Service assessments and applying the Service Standard

Book a service assessment

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From:
Standards and assurance community

Before you book an assessment you should:

  • check your service against the Service Standard to see if you’re covering all the points
  • have a meeting with your department’s assessment team to check if your service is ready for an assessment - and whether it will be assessed by a panel from your department or a cross-government panel

Your department’s assessment team will agree a time and date for the assessment with you. They will contact CDDO if a cross-government panel is needed. They should contact CDDO at least 4 weeks before you want the service to be assessed.

Most services are assessed remotely. Read more about how remote assessments are run.

If you’re in an agency, you may have to contact your parent department to arrange an assessment.

If your service does not meet the standard at it’s assessment

You’ll need to book a reassessment by contacting your department’s assurance team.

You’ll get a report explaining the things you’ll need to improve to meet the standard.

What information you need to provide

Before a service assessment, the assessment team will ask you to provide a short service brief, including a:

  • description of your service and its users
  • recent prototype or link to a development environment
  • high-level technical architecture diagram

You can bring user journey maps or anything that will help you demonstrate your work to the assessment.

Who should attend the assessment

You should bring the people you feel are most able to answer the questions you’re likely to be asked.

It’s recommended that at least the following team members attend:

  • service owner
  • technical architect or lead developer
  • user researcher
  • designer
  • performance analyst (for beta and live assessments)

Your department’s assessment team can recommend who you should bring.

Prepare for an assessment

You can find out what will happen at a service assessment. This will help you plan what you’ll say and how long you’ll need to spend on each section at your assessment. You can also read previous service assessment reports.

You may find the following guides useful:

From:
Standards and assurance community
Last updated
7 months ago
Last update:

Updated to reflect changes in responsibilities around assessments.

  1. Added steps teams should take before booking a GDS assessment.

  2. Guidance first published