Get help arranging Child Maintenance alpha assessment
The report for DWP's Get help arranging Child Maintenance service alpha assessment on 10 June 2021
Service Standard assessment report
Get Help Arranging Child Maintenance
| From: | Central Digital & Data Office (CDDO) |
| Assessment date: | 10 June 2021 |
| Stage: | Alpha |
| Result: | Met |
| Service provider: | DWP |
Service description
The service provides supportive information to help users understand their options when setting up a Child Maintenance arrangement.
It better enables them to make a decision on how they can initiate an effective arrangement with the other parent. It asks a set of eligibility questions which allows users to understand whether they can make an arrangement through Child Maintenance. At the end of the service the user can select the option that is right for them – to attempt/set up a Family Based Arrangement (FBA) to consider more information before making a decision, or to start an application for a Child Maintenance Arrangement.
Service users
This service is for:
Parents of children who want to either set up, or get some information on a child maintenance agreement, they fall under the categories of either:
● Receiving Parents (RP’s)
● Paying Parents (PP’s)
● Third parties wanting to know the options available when setting up Child Maintenance (for example, third party organisations such as Citizens’ Advice Bureau acting on someone else’s behalf)
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 has done extensive research with a wide variety of potential users. They have a deep understanding of users’ various contexts and the impact those contexts have on what people need when applying for child maintenance
- the team has used a variety of methods when doing research from usability testing to call listening and were able to describe, in detail, the problems the existing call-based process causes for users
- the team is working closely with policy colleagues to help them understand what users need and influence the policy that underlies the service
What the team needs to explore
The team has reasons, based on research, that underlie its choice of a service-style pattern for guiding users through information.
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- articulate this reasoning in simple hypotheses, which will help the team monitor for problems that might arise and scope their research in beta
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 team:
- is aware of the wider journey this service sits within and is working with other teams to solve a whole problem for users. They are merging with the “apply” team and eventually plan to look at how to integrate other services in the future which are currently run by G4S
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- continue to work closely with and bring together other services in the journey
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 been doing research with and iterating the digital and telephony channels as well as the front and back end service
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- explore how the options and apply journeys can be more seamless, removing the reliance for the URN in the digital journey
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 team:
- has been working to make the service simple to use, for example by renaming the service to be more descriptive or by feeding research into policy
- identified duplication in the existing processes and reduced the amount of information that users need to provide
- has done research with a range of users on the digital inclusion scale
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 iterated content throughout alpha and discovered that they could serve 80% of people with basic content and still support those who need more information using the progressive disclosure pattern
- reduced the need for content by using smart questions and answers, making it easier for everyone to get the information they need
- has worked with community organisations to develop this service
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- continue to work with GOV.UK to remove duplicated guidance
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 team has been merged with the ‘Apply’ team, making the team twice the size. This allowed the service team to make best use of the Apply team experience and skills
- the expected set of skills and team members have been included for the duration of the alpha phase, there is a clear separation of roles, and understanding of roles and responsibilities
- the team will also have the support of 3 developers and 1 tester in addition to the existing team, as well as a virtual telephony team that will bring in telephony expertise and governance, going into private beta
- the team reports that they are empowered to make decisions based on their plan to meet user needs, and create a high quality service for users
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 is following a regular cadence of agile ceremonies which they use to prioritise, plan, and deliver their work, and to share progress with the wider organisation (including; stand-ups, sprint planning, show and tells, retrospectives)
- the use of various tools and collaboration platforms has allowed the team to successfully incorporate elements of distributed working (including; teams, Slack, Confluence, Jira and other tools)
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- bear in mind using good development practices - pairing, code review, modelling, as the team goes into private beta and gains 3 developers
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 considered and tested a variety of approaches including flat content, automated interactive voice recognition and question led content
- developed a range of well-documented prototypes
- the team work in weekly sprints, with User Research sessions informing the scope for the following sprint, and weekly planning sessions to agree areas of focus
- the alpha phase has provided clear evidence of what didn’t work for users, and what has been retained and improved
- the team makes collaborative prioritisation decisions on the next most important activity or area to explore
