File a Confirmation statement Beta Assessment
The report for the File a Confirmation statement beta assessment on the 26 January 2022
Service Standard assessment report
File a Confirmation statement
| From: | Central Digital & Data Office (CDDO) |
| Assessment date: | 26/01/2022 |
| Stage: | Beta |
| Result: | Not Met |
| Service provider: | Companies House |
Service description
The confirmation statement is an annual prompt for companies to check and confirm that their company record is up to date. The service supports this requirement by displaying the current company data within the filing journey and prompting the user to confirm it is correct. The service also acts as the vehicle for the company to pay their annual fee. Where necessary, the service will direct the user to take the appropriate action to update their record. The update journey is not in scope for this service assessment. When a confirmation statement is accepted, it will appear on the company’s filing history on the public record.
This service is for:
- Directors of companies who are responsible for maintaining the company data.
- Presenters acting on behalf of directors such as company secretaries, accountants, solicitors etc.
- Companies House internal users
- Search customers – consumers of output data e.g. credit reference agencies, banks, financial institutions
Previous assessment reports
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 have further validated the needs of the user groups identified in alpha, in addition to evolving their understanding of additional needs throughout beta
- research has been carried out with support services to further understand common pain points and queries. This has helped the team identify design improvements in the service to reduce any potential downstream failure demand
- a good range of research methods was used in this phase to triangulate research data from different sources. This helped build confidence in the research and the team’s understanding of their users
- the team provided a reasonable rationale as to why the immediate focus of the service has been on those “information providers” who make no updates to company records. The team cited that this is the simplest journey and accounts for 75% of all confirmation statement filings
- a plan is in place to recruit participants with accessibility needs
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team must:
- undertake accessibility testing with users who have visual, cognitive and motor impairments. It’s conceivable that a large proportion of the users targeted will opt to use a smartphone on this service so focused accessibility testing on these devices is important. See point 5 for more on this
- undertake research with how users may seek support when using the service. As a good service design principle, the service must make it easy to get human assistance if required (and not seek to obscure support channels from view). See point 5 for more on this
- explore the nuances of user behaviour when more complex journeys are in play such as updates to the confirmation statement. Going forwards the team has plans to consider “in confirmation statement” updates as part of this service and this should result in revisiting user groups to understand how needs differ
- reach out to internal disability networks if recruiting for accessibility becomes challenging. For example, the Civil Service Disability network is a good pool of proxy users who can test the interactive components of a service (albeit they may not have the domain knowledge but that should not deter when testing interactive elements of a service)
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:
- the service has various ways for users to find it within existing Companies House journeys on related services and consideration for how users will move between services has been taken
- the team is working closely with the Companies House account project team which seeks to combine user details on one platform
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- improve the extent to which they are “solving a whole problem for users”. The service, as currently designed, will address, at most, 75% of confirmation statement filings. The remaining 25% must continue their journey using the existing webfiling service. There is however a roadmap to design the “update” journey into the service to ensure it can solve a whole problem for users in Beta
- continue working closely with the Companies House account project. Further research to align user journeys must continue to ensure a seamless experience. A plan must be put in place for when this is likely to be rolled out and what additional support may need to be provided on this service during any transition to this single login
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 service acted on the Alpha recommendation to improve how information of items being updated is displayed to users; they will add notification banners from the GOV.UK design system to help users understand that they can continue to file after leaving the service to ‘update’ details then returning; ‘ready to continue’ tags have also been added in the task list
- an existing paper channel will continue to be in place for the foreseeable future which (in practice) can act as an assisted digital option. The team explained that around 20,000 confirmation statement filings are done each year through the paper channel
- the Service Owner is responsible for all channels, as noted in point 6
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- further design iterations based on live user feedback (such as exit surveys) and analytics data to optimise the user experience
- undertake research with “information consumers” of the output data to measure their confidence in the data and whether the data gives them what they need. For example, the downstream availability of data entities and attributes through APIs
- consider any guidance on how a user can amend a confirmation statement in the event one was submitted in error? What options are open for “information providers” and how are they guided to these options?
