Single Customer Account - Child Benefit alpha assessment
Service Standard assessment report Single Customer Account - Child Benefit 20/03/2023
Service Standard assessment report
Single Customer Account - Child Benefit
| From: | Central Digital & Data Office (CDDO) |
| Assessment date: | 20/03/2023 |
| Stage: | Alpha assessment |
| Result: | Not met |
| Service provider: | HMRC |
Service description
As part of the Single Customer Account (SCA) programme, HMRC are intending to digitise the Child Benefit scheme to enable new claimants and provide an on-line self-service. This will also include the first common change of circumstance capability.
Service users
This service is for…
- individuals (not agents or businesses).
- adults wishing to claim Child Benefit for a child - usually, but not always, a parent.
The majority have always lived in the UK but about a quarter have not always lived in the UK.
Ninety nine per cent of claimants are currently living in the UK.
1. Understand users and their 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 actively developed an understanding of High Income Child Benefit Charge (HICBIC) (paid by high earners who claim Child Benefit) and how it affects users of the service.
- the team is sharing insights with other user researchers to improve their understanding of potential pain points.
- the team is exploring recruitment through municipal registrar services for private beta. This demonstrates a commitment to ongoing testing throughout beta and a commitment to recruitment methods that are likely to reach a range of users.
What the team needs to explore
Before the next assessment, the team needs to:
- provide a compelling segmentation of users which highlights the differences between how different user groups are likely to experience the service.
- include rival claims and users who have experienced contested claims as part of their research. Child Benefit is complex in its relation to tax and pension benefits. The receipt of Child Benefit also interacts with separation cases regarding legal custody of children. The team needs to demonstrate that the new service is cognisant of and responsive to these potentially contentious claim journeys.
- develop a plan for testing during private beta, including a list of hypotheses or research questions that are being addressed through this phase.
- explore a fuller picture of how users get to the service, and what users are searching online to land on the Child Benefit claim page. It could open up patterns in terminologies, language and behaviours users have an opportunity to understand access needs.
2. Solve a whole problem for users
Decision
The service did not meet point 2 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team is releasing incremental changes to the service that quickly realise benefits to the user.
What the team needs to explore
Before the next assessment, the team needs to:
- although the team has developed their understanding of the HICBIC, they need to demonstrate how they are attempting to make the restrictions on Child Benefit easier to understand and abide by.
3. Provide a joined-up experience across all channels
Decision
The service did not meet point 3 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- appreciated that the team identified a need to research and understand the call centre and case working processes, this is a good starting point to help understand the end to end user experience. Their proposal of an emergency call number for users experiencing service issues is a good solution to address accessibility needs. It would be helpful if the team could provide further elaboration on their research insights and impact on designs in the next assessment.
What the team needs to explore
Before the next assessment, the team needs to:
- a piece of service design work needs to be done to explore the whole landscape of stakeholders and user journeys into, and user flow through, the service. It would be beneficial if the team looks into offline and online journeys.
- entry and exit points from GOV.UK to the Child Benefits service isn’t clear. When do users need to contact them, especially when there’s a case of an emergency should their service be flagged at the top of the info page on Child’s benefits?
4. Make the service simple to use
Decision
The service did not meet point 4 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has actively engaged with the content community to improve the content of their service, for example reviewing question patterns to remove ambiguity.
- GOV.UK design system styling and design standards have been implemented.
What the team needs to explore
Before the next assessment, the team needs to:
- the team needs to show more evidence that the designs have iterated multiple times based on user needs, specifically for people with access needs. There was no mention of usability or concept testing, nor any insights gained from those tests. Clarification on these points would be helpful in understanding the impact of user feedback on the design iterations.
5. Make sure everyone can use the service
Decision
The service did not meet point 5 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team is planning to keep the paper route to apply for the service and other options to apply.
What the team needs to explore
Before the next assessment, the team needs to:
- conduct end-to-end usability testing with users who have access needs, including tests to understand how users will discover and enter the service, and confirm their identity. The team rightly highlights that they have used accessibility principles from other HMRC testing, but they need to conduct their own usability tests to validate the claim journey.
- conduct usability testing with vulnerable users who may experience other barriers to accessing the Child Benefit service. This includes people with low levels of spoken English.
- needs to demonstrate they’ve researched and understand the journey through the whole service and the various ways users arrive at it, particularly for users with assisted digital needs.
- there was no evidence that they conducted usability testing with assisted digital users and users with access needs.
- test the offline journey with real users and identify improvements to the paper journey. It is likely that a significant minority of users will not be able to apply through the online route because of known limitations of Government Gateway. In time, other channels need to be available to them that demonstrate an improved experience.
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:
- there is a multidisciplinary team in place.
- the team is well established and is balanced as well as it can be between contracted and permanent resources.
- the team is utilising an established support model to assist with private beta.
What the team needs to explore
Before the next assessment, the team needs to:
- the team should ensure that they are able to scale resourcing in such a way that it meets the demands of private beta and have a clear plan for public beta.
- the team should establish an agreed prioritisation process to enable any shared resources to be prioritised, ensuring the service outcomes are met.
