Send money to a prisoner - Beta Assessment
The report from the beta assessment for MoJ's Send money to a prisoner service on 08 July 2016.
| Stage | Beta |
| Result | Met |
| Service provider | MOJ Digital & Technology |
The service met the Standard because:
- User needs were thoroughly understood and influenced every aspect of the service’s development
- The team is complete, high functioning and focussed on user needs
- The most appropriate technologies have been used and changed as necessary
- The design closely follows the Service Design Manual’s style guide and the team will share variations they’ve developed and explain the reasoning behind the changes
- Analytics have been well implemented across all service components with the data being used to influence future development
About the service
Service Manager: Tony Duarte
Digital Leader: Matthew Coats
The service allows the family and friends of prisoners to send money via online banking. This is achieved by providing customers with a tool that generates a unique reference for the payment. The unique reference is a combination of the prisoner’s number and date of birth - both of which are validated within the tool then presented as a formatted reference number.
Detail of the assessment
Lead Assessor: Allon Lister
User needs
The panel was impressed by the team’s deep understanding of user needs of both internal and external users. It was positive to also see the emotional needs from internal and external users. This understanding extended to the prisoners themselves and the team explained how lack of money, or extended timeframes to receive money could impact their self-esteem and in some cases, physical safety.
The panel was also pleased to see that broader issues around privacy for those sending money to prisoners had also been considered.
The panel felt that there was an opportunity for greater face to face research with external users and users with accessibility needs this is outlined in the recommendations.
Team
The team is well formed and essentially complete. It’s clear that user research and understanding of user needs is very much an activity for the team as a whole.
Technology
We were very impressed by the team’s use of technology. They have changed technology since the Alpha due to a better fit for the team and problem. The team is still using a “swivel chair” implementation to perform the data entry, but the operators needs have been considered and the API implementation is on the roadmap for future iteration.
The team have selected appropriate technologies, hosting the service on a highly reliable public cloud, and using it to good effect.
It’s clear that where there are gaps in the service, the team is looking to test hypothesis about how to best fill those gaps, and use technology where appropriate rather than being driven by technology solutions.
Design
The team have demonstrated the MVP was based on user needs and demand, tackling money to prisoners first, with plans to develop the service to consider both disbursements (prisoners sending money to friends and family) and discharges (giving money back to prisoners when they leave).
The team have considered the needs of the back office staff, building separate task focused tools for the needs of the business hub staff and the security staff, carrying out contextual research with staff in their place of work.
The design was consistent with the GOV.UK design patterns and style guide. There were some deviations from the styles in the case management tools. These should be documented on the hackpad, with user research evidence, and shared with the wider design community.
Analytics
Analytics is well implemented across the public and staff facing components of the service. It was evident to the panel that data gathered from analytics, along with user research, is producing actionable insights that are being used to influence the service’s features and development.
Recommendations
To pass the next assessment, the service team must:
- Demonstrate substantial direct contact and research with users and potential users of the service.
- Undertake user research around accessibility issues, on the internal and external users.
- Contribute any deviations from the design patterns to the hackpad and design community
Summary
Send Money to a Prisoner is a great example of how to create effective and impactful digital services that meet user needs and produce business value. It’s exciting and encouraging to see a useful and usable service that’s being developed with absolute focus on user needs.
In addition to the necessary skills and experience, the team demonstrated deep understanding and genuine passion for the service and this is evident in the development to date.
We advise the team to act on the recommendations above and we very much look forward to seeing how the service has iterated when the team return for the service’s live assessment.