4. Make the service simple to use
Decision
The service did not meet point 4 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the service incorporates recommendations from the Alpha assessment; error messages are now present in the journey
- the flow of the journey has been iterated based on how users interact with the service; there are also plans for users will be able to navigate through all questions in a task list without needing to constantly return to the full task list
- the service will incorporate Companies House payment accounts which will help high volume users be able to use this service more efficiently and hopefully reduce dropout rates which were being caused by users currently being unable to pay with this method
- consideration for the wider journey has been taken and how this service will work with various other Companies House services have been made and the design teams across the services are working together on building and reusing components unique to their services and have plans to change and make accessible other connected services such as the ‘update’ service journey
What the team needs to explore
Before their re-assessment, the team needs to:
- remove the use of Step by Step navigation pattern from within the transactional user journey as this goes against the GOV.UK Design System guidance for how to use this pattern. The service should replace this pattern with a task list pattern instead which will be able to clearly show users the tasks they must complete on links outside of GOV.UK to continue the application
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- continue to feedback to the task list working group and design system and share any findings from accessibility testing once users are able to go through task list questions without returning to the main task list page; the design system could use more insights into how this works for users with screen readers particularly
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 service has continued to be tested with a wide range of users including users with assisted digital software and those less familiar with Companies House but who will need to use this service
- all A and AA DAC accessibility audit recommendations have been actioned and AAA recommendations are in the backlog; the service accessibility statement has been updated to reflect this
- each team works closely with an ‘accessibility champion’ and worked closely with developers throughout the beta
- the service has continued to be iterated designs and exploring alternatives in content, including introducing a card component that helped users more easily understand the large amounts of content on the screen
- the design team has been working with analytics, has a dedicated content designer and holds regular content crits and test with users to make sure content and language is easy to understand
- the service has been able to achieve a 78% completion rate with eligible users
- there are plans to increase the amount of people who can use this service such as prototyping journeys for ‘multiple people with significant control’
- there are future design plans to allow users to save an application and resume later, and integrate journeys to update details
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- test the card components being considered with users with accessibility needs and using assistive technology and that it works for a wide range of screen sizes and devices without content being broken
- think more about where users might get stuck in the journey and what the easiest way to help them would be such as hint texts and not just rely on users findings the ‘contact us’ link in the footer
- consider submitting the card component to the GOV.UK Design System
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:
- the Service Owner is empowered, as Senior Responsible Owner, for a number of related filing services, across all channels. He demonstrated a good grasp of the detail
- the Service Owner is part of wider governance aligning with the broader programme of work moving Companies House services off legacy technology, increasing digital take up, and improving user journeys by the same occasion. This governance includes appropriate links in with project delivery as well as policy amongst others
- the DDaT professions that are key to this stage of development were represented in the team, although the failure to bring in a service designer at earlier stages of the service was evident
- the team primarily included civil servants, showing a sustainable team structure for this stage in the development of a service
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- bring in service design capability to support the Service Owners and work across Companies House services. This is critical to support the development of modern services that provide the best user experience, minimising demand failure, maximising digital take up. The investment away from legacy technology provides a unique opportunity to do this. The advice was already given at the Alpha assessment but not acted upon, and this is undermining how well the team can meet point 2 of the standard
- integrate the various professions into a multidisciplinary team, once the contracted developers come to the end of their contract. At the moment, while designers join scrum team ceremonies, the scrum team is exclusively made up of delivery manager and developers
- consider how to govern and run common components that Companies House use such as identification, authentication, notification, and payment. There is clear movement towards aligning within Companies House (e.g. for accounts) and in some cases across government (e.g. GOV.UK Pay), however the organisation does not sound like it is set up for success, with this currently being picked up by teams ad hoc. How well Companies House manages this will impact user experience, including failure demand rates. Performance analytics are already showing users are confused and failing to complete transactions due to the use of multiple payment systems across Companies House services. Regularising the use of common platforms will also reduce the cost to maintain Companies House services in the long run
