Apply for a National Insurance number alpha assessment report
The report for the Apply for a National Insurance number alpha assessment on 29 July 2020
Digital Service Standard assessment report
Apply for National Insurance Number
| From: | The Government Digital Service (GDS) |
| Assessment date: | 29/07/20 |
| Stage: | Alpha |
| Result: | Met |
| Service provider: | The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) |
Service description
The Apply for a National Insurance number (NINo) service enables citizens to apply for a NINo on GOV.UK and receive it quickly. The current process is intimidating, not transparent to users and it can take up to nine weeks from application to receipt.
The scope for the service is application, information gathering, assessment and issue of a NINo. It includes both the internal and the citizen facing journey. The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) serves citizens applying for a NINo as Third Country Nationals (work visa eligible citizens) that hold a valid Biometric Residence Permit (BRP).
Allowing citizens to apply for a NINo on GOV.UK reduces time needed during the face-to-face evidence appointment at a Jobcentre and replaces the clerical paper application (CA4500) with an online digital solution.
Service users
1) Third Country National Visa holders whose primary purpose is to work and refugees who are allocated a BRP.
2) All other National Insurance number applicants:
- UK citizens (including dual nationals and young people not included in HMRC’s registration process)
- Common Travel Area nationals (Republic of Ireland, Channel Islands and Isle of Man)
- HM Forces (and their dependents)
- Benefit Inspired Applications (people who require a NINo to support benefit applications, including student loans)
- EU / EEA nationals
- Short-term seasonal workers (people who will live and work in the UK for less than six months)
- Visa applicants with a secondary right to work (for example students)
- International Pensions Centre (IPC) applications (people requiring a NINo to apply for Pension Credit)
1. Understand user needs
Decision
The service met point 1 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has done in-depth research at this stage of the service to uncover internal and external user needs and pain points
- the team has recognised the assisted digital need (21% from 306 users) and have plans in place to support users
- a range of methodology is used to understand challenges users face (for example; language, understanding why they need to supply the data, have mistrust) and how they would interact with the service
- the team has made efforts to gather further learnings through observing paper trials and UK visa postal process
- personas are evidence based covering a diverse range of users
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- continue to understand where users would go for support and how that support works for them. If there is mistrust in service and language barriers, what can be done to help users to overcome that challenge
- continue to include users of accessibility needs in your research, understand their needs and pain points
2. Do ongoing user research
Decision
The service met point 2 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has a very good short and long term plan in place for ongoing user research
- different avenues are used to recruit users for interviews and testing
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- continue to speak to a diverse range of users and test the end to end journey with users (users that fall in the assisted digital spectrum and users that use assistive tech)
- look to overcome the challenge of testing with actual users of the service that have an assistive need. It is acceptable to test the end to end journey with non expert users
3. Have a multidisciplinary team
Decision
The service met point 3 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the original alpha team consisted largely of civil servants
- there was good communication between the original alpha team and the new team taking the work forward into private beta
- the original team was able to attend the alpha assessment and build confidence that knowledge would not be lost between the phases
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- continue to be conscious of the need to reduce reliance on contractors within the team and ensure that they do not lose knowledge about the work done if individuals leave the team
- consider the size and shape of the team and how appropriate it is for the delivery of MVP+
- do a further discovery and alpha for MVP+
4. Use agile methods
Decision
The service met point 4 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the transition between the original alpha team and their newer colleagues was being handled with care and attention
- the new team was able to outline their initial processes and ways of working and demonstrate how they were using or planning to use agile methods to deliver the next phase of the work
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- make sure that they continue to regularly hold show and tells and retrospectives
- continue to test and iterate the tools they use to ensure that they meet the needs of a remote-first team as both the team and the context they are working in have changed dramatically between alpha and private beta
5. Iterate and improve frequently
Decision
The service met point 5 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has extensively iterated and tested the service during alpha and made improvements to better meet user needs
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- ensure that they have sufficient time in private beta to further iterate and improve the service
- ensure that they have tested the questions with users and had sufficient time to iterate these
- the panel was concerned at the potential risks at the rise from 15 to 26 questions between alpha and private beta MVP so would urge the team to test these
6. Evaluate tools and systems
Decision
The service met point 6 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team is utilising existing DWP infrastructure and components where appropriate
- the architectural patterns, technology choices and frameworks demonstrate a comprehensive modern approach to the development of services
- the use of the AWS cloud platform and (micro)services therein shows a clear understanding and adoption of cloud based services
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- continue to explore how the existing processes that require manual intervention can be reduced, streamlined and integrated into the core service(s)
7. Understand security and privacy issues
Decision
The service met point 7 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has identified how existing processes with the BRP service has helped to refine the MVP service
- the team has a strong anti-virus and acceptance testing posture
- the team is aware of the sensitivity of the Personally Identifiable Information (PII) information required for the service and ensure that all components employ encryption and rest and in transit
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- continue to work with their data protection team to complete the necessary Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA)
- explore session durations and look at how they can help to manage how users on common/shared devices can clear their session
- complete an IT Health Check and undertake and remediation activities
- consider any security implications if “save and return” or similar functionality is introduced
8. Make all new source code open
