“Apply for a postal vote” and “Apply for a proxy vote” beta assessment

Service Standard assessment report “Apply for a postal vote” and “Apply for a proxy vote” 07/09/2023

From:
Central Digital and Data Office
Published
11 December 2023
Assessment date:
7 September 2023
Result:
Met
Stage:
Beta

Service Standard assessment report

“Apply for a postal vote” and “Apply for a proxy vote”

From: Central Digital & Data Office (CDDO)
Assessment date: 07/09/2023
Stage: Beta
Result: Met
Service provider: DULHC

Previous assessment reports

Service description

People who can’t or don’t want to vote in person need a different way of voting or need someone to vote for them. ‘Apply for a postal vote’ and ‘Get someone to vote for me (proxy)’ ‘Apply for a proxy vote’ will enable them to apply for a proxy or a postal vote.

In England, Scotland and Wales there is a paper-based user journey for electors who want to vote by post or proxy. New online application journey will be introduced for electors who want to apply online.

The Elections Act 2022 amends existing legislation to enable the identity of absent vote applicants (electors using postal votes or appointing proxies to vote for them) in Great Britain to be checked at the point of application. The identity checking  process will apply to paper applications as well as to applications made online.

Electors using a postal vote on a long-term basis in Great Britain will need to reapply every three years; currently electors can apply to vote by post indefinitely – with only a requirement to update their personal identifiers every five years.

A person may be appointed to act as a proxy for a maximum of four electors in total (currently two electors in any electoral area and an uncapped number of close family members), and within that four, no more than two may be electors who are not overseas electors or service voters.

Postal and Proxy Voters in Scotland and Wales:  Whilst the Elections Bill makes identity checking a legal requirement for voting in UK Parliamentary elections, Police and Crime Commissioner elections and by-elections in England and Wales), the requirement does not apply to devolved polls in Scotland and Wales. Separate applications are in place for such elections and referendums. This will mean that some electors in Scotland or Wales who wish to vote by post or proxy for all elections they hold the franchise for, will be able to complete separate applications, one through the online absent vote application service or paper form to cover their votes in UK Parliamentary and / or PCC elections (and English local elections and referendums if also entitled to vote in those), and another application through the relevant Scottish or Welsh government services, to cover devolved polls/referendums.[Note - they will also be able to apply on paper for either UK / English and Scottish or Welsh polls.]

Northern Ireland is not currently in the scope of this service, but will join at a later stage, not yet defined.

Service users

This service is for:

  • Applicants (electors and special category electors) - people who can’t or don’t want to vote in person - including overseas applicants
  • Local authority EROs

Postal voting service users:

Groups Locations
Vote by post for convenience England, Wales, Scotland
Overseas UK voters Europe, Commonwealth
Over 70s England, Wales, Scotland
People with severe disabilities England, Wales, Scotland
Low digital skills England, Wales, Scotland
Users with access needs Europe, Commonwealth
Users without a permanent address England, Wales, Scotland
Users whose first language is not English England, Wales, Scotland
Electoral Registration Officers England, Wales, Scotland

Proxy voting service users:

Groups Locations
Away on polling day (single election only)  
For being away on polling day, medical issue or disability, or not being able to vote in person because of work or military service England, Wales, Scotland
Education (full time course away from home) England, Wales, Scotland
Armed Forces England, Wales, Scotland
Crown/British Council England, Wales, Scotland
Spouses (marriage and civil partnership) for proxy applicants of armed forces, educational courses, employment). England, Wales, Scotland
Low digital skills England, Wales, Scotland
Overseas UK voters Europe, Commonwealth
User with access need Europe, Commonwealth
Users whose first language is not English England, Wales, Scotland
Users without a permanent address England, Wales, Scotland
Elections Registration Officers England, Wales, Scotland
Scottish and Welsh electors Scotland, Wales

1. Understand users and their needs

Decision

The service met point 1 of the Standard.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • The team had actively recruited for a range of disadvantaged and marginalised groups through their connections with the LAs
  • The team have carried out extensive research to understand the needs of users with access needs and have produced succinct archetypes outlining the specific needs, pain points and behaviours of groups within this user type, demonstrating their understanding of this user group
  • The team has adopted a robust approach to continuously engage with Local Authorities throughout, to ensure that they understand how the front end impacts the back-office processes, and the impact this has on EROs
  • The team have a developed a well-thought-out plan for their further research activity, utilising a holistic approach to the overseas electorate research as this user group will be impacted by the changes to the Register to Vote service
  • Had effectively understood the constraints placed on them for testing and addressed the risks appropriately
  • Has tested against a range of assistive technologies with different for users with accessibility needs and has a plan to develop this further
  • The team has involved EROs in the user facing journey design feedback, as well as the portal design work