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 team has all the ceremonies in place that are expected of an agile team, with all professions contributing to these
- the team demonstrated that they are testing, iterating, and shipping improvements to the service on a sprint basis. Section 8 of the report provides more examples
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:
- the team has iterated on their understanding of their users. For example, user research through private beta has shown that users are less comfortable with jargon than originally expected, and this has been taken into account in the personas and in the service
- a number of improvements have been made in response to insights from performance analytics. For example, they identified the reason for drop outs on the payments page and addressed this through improvements to content
- the team has a roadmap with clear opportunities to improve the service offering for Public Beta, and a sustainable team in place to do so
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- further iterate and improve the end to end service. For example, the low completion rate seen to date is in part linked to the fact that users are sent off for the journey to update their details; yet this is an integral part of their experience and it is essential for the team to feel responsibility and ownership over this. These points were explored in more detail in sections 2 and 4 of the report
9. Create a secure service which protects users’ privacy
Decision
The service did not meet point 9 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team have carried out a risk assessment, threat modelling and had an external pen test
What the team needs to explore
Before their re-assessment, the team needs to:
- as there is a clear and present danger that the current beta could enable an attacker to disable Companies House’s production systems, the panel recommends that the private beta service is taken offline while remediation work is completed
- determine how best to fix the OWASP 2021 issues; A02, A03, A04, A06, A09
- provide training for the software engineering team in web security vulnerabilities and best practices
- add unit tests and integration tests that check for validation of unexpected inputs
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 demonstrated that they were set up to analyse data from a range of sources to improve the service, including Matomo for digital analytics and survey data. The team showed how these different sources can be combined to build a more accurate understanding of user journeys
- the core KPIs are being published to a dashboard showing a commitment to transparency and sharing key data with stakeholders
- the team had a good understanding of the caveats and constraints around the data, for example, where in the journey they calculated completion rate from
- the service has a dedicated performance analyst
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- set targets and be clearer on what success looks like. The team has the fundamentals in place but more needs to be done to show that the KPIs are actionable and driving service improvements
- carry out a performance framework to map their success criteria back to their user needs, and use this format to set appropriate benchmarks
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 team uses familiar languages and technologies that have had a proven track record in Companies House
- the new system has been designed to work in the existing hosting environment and integrate with existing services and the enterprise messaging system
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- in choosing to stick to older familiar technologies the team has missed opportunities to benefit from newer technologies. The panel recommends that the team take time to explore how unfamiliar technologies could be introduced to improve the quality of the system. For example add Open API annotations to the java spring api and use an Open API validation tool to automate testing of compliance to the standard
12. Make new source code open
Decision
The service met point 12 of the Standard.
Open source link:
https://github.com/companieshouse
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has embraced the coding in the open culture and have open sourced their code for this project
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 team has consistently chosen to use open standard based components whenever there has been a choice to be made. Examples include Matomo, Kafka and Concourse CI
- the choices for programming languages, Java and NodeJS are also open standards
- the team has re-used Companies House developed components for common requirements, such as logging and session management
- common patterns and protocols such as API, JSON, OAuth2, HTTPS have been used by design
- the team has integrated the service with GOV.UK Pay
- the user interface has been developed using the GOV.UK design system
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- continue to explore how Companies House can make more use of GOV.UK services such as Notify and GOV.UK Account
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:
- the beta service has been running in a live environment for nearly two months and is meeting its agreed SLA for availability and performance
- the beta service is being monitored and its performance measured using suitable tooling
- the team has in place continuous integration pipelines and multiple environments, which include automated tooling to support quality assurance
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- address the critical security risks identified in point 9
- carry out automated integration tests between the web and the api components. These will be especially beneficial after the service goes live to help with the ongoing maintenance of the system. The panel recommends automated integration tests are developed during the public beta phase