7. Use agile ways of working
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 a well established agile ceremonies in place and have evolved their ways of working as a result.
- the team understands their stakeholders well and have managed the transition into a wider programme of work - mapping stakeholders accordingly.
What the team needs to explore
Before the next assessment, the team needs to:
- the team must demonstrate how they move from established user needs to hypotheses to prototype / research and then creation of user stories and build in a more sequential way.
- the team must have a level of autonomy in deciding the next phases of activity with product managers being empowered to make decisions pertaining to the roadmap.
- the team should try to influence the current reporting and governance models to bring them more in line with agile ways of working as there appears to be excessive reporting which is impacting on product management capacity.
8. Iterate and improve frequently
Decision
The service did not meet point 8 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the Team had acted upon some user research findings to iterate their design
- the Team indicated that they would use data from the service to inform future iterations
What the team needs to explore
Before the next assessment, the team needs to:
- the team must demonstrate how they have used a number of methods to prototype and test with users before reaching a conclusion on design choice.
- the team must demonstrate how any changes will be communicated to users and what the approach to learning and development will be.
- the team must demonstrate how they have used qual and quant information to inform their design decisions.
- there doesn’t seem to be enough evidence that the team has tested out multiple concepts. This needs to be highlighted in the next assessment to show they have landed on the best concept that is solving a user problem. For example, how can the users check if they are eligible for child’s benefits or not? Do users need to know this piece of information before starting this process?
- there was not enough evidence showing that the designs have iterated multiple times based on the user need, for example people with access needs. No mention of usability or concept testing and what were their learnings as a result.
- tackling a user’s needs at a time and improving it can be a good approach for the team to take. A few use cases were mentioned in the meeting that they can take forward for example, changing bank details, addresses, seeing the entitlement and past payments.
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 Child Benefit service operates upon a ‘collection of services’ (EACD, Auth, SI, SCP) for its authentication layer to provide a holistic secure service and at the same time protect the service user’s privacy and data protection concerns.
- claimant’s application submissions traverse several security verifications and authentication layers within their Integration Framework prior to creation of records within their NPS systems and other cross-government departments data systems.
- their ‘user allow list’ service combined with their frontend application system which is already running in private beta - provides a restrictive covenant adhering to user’s data privacy and data protection functions.
What the team needs to explore
Before the next assessment, the team needs to:
- the service team needs to elaborate on how they have mitigated their risks and systems from fraudulent claimants and assessed their system’s vulnerability against such.
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
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has identified a set of KPIs and indicated how these will be measured.
- the team has produced a service dashboard which not only supports performance, but identifies trend data that can be used to demonstrate impact over time.
- the team has a dedicated performance analyst.
What the team needs to explore
Before the next assessment, the team needs to:
- the team must demonstrate how data and intelligence has been used to influence incremental change to the product.
- the team must outline how their data will be published on data.gov.uk.
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 service team has a ‘cloud first’ approach adoption by utilising AWS’s platform as a service for their MDTP platform.
- utilising the lightweight Scala’s Play Framework, the service uses right tools and technology components for minimal resources consumption and effective TCO practices.
- having had to integrate with ‘print and post’ legacy mode of services, their web based application system integrates well with other myriad of systems.
What the team needs to explore
Before the next assessment, the team needs to:
- outline a more coherent solutions architecture of how have they automated their logging and alerting mechanisms and what testing measures are incorporated within their application toolchain.
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 Child Benefit frontend system is open source based and has GitHub repositories to enable working in the open standards workspace.
- the fiscal services separate out from the frontend public open source space within the Integration Framework layer to expedite other services viz. payments and tax management or case management.
- the team has enlisted the following links to their Github repos:
13. Use and contribute to open standards, common components and patterns
Decision
The service did not meet point 13 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the MDTP platform adheres internally to HMRC Digital standards.
- the team has described that they can reuse other service’s platform viz. bank and credit reference agencies, HO and GRO systems.
- the service’s front-end system adheres to the gov.uk design system.
What the team needs to explore
Before the next assessment, the team needs to:
- given the integrative nature of Child Benefit services with various other services and its appetite for cross-government credential platform, the service needs to adopt future flexibility in utilising common components of API’s, software design patterns and standards.
- demonstrate and share how their standards and best practices contribute and integrate very well both internally in-house viz. with DMS submission and externally viz. banking and payment gateways.
14. Operate a reliable service
Decision
The service did not meet point 14 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- child Benefit service has transitioned from paper-based to ‘print and post’ to now a web-based application MDTP platform to offer a strategic ‘Platform-as-a-Service’.
- the team has outlined that the platform would be maintained by a dedicated ‘platform team’.
What the team needs to explore
Before the next assessment, the team needs to:
- given the strategic, critical and sensitive nature, the Child Benefit services team needs to outline and demonstrate the resiliency and availability of the services being built.
- as the services would scale there is a further need for a resilient Object Store, the SDES exchange service and DMS archiving service to be highly available for caseworkers as well as claimants and to avoid a build up of backlog.