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

  • Identifying any user needs for achieving ‘real’ outcomes in a live setting, that couldn’t be addressed due to the constraints of the private beta work by utilising the first reasonable opportunity of a suitable by-election to run ‘real’ private beta activity.
  • Continue to explore ways to engage with carers and helpers (i.e., tapping into carers networks and forums to recruit) so that the service understands how they support electorates to determine whether any alternative journeys or additional guidance are needed and practicable
  • Build on the recommendations of the Accessibility Audit, and continue to explore how to test the portal with users of assistive technology

2. Solve a whole problem for users

Decision

The service met point 2 of the Standard.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • through focus on solving the whole problem around voting and elections for Local Authority EROs and what success looks like, this has provided consistency of experience for EROs and projected benefits
  • the team has thought about linking to wider services (register to vote) to reduce cognitive burden on users by pre-populating data fields
  • the team had put considerable thought and effort into managing the range of stakeholders to ensure these multiple perspectives contributed to the design of the full end to end journey. The use of the Business Change team to support this function was effective

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

  • build on the content recommendations for the GDS start page and support materials
  • explore how to test the service in public beta to ensure there are no unintended consequences of the design, that couldn’t have been identified within the constraints of the Public Beta
  • explore how the failure points in the journey enable the user to achieve their goal, and how this ‘failure data’ can be codified and used to iterate the service
  • understand and incorporate future tailored marketing change activities that support the adoption and use of the new service for different service users

3. Provide a joined-up experience across all channels

Decision

The service met point 3 of the Standard.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • The team has effectively understood and communicated constraints and worked well across organisations and boundaries
  • a wide range of artefacts had been developed and iterated to support the design and consolidate understanding across stakeholders
  • the offline processes and user support has been designed and tested with LAs

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

  • explore how the user needs for onboarding to the portal vary across LAs, and how onboarding support can be further designed and iterated to meet those needs
  • explore the extent that the offline processes and user support operate as intended without the constraints of the previous test setting and user groups
  • explore how data for drop out points in the journey can be collected and codified, to understand common reasons for drop out to support design iteration
  • explore what factors drive inconsistencies in matching both for the automated and clerical system, with a view to identifying potential practical ways to support consistency
  • explore the extent that organisational design and performance factors impact variation on EROs’ behaviour in using the portal and resulting outcomes (especially during periods of peak demand)

4. Make the service simple to use

Decision

The service met point 4 of the Standard.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • the GDS 11 barriers framework has been used to support testing and design decisions
  • data (qualitative and quantitative) has been used to understand service performance and drive continuous improvement (especially the signature upload) for the user journey. There was an effective use of the Service Usability Scale (SUS)
  • the GDS design patterns had been used, and feedback to develop (step by step navigation pattern) and improve patterns provided to GDS, as well as developing a design system for the portal that built on GDS patterns

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

  • explore how converging with Gov. Uk One Login will impact user behaviour, especially the additional friction for users setting up an identity account for the purpose of a single transaction
  • identify and explore further design options for reducing cognitive burden on users, especially through the pre-population of data fields
  • explore whether responses to the ‘ease of use’ questions in the SUS, provide additional insight into how make the service simpler

5. Make sure everyone can use the service

Decision

The service met point 5 of the Standard.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • The team has considered the risks and conducted research to ensure task completion for a range of potentially excluded users
  • the plans for continual testing with users with access needs are comprehensive
  • there is a signpost to offline support on every page for users unable to proceed on the digital journey

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

  • fix any A and AA non-compliant issues from the accessibility audit and update accessibility statement
  • address the content issues raised in the Content Audit, especially those related to Accessibility
  • explore whether there is a need to check and ensure consistency with the Gov.UK style guide across all text, online and offline content
  • continue to monitor non-digital or off-line processes and their impact or relationship to the service, especially outside the constraints of the previous testing, and at times of high demand on the service

6. Have a multidisciplinary team

Decision

The service met point 6 of the Standard.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • User research and private beta activities have been a team sport with learnings shared and knowledge transferred to team members and the wider team.   For example, we heard how the performance analyst’s observation of user research fed actively into prioritisation and strengthened the service
  • There was reflection and action on how to improve as a wider inter-organisational team from previous experience with the Voter ID service.
  • There was evidence that both business change philosophy and policy were central to outcomes and intent of the team.

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

  • Continue prioritising building permanent capability as the team is imbalanced toward contractors, especially within the user research, design and user experience disciplines.  This will reduce the risk of reliance on suppliers and contractors.
  • Confirm their plan for their eventual transition to live running.

7. Use agile ways of working

Decision

The service met point 7 of the Standard.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • The many iterations of the complex signature upload and signature wavier features, in response to user research findings, together with how team members collaborated, demonstrated strong agile ways of working behaviours.
  • The team has evolved ways of working which include a focus on policy and business change.
  • Rather than reinventing the wheel, they have looked to reuse tried and trusted components and lessons from other government services including DVLA and Passport Office.
  • The team look at the ‘election service’ as a whole and look to reuse and learn from other parts of the service including voting with ID.
  • The team are defined to deliver to shared outcomes.

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

  • Utilise the first reasonable opportunity of a suitable by-election to enable ‘real’ private beta running to provide greater opportunity to derisk public beta before a national scenario
  • Continue to work closely with partners including Local Authorities as an inter-organisation team to ensure effective mutual understanding and to achieve shared outcomes.

