ shared its scripts with other government departments.

NOMS worked with Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) to create a virtual campus to help prisoners develop the skills they need to become more employable in an increasingly digital world.

Planned activities in 2015

MOJ Digital Services will work with cross government groups and third parties to generate awareness of the services it is implementing for the benefit of the public. This will ensure that more people are aware that government services are now being provided digitally to encourage digital participation.

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

MOJ worked on a number of initiatives to open up government data. It improved and opened up data to 16 application programming interfaces (APIs). The tribunals database team built online and API solutions to improve access to information about the outcome of trials and tribunals.

MOJ opened up data through innovation drives and attending more digital data events such as Hackathon conferences. At the TechCrunch Disrupt Europe Hackathon, sponsored by MOJ Digital Services, ethical hackers faced a challenge to build something useful for victims of crime. MOJ’s team built an application for a Twitter-based crime map displaying crime rates and risks in areas near an individual.

Planned activities in 2015

MOJ Digital Services will take 2 approaches to opening up data and transactions. To present timely and accurate data-driven content on GOV.UK, it will build systems which provide required data to GOV.UK. MOJ will also support access to transactions through APIs that support a known user need and complement user-facing services.

MOJ Digital Services will work closely with partners across government to ensure the effective use of open data standards and the creation of government data standards, supported by the necessary tools, services and communities.