Prove Your Eligibility To A Foreign Government
This service aims to help British citizens overseas to prove their eligibility to a foreign government for a variety of purposes, for example to be able to marry abroad
Prove Your Eligibility To A Foreign Government
| From: | Government Digital Service |
| Assessment date: | 11/03/20 |
| Stage: | Alpha Assessment |
| Result: | Met |
| Service provider: | FCO |
Service description
This service aims to help British citizens overseas to prove their eligibility to a foreign government for a variety of purposes, for example to be able to marry abroad.
Service users
This service is for UK nationals seeking to prove eligibility to a foreign government to get married abroad. The scope for private beta is to prove eligibility to get married abroad in France, Spain and Thailand.
1. Understand user needs
Decision
The service met point 1 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team engaged with users, despite the restrictions in place during the election purdah. This gave the team a very limited window to carry out user research activities
- the team has already engaged with users with access needs, as well as with users with assisted digital needs
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- articulate the user needs of the service and demonstrate how the service has met them
- continue exploring and validating the user needs of all users. The team should continue to engage with users in the countries where the service will be initially launched, as well in the countries in the pipeline
2. Do ongoing user research
Decision
The service met point 2 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team have a plan to continue user research and iterate the existing patterns of the service
- the whole team seems to be engaged with the user research activities
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- be allowed to carry out direct user research with the users that engage with the service throughout the private beta and onwards during all phases of the service. We understand this is challenging because the sample sizes are potentially small, hard to recruit and there is a challenge of over-researching the same users who participate in existing market research exercises. But this is absolutely critical and failure to address it will result in failure at public beta. We recommend re-prioritising primary user research over market research exercises
- engage with actual users of the service, including other research approaches, such as remote usability sessions in the countries they are aiming to deploy the service. Employ alternative recruitment approaches to ensure you are talking to potential users of the service
- test end to end the user journey including the assisted digital channel and how that interacts with the service
- continue testing the service to demonstrate that users can meet their needs based on the personas identified, including users with Assisted Digital and Access needs
- the team should engage with the GOV.UK team about potential recruitment through the relevant pages hosted there, e.g., sign-up links, panel, etc
3. Have a multidisciplinary team
Decision
The service met point 3 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has integrated suppliers well with FCO staff and notes Consular Services Directorate’s ambition to recruit and significantly scale its specialist digital services capability
- responded to a current lack of internal technical capability to build a tool that requires light technical skills
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- have formalised its service and product owner roles and responsibilities as part of the multidisciplinary team model and be able to demonstrate their roles in directing the end to end service and all its component parts
- demonstrate that the digital services team has the capacity and range of specialist skills to manage and iterate the service as it develops and scales
- demonstrate plans for the FCO digital services team to move from a supplier heavy model to building a better balance between internal capability and suppliers
4. Use agile methods
Decision
The service met point 4 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team had organised its working practices well and its ability to respond to changes of pace, for example when waiting for decisions to be made outside of the team’s gift
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- demonstrate how decision makers from policy and operational roles in Consular Services are integrated into team decision making ceremonies and governance processes
5. Iterate and improve frequently
Decision
The service met point 5 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the service team responded to research learnings, took stock of previous public sector efforts to build similar form building tools, and focused on delivering working prototypes that deliver the user journeys
6. Evaluate tools and systems
Decision
The service met point 6 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team had assessed several form technologies from other government departments
- a case management API was introduced to address stability concerns and prepare for a possible future change of case management system avoiding contract lock in
- AWS was used appropriately to achieve a simple architecture
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- demonstrate they are sharing their knowledge and experience of the Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service with other FCO development teams
7. Understand security and privacy issues
Decision
The service met point 7 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- access to the case management API is highly restricted
- session data and uploaded files are only held for a limited time
- access to user data is limited to security-cleared support teams
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- consider the security implications if “save and return” functionality is introduced
8. Make all new source code open
https://github.com/UKForeignOffice/digital-form-builder
https://github.com/UKForeignOffice/digital-form-builder-designer
https://github.com/UKForeignOffice/digital-form-builder-engine
https://github.com/UKForeignOffice/case-management-wrapper
https://github.com/UKForeignOffice/document-upload
Decision
The service met point 8 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- attempts were made to make all new code open source
- most code is open source
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- define how the forks of DEFRA digital-form-builder* repos will be managed in the long term
