Service Standard

14. Operate a reliable service

Minimise service downtime and have a plan to deal with it when it does happen.

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Why it’s important

Users expect to be able to use online services 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Many users have limited choice over how and when they access government services. For example, they may be a carer who only has time to apply for benefits in the early hours of the morning. If a service is unavailable or slow, it can mean those users are unable to get the help they need.

What it means

Service teams should:

  • maximise uptime and speed of response for the online part of the service
  • be able to deploy software changes regularly, without significant downtime (for example, by minimising the effort involved in creating new environments and populating pre-production environments with test data)
  • carry out quality assurance testing regularly
  • test the service in an environment that’s as similar to live as possible
  • have appropriate monitoring in place, together with a proportionate, sustainable plan to respond to problems identified by monitoring (given the impact of problems on users and on government)
  • actively work towards fixing any organisational or contractual issues which make it difficult to maximise availability (for example, by agreeing a common set of languages, tools, and ways of working for technical staff - either informally, or through something more formal like the GDS way

Uptime and availability: keeping your service online

Deploying software regularly

Quality assurance: testing your service regularly

Monitoring the status of your service

The GDS way

Service standard points

1. Understand users and their needs

2. Solve a whole problem for users

3. Provide a joined up experience across all channels

4. Make the service simple to use

5. Make sure everyone can use the service

6. Have a multidisciplinary team

7. Use agile ways of working

8. Iterate and improve frequently

9. Create a secure service which protects users’ privacy

10. Define what success looks like and publish performance data

11. Choose the right tools and technology

12. Make new source code open

13. Use and contribute to open standards, common components and patterns

14. Operate a reliable service

Last update:

Added links to related guidance and other standard points. There is no change to the content of the standard point itself.

  1. Guidance first published