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 team understands the service and the data around it and has decided there will be no need for users to authenticate with their service during the alpha and public beta phases
- the team has confirmed that any data collected during the service such as email address and telephone number is deleted after the journey is completed, therefore no personal data is stored
- the team is clearly presenting to users which consent to cookies they are accepting, complying with DWP and GDS requirements
- the team has done a rigorous study identifying the potential threats for the service, following the DWP Enterprise Security and Risk Management processes
- the service uses Akamai Kona site defender against DDoS and Web Application Attacks which is the preferred DWP solution, ensuring consistency in the tools used
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- ensure future iterations of the service where there is a need for identity management (an example would be once the telephone journey is the responsibility of DWP) is iterated in an agile way, starting with a discovery phase, progressing to alpha and beta to understand user needs and the best technology fit
- continue the work started in alpha evaluating potential threats and risks to the service and testing those, and their mitigation plans, in beta
- complete a Data Protection Impact Assessment and ensure resources are available to act upon its recommendations
- complete a risk assessment and engage with the SRO so he can sign it off
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 has identified their overall private beta goals and understand how they will be measured
- the team has identified the data sources they’ll use, including Google Analytics and the service database
- the team has followed a custom approach to identify the most important key performance indicators for the service
- the key performance indicators include a balance of metrics which will measure; quality of outcome, quality of service, and technical performance, and the team have developed a baseline measure for these
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- ensure that data will give insight into the full range of user journeys
- demonstrate they have an ongoing roadmap for performance analysis
- consider how they will use the insights generated from analysing the key performance indicators to continue to iterate and improve the 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 team has explored different languages and frameworks
- the team has implemented and tested different frontend prototypes
- the team is aware of the current technology used by the wider Child Maintenance Service which has helped inform their approach for the options service (hosting in DWP Hybrid Cloud, complying with DWP Application Reference Architecture and Technical Reference Architecture)
- the service complies with accessibility standards and follows GDS browser compatibility standards ensuring the service is universally accessible.
- the service route to live environments will be built identically using infrastructure-as-code.
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- consider whether a future integration with CRM Siebel is needed and how that could be tested given Siebel’s monolith architecture nature. Testing what impact it will have on the service availability and performance would be beneficial
- data reconciliation activities must take place to ensure both telephone and online journeys can provide a joined up view of the Child Maintenance Service as a whole
- explore how, once the existing contract for the telephone journey supplier comes to an end, both online and telephone journeys will provide a joined up experience, where data and user research on the online part of the service is used to improve offline channels
- define and test an offline plan
- ensure automated testing and deployment is achieved in beta
- define and test a disaster recovery plan and build redundancy into their deployments, including restoring data from the backups
- ensure any future vision architecture is tested, ensuring what impact it will have on the service availability and performance, if any
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:
- the prototype code has been published on Github: https://github.com/dwp/cms-options
- the Options application will be built using the existing DWP open source CASA framework https://github.com/dwp/govuk-casa
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- continue to make open and reusable any new source code and keep it updated unless it must be kept closed
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 service will be using GOV.UK Notify
- the Options application will be built using the existing DWP open source CASA framework https://github.com/dwp/govuk-casa
- RESTful HTTP APIs will be used for integrations where event services are not available
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- explore whether any architecture components might potentially be reused from other government services to avoid duplication
- consider making contributions to relevant libraries/frameworks if possible
- ensure any future vision architecture makes use of open standards
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 team has worked on how to make deployment secure and what mitigations might be needed
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- formalise a plan for monitoring and alerting that will be shared with and approved by the wider DWP relevant technical support teams and agree SLAs to operate the service in a sustainable way
- anticipate regular penetration and load testing to check how secure the system is and how well it can cope with demand
- ensure relevant documentation is accessible and up-to-date
- carry out quality assurance testing as part of the ongoing service development
- develop a plan describing how the service will be supported. This would include understanding how the service will be supported in and out of regular hours and fielding queries
- consider what would happen if the service goes down out of hours and how to mitigate the resulting issues to support users