Decision
The service did not meet point 8 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team is working in an agile way, deploying infrastructure from code and using GIT in development and deployments
- developer team members can approve the commit of other members code
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- identify how they can open-source as much of their service as possible, particularly the frontend components
- identify which existing components the service utilises are/can be open sourced
9. Use open standards and common platforms
Decision
The service met point 9 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team reuse many existing internal platforms and services
- the team uses and interoperates with systems from other government departments (OGDs) using appropriate APIs
- existing technologies within the Citizen Information Platform is planned to be used to monitor technical components
- the service is deployed as docker containers onto the existing CI Platform Kubernetes cluster, that could be hosted on/across multiple virtualisation platforms
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- where possible, input into and influence the requirements of ‘down and upstream’ components, to ensure there is appropriate iteration available and the Service is not restricted by existing services
10. Test the end-to-end service
Decision
The service met point 10 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the citizen facing and civil servant service can be tested
- the team has multiple environments from dev/test to production, to develop the service, with automated testing and deployment pipelines
- there is a complete and coherent logical infrastructure and application architecture
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- have a load testing plan and begin to explore business continuity scenarios
- ensure that validation on user input(s) is sufficiently tested
- continue to develop and consider the MVP+ service to ensure that the current service will not need rework to accommodate future functionality
11. Make a plan for being offline
Decision
The service met point 11 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the service is designed with appropriate high availability, business continuity and disaster recovery driven from non-functional requirements. Selected cloud services provide high SLAs
- the previous method of completing the service offline is still available for MVP
- the technology choices generally allow for quick Recovery Time Objects (RTOs)
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- continue to consider and develop the functionality to allow automatic scaling
- test high loads of concurrent sessions (load test)
- continue to define RTO/Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs)
12: Make sure users succeed first time
Decision
The service met point 12 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has done rapid iteration of the question set and carried out several rounds of usability testing
What the team needs to explore
Before private beta, the team needs to:
- carry out several rounds of prototyping, iteration and user research on the new questions that are being added
- work out how to ask the gender question more sympathetically and carry out usability testing with trans and non binary people - the question currently does not acknowledge non-binary people at all. This may involve splitting into several questions
- find a way of selectively recruiting into the private beta without using a GOV.UK start page, and gracefully handling the majority that should be using the existing service
Before the next assessment, the team needs to:
- iterate the design based on private beta analytics backed up by in-depth user research
- carry out mobile only user research
- make sure the name fields are understood by nationalities that use different naming systems
- clarify any security and usability issues around personal information being stored by browsers
- include the sent email in the user research and make sure users know what they need to do next
- have a clear plan for a new alpha around the MVP+ as there are significant interaction and usability challenges with digital proof of identity
- test and iterate digital inclusion and non-digital routes
- continue research with third parties and agents who might fill this in on someone else’s behalf
13. Make the user experience consistent with GOV.UK
Decision
The service met point 13 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team is using the design system for their prototype and will use in production
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- feed back to the design system any research around sex and gender questions and name questions
- have a process in place to update the service when the design system changes
- contribute findings from Searchlight design to the cross-government internal systems design community
- have a plan for designing and testing the non-design system components that will be required for MVP+
14. Encourage everyone to use the digital service
Decision
The service met point 14 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has a clear idea of the benefits offered by the new service
- the team has a strong understanding of the assisted digital support required by a significant number of their users
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- ensure they continue to research and test the service with users with assisted digital needs
- ensure they can capture data from the service to understand where users might be struggling to use the new service
- have a clear plan for increasing digital take up during beta
- be able to present evidence to support this plan for digital take up
15. Collect performance data
Decision
The service did not meet point 15 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has held workshops to understand what data they might collect and how they can measure the success of the service
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- explore and implement using the paid version of Google Analytics to help them measure performance of the service
- use data to help them understand problems facing users
- used data to help iterate and improve the service through private beta
16. Identify performance indicators
Decision
The service met point 16 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has done work to understand what success means for the service
- the team has a clear understanding of the assisted digital users of their service and have plans to continue to offer them support to channel shift
- the team has plans to address the four key performance indicators as well as a range of other metrics
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- continue to work with assisted digital users
- demonstrate how they have started to measure the metrics outlined and how these have helped they improve the service
- how the team will track users switching from the offline service to the online service
17. Report performance data on the Performance Platform
Decision
The service met point 17 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has worked hard to identify a significant number of metrics by which they can measure their success
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- ensure that they are ready to report on the four mandatory Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
- ensure that the performance platform is able to support the metrics they want to display on their dashboard
18. Test with the minister
Decision
For Alpha: Point 18 of the Standard does not apply at this stage.