Get Help Buying For Schools beta assessment
Service Standard assessment report Get Help Buying For Schools 31/01/2023
Service Standard assessment report
Get Help Buying For Schools
| From: | Central Digital & Data Office (CDDO) |
| Assessment date: | 31/01/2023 |
| Stage: | Beta assessment |
| Result: | Met |
| Service provider: | Department for Education |
Service description
Get Help Buying supports schools to enter better value commercial deals, saving them money. The project makes schools feel better equipped to deliver future procurements and meets School Business Professionals’ changing needs, making sure they are satisfied with the service they receive
Service users
- the primary users are people who buy things for schools, or school business professionals (SBPs). SBPs are usually non-teaching staff.
- the procurement operations (procops) team are internal users of the service.
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 whole team demonstrated a willingness to engage and understand the UR. The product teams integrated well with the procurement operations team and demonstrated a good extended team approach
- the user researchers clearly articulated the issues with the service, especially around user expectations
- the user researchers presented a clear set of high level user needs and had begun to dig beneath these
- the user researchers worked hard to develop a suitable level of accessibility research and the team were open to their findings. They demonstrated a good understanding of accessibility needs
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- fully test the hypothesis that designing the service to meet the needs of ‘Uri’ will automatically mean the service is meeting all user needs
- progress the work to understand how much time is being saved by schools as a result of the service and consider this alongside the DfE resource input
- continue to explore lower level user needs and whether they are met by the 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 team are collaborating across wider DfE teams, including those within their programme and other services, to create a service that meets users’ needs across all channels in the journey, including digital, emails, guidance and phone calls.
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- continue evidencing how the team is working to join up with other related services that make up the wider journey
- where relevant, work with GDS/CDDO content team to join up any GOV.UK content that feeds into the service journey
- continue to develop schools awareness of the service through engagement with local authorities and schools
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:
- design demonstrated how Get help buying for schools fits into a wider journey alongside other DfE services, GOV.UK pages and how it joins up across the different channels and services.
- clear demonstration of different entry points and how users will find out about the service, with a plan to scale this up as they move into public beta.
- design - and the team - demonstrated offline processes and tailored user support that has been considered and built into the service, such as phone calls and different types of training, depending on the schools needs. There was also clear consideration of how this might change as the service moves into public beta, and they expand the digital self-service offer.
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- the team are creating tailored content for their users on the service domain name, to ensure a joined up experience across all channels, the team must ensure there is a process for making sure content remains up to date, they must also make sure content is aligned with existing content GOV.UK content where they are addressing the same topic (e.g. Energy relief).
- continue to review and gather data on the support they are providing to help schools to choose the right framework. This will allow the team to understand which areas might have the most impact or add the most value in terms of building out self-serving digital tools for schools. The team made clear they would do this with ProcOps help.
- as the service scales from private to public beta, the team continues to consider engagement strategies and relationships within the sector and local authorities to build awareness of the service and its entry points.
- as referred to by the team, any offline support, for example, support calls from ProcOps, are monitored in terms of making sure that the service continues to have the right amount of user support and the roles in place to provide this as part of a school’s journey through the service.
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 considered how to use data based on user needs to inform future design iterations of the service. For example, using a free text box for schools to explain what they need help with. This was evidently based on findings from research for multiple users of the service, with the awareness that the team will use the data gathered to iterate the service as they learn more.
- the team gave multiple examples of iterating the service in a continuous cycle of designing, testing and making changes based on what they learned. For example, they’ve worked closely with subject matter experts and stakeholders to refine and improve the journey schools take to share their energy bills. This resulted in reducing the number of steps users need to take from 8 to 6.
- use of GOV.UK patterns and components in the frontend of the service.
- evidence of usability testing.
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- as referred to by the team, digital colleagues and ProcOps continue to work closely together. They are looking to improve the experience of any offline documentation. For example, starting with templates. The team are aware they still have a way to go but have made excellent progress in the 12 months they’ve been working together.
- continue to monitor feedback on the service and in user research, to iterate and test usability.
- continue to use patterns and components from GOV.UK service manual.
- the team referred to enhancing confidence in school staff, rather than replacing them, this should remain within focus and scope. The team could think about how to demonstrate this at their next assessment, including possible evidence that schools are using the digital guidance to self-serve where this meets user needs.
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:
- design gave an excellent demonstration of user ‘Uri’ working his way through the service, through all the on-and-offline processes. If the team continues to design for Uri they will meet all of their current user needs.
