Renew a patent, trademark and design beta assessment report
The report for the IPO's Renew a patent, trademark and design beta assessment on the 10/12/2019.
| From: | Central Digital and Data Office |
| Assessment date: | 10/12/2019 |
| Stage: | Beta assessment |
| Result: | Not met |
| Service provider: | Intellectual Property Office |
Previous assessment reports
Service description
Under it’s “Transforming the IPO Digitally” (TRIPOD) programme, the IPO will deliver a whole range of new enterprise wide digital end-to-end services for its customers.
The IP Renewals project will deliver the first of those services, providing customers with a single unified digital service for the renewal of patents, trademarks and designs including the facility to request both single and bulk renewals.
By its very nature this project will fully support a ‘channel shift’ from costly paper processing to straight through processing from the customer, where decision making on renewals is fully automated, and the complexities of manual renewals case resolution are significantly simplified or removed.
In order to deliver this form of digital transformation it is important to standardise the delivery of technology services, designed once with the sole intent of re-use across the IPO organisation and its customers to deliver excellent customer service and online experience for both individual and agents.
Service users
- Unrepresented applicants
- Company In house IP Services
- Attorneys
- Renewal Agents
1. Understand user needs
Decision
The service did not meet point 1 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has done some great user research with most users and that did come across very well within the service assessment
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- increase understanding about the needs of novice users, it was clear in the assessment that more research and learnings are required from this user group
- conduct continuous research and testing with users with limited digital capability and users of assistive technology
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 has a good plan in place but it is imperative that this plan incorporates novice users, further research and testing with assisted digital users and users of assistive technology
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- ensure their plan includes further research to understand needs of novice/non expert users. Also ensure the end to end service is tested with such users
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 demonstrated that they have the right skills and capabilities in place to iteratively develop the service
- there seems to be the right level governance in place to support the team in developing the service
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- continue to ensure there is a good balance between permanent and contractors to run and integrate the service
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 was working in a good and effective way to develop and iterate the service
- the team has good agile processes, ceremonies and hygiene to continue to develop the service
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- continue to follow good agile processes and ceremonies in developing the service
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 team has shown that they regularly iterated the service
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- continue to regularly iterate the service
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 have taken a sensible approach to dealing with legacy systems by introducing standard integration points to develop new digital services whilst providing continuity for existing client applications
- the team are using best practices to ensure the resilience of the service
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- a decision to upgrade the current payment solution has been deferred to another team, however, this has a material impact on the accessibility of the service. The team should address the issues of this particular integration sooner rather than later
7. Understand security and privacy issues
Decision
The service did not meet point 7 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has minimised the information collected from users to avoid unnecessary data being collected
- the team’s data architecture is generally robust
- the team are utilising best breed Cloud security infrastructure and patterns where possible
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- address concerns about why the PDF generation module cannot be open sourced and whether this reliance on black box security in the code is a vulnerability to be addressed
- provide a more robust authentication mechanism for users
8. Make all new source code open
Decision
The service did not meet point 8 of the Standard.
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- open source the project and adopt working in the open as the standard way of delivering
- consider that open sourcing isn’t intended merely as a benefit of others who will value their work but also improves the quality of the technology they deliver. This is especially important given concerns around security noted above
9. Use open standards and common platforms
Decision
The service did meet point 9 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team are using common government components where available such as Gov.uk Notify
- the team have a sound integration and migration policy for working with their legacy systems
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- explore alternatives to the proprietary closed systems such as in payments and front-end forms
- investigate using Gov.uk Pay to enable card payments for the service
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:
- the team have a streamlined development pipeline and infrastructure management as part of the day-to-day practice for delivery
- the team have good data management and testing processes through all stages of development
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:
- the team have a good understanding of their user’s needs in terms of availability
- the team have adopted best practices for resilience and disaster recovery
- the team have a number of established fall back channels in case of the service being unavailable
12: Make sure users succeed first time
Decision
The service did not meet point 12 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team had engaged the Digital Accessibility Centre to test the service for potential accessibility issues
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- show unhappy paths as well as happy paths. The team was able to demonstrate the happy path for bulk renewals, but failed to show the journeys for individual renewals or cut-and-paste bulk renewals. Nor did they show what happens when the process fails and how a user might recover from failures
- simplify the user journeys. There are several unnecessary steps within the service, for example: the question page asking a user whether they want to download all or individual documents, the question asking how many patents they want to renew and the choice of payment options if you’re an individual user. The document download page could simply include a select all/none option. The provision of one or many reference numbers for renewal could also be combined. The choice of payment options could be limited to just credit cards for specific journeys or user types
- simplify the user interfaces. The error page is overly complex and could be improved by making the information tabular. It is also recommended that buttons are not hidden, but appropriate messaging is shown if a user cannot do something
- ensure the service supports users’ needs. Many design decisions appeared to be derived from other services in the IPO rather than from direct user research and several user groups were ignored in favour of others
- ensure the service supports users with assisted digital needs. There was no assisted digital support provided in the service
- ensure the service meets all accessibility criteria. For example, the payment gateway isn’t accessible and the use of GOV.UK Pay is a valid alternative
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 good use of the GOV.UK Design System
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- validate the usability and accessibility of the experimental accordion component and contribute their research back to the GOV.UK Design System
- include a content designer more actively in the design process
- show iteration of the service. The team did not demonstrate enough iteration of the service based on user research. Changes shown only included some minor changes to text and a possible reduction in a number of options when choosing how many patents, trademarks or designs a user might want to renew
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 demonstrated that they had approaches and plans in place to encourage the use of the service
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- continue to put and enact plans to encourage users to use the service
15. Collect performance data
The service did not meet point 15 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team gave some evidence of understanding their current business metrics
- a web analytics tool has recently been implemented to gather user journey data
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- give evidence of basing their decisions on empirical data, rather than just on feedback from a limited range of users (the bulk uploaders)
- consider the Assisted Digital needs of the Design renewers, who have no digital service at the moment
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 demonstrated that they had looked at measuring and improving the four core KPIs, and already have some of this data for their current services
- the team carried out a Performance Framework session, as suggested in the previous assessment
- the team is using Power BI to present some important metrics that pulls together the business as usual processes (digital, email, paper)
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- demonstrate how they have used the outputs from the Performance Framework to decide what metrics to gather, report on and make decisions on
17. Report performance data on the Performance Platform
Decision
The service did meet point 17 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the current digital service reports on the Performance Platform
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- continue to expand the current metrics
18. Test with the minister
Decision
The service met point 18 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team provided a demonstration to the minister
- the team have been engaging with the Ministerial team and keeping them up to date with developments leading up to the public beta launch
- the team have also provided demonstrations to the CEO of Companies House