Register for CQC
This service allows users who provide personal care to people in their homes to register with the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
Digital Service Standard assessment report
Register for CQC
| From: | GDS |
| Assessment date: | 05/03/19 |
| Stage: | Alpha |
| Result: | Met |
| Service provider: | Care Quality Commission |
Service description
This service allows users who provide personal care to people in their homes to register with the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
Service users
This service is for people who run businesses or organisations that provide health or social care services.
1. Understand user needs
Decision
Met
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the service team had conducted a significant amount of user research with both external users and internal users, identifying user needs for each identified group. A significant amount of time has been dedicated to understanding the scope of “service types” for providers which also acts as a useful guide to the recruitment pool
- a good amount of research had been conducted to understand pain points on the existing provider portal as well as on email and paper applications
- the team provided good examples of how they iterated their prototype based on user research with a particular emphasis on simplifying the language on the service to ensure content is understandable by users
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- make it more clear how user needs identified in earlier phases have evolved in subsequent phases through further research
- further understand and validate the needs of assisted digital users. The service team has explored ideas of what an assisted digital support model could be – this will need to be tested with assisted digital users in beta
- aim to set user expectations at the beginning of the service detailing what the journey will entail without disclosing specific information that could compromise care quality. This is more pertinent around the various documents users are required to upload
- do further research with potential users who don’t know about CQC. Users should be able to find out from government how to become health care providers, rather than government assuming that third parties will inform them
2. Do ongoing user research
Decision
Met
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team had used a variety of appropriate user research methods with a range of users throughout alpha. The team acknowledged the pain points that still need work in their prototype, which will be iterated in beta
- the team has a clear user research plan for beta with a greater use of analytics and quantitative techniques (in addition to face-to-face testing) to help understand user behaviour. They also have plans to conduct end-to-end testing and accessibility testing
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- widen the scope of user recruitment to identify assisted digital users and to ensure they have tested with a sufficient number. This may involve working collaboratively with other departments and loosening the recruitment criteria. Furthermore, this could involve users who are completely new to care and want to learn more
- conduct more cross-channel research including user enquiries to the contact centre regarding the status of already submitted applications and general application enquiries
- ensure accessibility testing includes a wide range of access requirements
3. Have a multidisciplinary team
Decision
Met
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the core team included people from policy, subject-matter experts (such as inspectors), and a call-centre manager. All of these people attended stand-ups and retrospectives
- subject-matter experts, legal and policy were also regularly involved in design workshops, which has had a positive impact on the designs of the service
- the service manager was empowered by the board, which met regularly so as not to slow decisions
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- re-consider the plan for beta having a smaller contribution from content and interaction designers. While a lot has been done to simplify the design of the service, the panel felt there was still more to do, particularly around the journey into the service and document upload
- continue to upskill or hire civil servants into key roles
4. Use agile methods
Decision
Met
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team is clearly working in an agile way and has iterated on the legacy service significantly
- although not all of the team were co-located all the time, they met regularly for agile ceremonies and stayed in contact using digital tools, like Slack, Confluence and Jira
- agile governance appears to be working, with the team able to challenge board decisions with evidence, such as moving into alpha before they felt they were ready
5. Iterate and improve frequently
Decision
Met
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team had managed to remove the need to ask more than 100 questions that had been asked on the legacy versions of the service
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- go even further to re-design the end-to-end service, starting from CQC’s website
- continue to challenge the regulations where there is evidence from research that this should be done. A good service will support users to do what they want to do without lowering the standard of care
6. Evaluate tools and systems
Decision
Met
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team is planning ahead and considering various tech options
- the team has well thought of architecture to meet the technical requirements and is using the GOV.Notify
- the team is proposing use of various open source tools such as CosmosDB (document database) (IaaS alternatives MongoDB) for the database, Azure Blob Storage for document storage and Azure Queue Service (IaaS Rabbit MQ, Active MQ) for the message queue
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- the team should look into using open, technology and tools from the start
- the team should look into calculating the Carbon Footprint statistics
7. Understand security and privacy issues
Decision
Met
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has considered various security requirements. All traffic is routed via a reverse proxy