8. Iterate and improve frequently

Decision

The service met point 8 of the Standard.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • During private beta there has been collaboration between the service team and consortium of teams invested in the outcome including Local Authority electoral service teams which have helped surface significant elements.
  • They evidenced that front-end and back-end teams have worked effectively to create the conditions to iterate and improve e.g., exemplar behaviours exhibited between UR and performance analytics.
  • the team has focused in on iterating and testing the signature upload part of the journey which they have identified as a key pain point across user groups, to further investigate how best to manage users’ expectations around what they can and cannot do
  • They have reused patterns, features and components across government where possible to achieve efficiencies as well as contributing to defining new patterns.
  • There has been consideration of the various channel support offered to users via local routes.
  • They are open with what they can and can’t do.

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

  • Ensure that support for external users supplied by local provision including telephone services is thoroughly reviewed.
  • As they have committed to; conduct more research on overseas electors.
  • Consider exploring ways to alleviate the anxieties surrounding the session time out for users to determine whether additional guidance about what to do at the signature upload part of the journey is needed, so that users do not feel the need to revert to the paper form
  • Utilising first reasonable opportunity of a suitable by-election n to enable ‘real’ private beta running to provide greater opportunity to derisk public beta before a national scenario.

9. Create a secure service which protects users’ privacy

Decision

The service met point 9 of the Standard.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • the service continues to retain as little data as possible before handing it off to Electoral Registration Offices (EROs) and any data that the service retains for analysis is anonymized

  • the team have put measures in place to proactively monitor the service to protect users from fraud

  • the service has added National Insurance number checks with DWP to reduce fraud

  • the team are continuing to work with DWP and HMRC to minimise fraud risk

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

  • continue working closely with Election Management System (EMS) vendors to provide a consistent service across Electoral Registration Offices (EROs) regarding exposing counter-fraud data

10. Define what success looks like and publish performance data

Decision

The service met point 10 of the Standard.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • The team have identified KPIs and monitored and benchmarked these.
  • Dashboards give the team good access to performance data across the whole journey.
  • Metrics are well integrated with product development and UR processes, supplementing user research effectively to help diagnose issues, understand behaviour and support decision making.
  • The team were aware of the limitations of their study and the potentially different motivations of recruited participants vs actual service users. The team have thought about how to recruit a large and diverse cohort of study participants.

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

  • Test the assumption that recruited study participants for private beta are representative of service users – particularly with regard to the very high completion rates achieved during private beta.
  • If possible, deploy the service in Public Beta in the run-up to a by-election, promoting it within one constituency. Review performance data to understand the validity of the assumptions and identify further improvements where necessary.
  • Baseline the existing paper-based service and directly compare performance indicators with the new service.

11. Choose the right tools and technology

Decision

The service met point 11 of the Standard.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • the infrastructure uses cloud best practice and the appropriate cloud managed services for the service.

  • public facing components of the service use AWS Lambda for automated scaling to mitigate unpredictable traffic patterns in the run-up to an election period

  • the service architecture uses queues to decouple online submissions from their processing which provides a better user experience

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

  • provide more detail about how the service is built upon the existing Register to Vote (RtV) and Voter Authority Certificate (VAC) services and how this impacts future development

12. Make new source code open

Decision

The service met point 12 of the Standard.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

  • investigate publishing the remaining closed-source code microservices that can be open-sourced

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

Decision

The service met point 13 of the Standard.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • the GOV.UK Design System has been used to meet accessibility requirements and provide consistency with other gov.uk services.
  • the NotGovUK implementation is used for the Electoral Registration Office Platform (EROP) to maintain the GOV.UK design
  • the service uses GOV.UK Notify for notifications
  • the team have used and improved the code for the DVLA Signature Processing service
  • the service uses the Match and Citizen APIs from DWP
  • the team contribute to the NotGovUK implementation which will benefit other government departments that use this framework

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

  • promote the work that they have done improving the NotGovUK framework and Signature Processing service which other departments may find useful

14. Operate a reliable service

Decision

The service met point 14 of the Standard.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • There is significant financial investment in the future team and there is a long-term contract with external suppliers to support the service going forward.
  • the service has been designed to handle traffic peaks
  • cloud managed services are used sensibly to provide reliability for the service
  • the existing support team has assistance with out of hours support and security with other teams

What the team needs to explore

Before their next assessment, the team needs to:

  • Be very considerate of demands on Local Authorities and monitor during the suggested suitable by-election and act accordingly.
  • Similarly, consider and manage for peaks in demand not only before elections but during the yearly cycle through a clear joint change driven plan with partner organisations including Local Authorities.
  • Utilise learning from ‘real’ private beta service running at the next reasonable and suitable by-election as a positive opportunity to derisk in a national scenario
  • Continue collaboration with Election Management System (EMS) vendors regarding the security and resilience of the service

Updates to this page

Published 11 December 2023
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