- the team completed an accessibility audit in January 2023 and embraced challenges around recruiting research participants with access requirements. They pivoted their approach to using proxy users, included participants with a range of access needs at an accessibility lab in Sheffield and using GDS accessibility personas.
- the proactiveness of the team to run a workshop with the wider schools portfolio to create accessibility panels to bring users with access needs into a regular sprint.
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- continue to empower ProcOps to use user-centred design principles and provide training for writing emails, using plain english and content guidance.
- include - and continue to update - an accessibility statement on the service as they move into public beta.
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 digital team contains a full variety of roles as would be expected of a beta team.
-
the digital team collaborates closely with commercial colleagues, to help them improve the service.
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- consider how to reduce knowledge loss when people leave, and ensure new team members can be brought up to speed quickly.
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 digital team works closely with commercial and policy colleagues, with the procurement operations team forming an integrated part of the team and attending daily stand-ups.
- the team has a programme wide problems backlog, with regular prioritisation taking place. Appropriate agile ceremonies are in place and digital tooling is used to promote collaboration.
- the digital team follows an iterative development cycle, with clear evidence demonstrated of how the service has been iterated based on user research and testing.
- everyone is included in decision-making in relation to ways of working.
- the team have adapted to changing requirements quickly, as evidenced by the response to rising energy costs.
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- measure the capacity of the procops team and prioritise support requests, so that the procops team can work at a sustainable pace and don’t become overwhelmed.
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 clearly demonstrated how they have iterated the service based on user feedback, sharing multiple examples of improvements made to both internal and external facing digital tools.
-
the team has responded to external challenges such as rising energy costs, iterating the service to provide guidance to external users and building functionality for users to upload energy bills.
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- continue to monitor challenges for schools and iterate the service if appropriate.
- continue to share learnings with the procops team, considering how the offline parts of the service can be improved.
- continue to review and refine their backlog to deal with competing priorities and identify where they can add most value.
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 GHBS applications are containerised and hosted in GOV.UK PaaS which is a secure hosting environment. With a good level of alerting and monitoring in place using logit.io and kibana.
- the tech team has implemented DfE Sing In as their choice of authentication provider.
- the team has developed a high availability and high resilience deployment strategy. The use of infrastructure as a code allows them to spin up a prod like environment, deploy and run a full test suite in it and conduct a seamless blue green deployment.
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- considering the soon decommissioning of GOV.UK PaaS the team has already taken actions to consider a plan for migration to Azure. Their App services are already containerised using Docker which will aid the migration. The team is aware of the need to implement a WAF/App Gateway.
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
- it was clearly demonstrated how the team are measuring the benefits set out in the business case, including the use of baseline data.
- the team have a dashboard to help them monitor the performance of the service.
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- continue to measure the business case benefits to help you monitor that the service is solving the problems it was intended to solve.
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 GHBS team has chosen standard tools approved by DfE such as Ruby on Rails with Postgres DB and Docker containers. They use GOV.UK Notify for sending notifications and AWS S3 Bucket for storing documents. The team has integrated Clam AV virus scanning.
- with reference to ‘content as a tool’ in their alpha assessment, the team have created and are working to a clear and robust content strategy. The strategy supports the development and scope of content within the service.
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- alternative storage to be used once migrating off GOV.UK PaaS (i.e. Azure Blob storage)
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 team adheres to the DfE’s open sources strategy with their repositories in the DfE GitHub Organisation https://github.com/DFE-Digital/buy-for-your-school
- the applications are built with the use of open-source technology such as Ruby on Rails, Clam AV.
13. Use and contribute to common standards, components and patterns
Decision
The service met point 13 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- using standard DfE approved tech stack and patterns (Ruby on Rails, GOV.UK Notify, Postgres DB, GOV.UK PaaS). Use of Contentful CMS to allow content changes without the need of redeployment. Implementation of infrastructure as a code with Terraform.
- the team has implemented tools enforcing Ruby coding standards.
- the choice of good patterns, infrastructure as code, open source and frequent backups have given a foundation for a thorough Disaster Recovery plan that has been fully tested.
- the team are using patterns and components from the GOV.UK service manual, including reaching out to other government services to explore patterns and components to meet user needs. Referencing file upload component from MOJ.
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 incident management process is defined and documented, and training has been delivered to the team.
- alerts are in place to monitor the service is performing as expected.
- service has maintained high availability throughout private beta
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- consider whether the procops team has the capacity to meet the increase in demand, and explore digital self-serve tools (as discussed by the team in the assessment).
- at the next assessment, evidence how the service will be supported once live.
Updates to this page
Published 28 November 2023