- traffic and browser access is via HTTPS and is secured using a server side certificate (SSL TLS 1.2 with approved cipher)
- the team is proposing to test against the OWASP Top 10 threats
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- provide a security strategy for implemented tools and test reports if possible
8. Make all new source code open
Decision
Met
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team is using Adopting Azure Cloud and also proposing to use .Net Core, an open-source technology, that supports deployment on Windows, Mac, Linux platforms and CosmosDB and services will be exposed using RESTful APIs where appropriate
- the CQC engineering team has already deployed .Net core services into Azure (for example Mental Health Portal)
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- finalise their open source policy. The panel recommends coding in the open from the beginning. In general, it’s much harder to open source something afterwards
9. Use open standards and common platforms
Decision
Met
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the CQC team is considering to adopt pen standards and open source tools and technology as listed above
- the team is planning to use Restful APIs and Gitlab. The team is using Jira and Confluence
- the team is looking into the use of GitHub
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- use Jira and Confluence for all their project documentation and planning
10. Test the end-to-end service
Decision
Met
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team is planning the end-to-end test approach with various automated and manual testing for security, performance and integration
- the team is planning for the digital accessibility and usability testing
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- test scenarios, scripts and expected results and compare with the results and reports from the tests once completed
11. Make a plan for being offline
Decision
Met
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has well thought of plan and strategy for the availability of services
- the team is looking into Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- the team should be able to provide evidence of the SLA and also the adopted methodology for the offline
12: Make sure users succeed first time
Decision
Met
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team had identified reasons for service failure and worked to reduce these, particularly in the removal of free text fields and use of clearer language
- the team was working closely with internal users to understand these issues and doing the hard work with policy and legal to make things easier for users
- the team is considering the wider journey of becoming a healthcare provider and understood the different backgrounds their users were approaching this from. Even more could be done to understand this further
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- make sure they guide users through the end to end journey of becoming a care provider. The team has done good work on the application form itself but the guidance that sits around it is also a very important part of the service
- show that they’ve considered the offline steps users will be taking as part of becoming a healthcare provider and how they fit into the registration process. For example, by making it clear what needs to be ready before an inspection, and providing guidance on the documentation users need to supply
- continue to simplify the questions and ask only what’s needed of users, especially where that information is difficult to provide, as in the case of the full work history
- keep testing the assumption that they can make meaningful improvements without significantly changing the caseworking systems
13. Make the user experience consistent with GOV.UK
Decision
Met
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has been using patterns from the design system such as the step by step, start page and check your answers page
- the team has made it clear what steps are involved in registering
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- do further work on the step by step pattern in relation to ‘become a healthcare provider’ which is the broader scope that the pattern is intended for. Users should be able to see where registering fits within steps like setting up a business, finding premises for example
- show how they’ve worked on users being able to supply the right documentation with their application. This could be showing either that the file upload page and the guidance enable users to do this successfully, or that they’ve iterated away from this
- show that they’ve tried different options for the save and resume feature, so that users do not need to set up an account until it is relevant for them to do so
14. Encourage everyone to use the digital service
Decision
Met
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has been working with contact centres to understand the issues users are having
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- show how they’ve been working with the other workstream around discovering CQC to route users to the service
- show how they have researched/plan to research users who do not register with CQC when they should
- show they’ve designed and tested support for the online channel
15. Collect performance data
Decision
Met
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team had a strong relationship with the existing call centre and were working with them to establish benchmarks
16. Identify performance indicators
Decision
Met
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team had clearly thought about their non-mandatory Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and had good plans to measure them during beta
17. Report performance data on the Performance Platform
Decision
Not met
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- engage with the Performance Platform. There are clearly plans to do so, but this had not happened by the time of the alpha assessment
18: Test with the minister
Decision
Not applicable at alpha assessment
Next Steps
To get your service ready to launch on GOV.UK you need to:
- get a GOV.UK service domain name
- work with the GOV.UK content team on any changes required to GOV.UK content
Before arranging your next assessment you’ll need to follow the recommendations made in this report.
Published 23 January 2020