- try to encourage an ongoing dialog between FCO security teams and GDS about open source concerns
9. Use open standards and common platforms
Decision
The service met point 9 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- GOV.UK Pay and Notify are being used
- the team have started a much needed cross-government conversation about form builders
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- show progress towards use of a shared document upload service
- agree a plan with GDS to take ownership of Smart Answers / “Marriage Tool”
- understand how single sign-on might work for authenticated editing and deployment of forms by FCO staff
- demonstrate how their solution aligns with cross-government activity in this area, particularly the coupling between specific forms and the underlying form-builder platform
10. Test the end-to-end service
Decision
The service met point 10 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- tests run as part of CI
- automated accessibility testing was done
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- implement fully automated deployment
- make it easier to test and demo the service, e.g. with stubbed dependencies
- demonstrate test reports
- have a load testing plan
11. Make a plan for being offline
Decision
The service met point 11 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- case management unavailability had been considered and the system design allows for this
- the “paper forms” are being updated to match the new service
12. Make sure users succeed first time
Decision
The service met point 12 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team hadn’t just converted paper forms to digital, but dug into user needs. They collaborated with people with experience of these processes in order to simplify where possible, doing the hard work to make it simple
- the team has a working prototype that is easy to iterate using the form editor
- the team has tested the prototype with users, including disabled people
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- continue to work on full end to end journeys. For example the panel heard about clear issues with the ‘smart answer’ part of the journey. The panel recognises this is a complex scenario, since that is currently owned by GOV.UK Publishing, but in Beta the team should continue to prototype what they think could be the best solution for users. The research outcome from this will be helpful in any changes that might need to happen with content on GOV.UK
- when testing with users make sure the prototype doesn’t have known problems in the design, for example we saw duplicated headings, and wrong page titles, which could affect user understanding and behaviour
- continue to investigate the upload documents journey. Other services have found this to be one of the hardest processes for users. If at all possible it would be easier if users don’t have to upload, for example by answering questions about information on the documents. Other services have found that when uploading is unavoidable, it can be easier to complete on mobile, where taking photos and uploading can be a simpler experience
- continue to investigate whether users need an account of some kind - to stop and come back later, or to correct information that is wrong at a later date. Register to become a Childminder has a very simple solution which just requires the user’s email address, and sends them a secure link when they need to get back into the service later - avoiding the need for a password
13. Make the user experience consistent with GOV.UK
Decision
The service met point 13 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team made innovative use of an existing form builder to provide an experience that’s consistent with GOV.UK, easily iterated by people who are non technical
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- investigate other interaction solutions to problems. For example the Autocomplete component might be helpful in some situations. While the panel can see the advantages of the form builder approach, there are potential risks if it’s the only approach used in designs
- possibly interaction design/frontend roles are not involved as much as they don’t need to be. However their expertise is important in order to explore all options
- not all interaction patterns might be easily available in the form builder at this stage. For example, as mentioned, the Autocomplete component. It’s not clear how easy it is to investigate developing existing patterns or designing new ones if needed
14. Encourage everyone to use the digital service
Decision
The service met point 14 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has demonstrated how this service will reduce error rates for both applicants and processors. Making the service so simple that users will prefer to use it rather than risk a declined application
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- tell us their plans for communicating business change to officials who currently support applicants with paper based applications so that they can direct users to the digital service, and how they will measure take up
15. Collect performance data
Decision
The service met point 15 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team had thought about utilising existing consular MI systems
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- unlock that internal MI data so that it is available to performance platform
- show evidence to back up stability concerns of Case Management system
16. Identify performance indicators
Decision
The service met point 16 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team recognises that existing performance data doesn’t track the right things and that this service will hopefully drive new better data
- the team had thought about cost per transaction and digital uptake metrics
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- demonstrate plans to use live performance data as a management information tool with all those tasked with managing and iterating the digital customer journey
17. Report performance data on the Performance Platform
Decision
The service met point 17 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team had thought about cost per transaction and digital uptake metrics
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- plan how they will make live or as near live as possible performance data available on the performance platform
18. Test with the minister
Decision
For Alpha: Point 18 of the Standard does not apply at this stage.