Commercial Continuous Improvement Assessment Framework beta reassessment
Service Standard reassessment report Commercial Continuous Improvement Assessment Framework (CCIAF) 11/12/2023
Service Standard reassessment report
Commercial Continuous Improvement Assessment Framework beta reassessment (CCIAF)
| From: | Cabinet Office |
| Assessment date: | 11/12/2023 |
| Stage: | Beta |
| Result: | Amber |
| Service provider: | Government Commercial Function (GCF) |
Previous assessment reports:
- Alpha 24 June 2022 - not Met
- Alpha reassessment 16 August 2022 - Met
- Beta assessment 8 September 2023 - Not Met
Service description
The Commercial Continuous Improvement Assessment Framework (CCIAF) is a framework which allows government departments, their arms length bodies and wider public sector organisations to regularly assess their organisation’s commercial maturity against the Government Commercial Functional Standard.
It allows organisations to drive improvement in their commercial processes via recurring continuous improvement plans.
Participant organisations receive a maturity rating (i.e. “Developing”, “Good”, “Better”, “Best”) and a percentage score by completing a peer reviewed self-assessment.
CCIAF self-assessment was previously carried out via a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet before this proposed transition to an online Salesforce service.
Service users
This service is for:
- Central Government
- Arm’s Length Bodies
- NHS England
- Local Authorities
Things the service team has done well:
The team have addressed much of the feedback from their previous assessment, and have presented their research in a clear way that communicates the extensive research they’ve done. The team have also iterated their personas after the last assessment feedback.
1. Understand users and their needs
Decision
The service was rated amber for point 1 of the Standard.
Recommendations:
- the team showed evidence around users’ understanding of CCIAF (the framework), but we would recommend that the team either conduct further research or pull evidence from existing research to test options for the service name. It’s currently listed as ‘CCIAF scoring tool’ on the service, but the team could frontload verbs in this service name, like ‘scoring for CCIAF’, that reflect what users are trying to do in this service. The team should focus on words that resonate with users in terms of the tasks they come to this service with, whether that’s scoring, assessing, or something else. This should then be tested with users.
- the team showed in their assessment that they had conducted extensive contextual research across multiple phases, and learnings from this should be used to improve their user needs. The team should ensure that the contextual user research from private beta and other phases is being used to develop or iterate existing user needs around users’ problems. This will help the team to ensure that user needs are agnostic of solutions and developed with users’ problems in mind. Use the service manual guidance and the test of a good user need to validate user needs, and make sure that user stories are being differentiated from user needs.
4. Make the service simple to use
Decision
The service was rated amber for point 4 of the Standard.
Recommendations
- the visual design of the service is not consistent with GOV.UK. The team must ensure that the header area of the service, including any government logos, the service name positioning and the beta banner, follows GOV.UK Design System standards.
- introducing new components that aren’t available from the GOV.UK Design System is not an issue providing they meet a user need. However, new components that duplicate the purpose of existing components should be avoided. Examples of which include accordions, navigation styles and error messages. The team should re-use existing, pre-tested and accessible patterns.
- any new components should, as far as possible, be in line with the visual language of GOV.UK. Examples of styles not in line include; radial corners, right-justified text blocks and tables with background colours. The team should continue to engage with the Design System community for feedback and keep a record of those conversations and the action being taken.
- the panel does not intend to influence the name of the CCIAF (the framework). However, the service name must communicate the intended interaction between the framework and the service’s users. To comply with guidelines, the service name must reflect what the service does and the task that users are trying to complete with it.
- the service doesn’t appear to be responsive to either smaller screens or larger screens with higher levels of zoom. This represents a risk to the accessibility of the service as some components become obscured by others.
6. Have a multidisciplinary team
Decision
The service was rated Green for point 6 of the Standard.
8. Iterate and improve frequently
Decision
The service was rated Green for point 8 of the Standard.
9. Create a secure service which protects users’ privacy
Decision
The service was rated Green for point 9 of the Standard.
10. Define what success looks like and publish performance data
Decision
The service was rated Amber for point 10 of the Standard.
Recommendations
- the team needs to capture and use user behaviour data to analyse user behaviour on the service and drive improvements to it.
- the team should implement a web analytics solution on the service to understand user behaviour. Google Analytics is the tool most widely used across the Government. MOD concerns regarding Google Analytics can be addressed by pointing out that the data that it collects is anonymous aggregated data. Also, the data can be hosted in the UK and Europe to alleviate concerns regarding where the data is held. If MOD agreement cannot be obtained, then a cookie consent mechanism should be deployed on the service to enable them to opt out of being tracked.
- once Google Analytics is implemented it should be configured to capture user interactions with elements of the service, such as radio buttons, help links and validation errors.
- when Google Analytics data has been gathered then the team will need to demonstrate that the data has been used to drive improvements to the service by providing examples of analysis using the data.
- the team stated that a new service owner would be appointing someone to carry out Performance Analyst duties. This person will need to be trained and mentored in order to be sufficiently skilled to be effective in performance analysis.
12. Make new source code open
Decision
The service was rated Green for point 12 of the Standard.
13. Use and contribute to open standards, common components and patterns
Decision
The service was rated Green for point 13 of the Standard.
Next Steps
This service can now move into a public beta phase, subject to implementing the amber recommendations within a maximum of 3 months time and Cabinet Office Digital spend approval.
This service now has permission to launch on a GOV.UK service domain with a Beta banner. These instructions explain how to set up your *.service.gov.uk domain.
The service must pass a live assessment before: - turning off the legacy service - reducing the team’s resource to a ‘business as usual’ team, or - removing the ‘beta’ banner from the service