https://dataingovernment.blog.gov.uk/redundancy-payments-claim-for-redundancy-claims-and-monies-owed-service-assessment/
Redundancy Payments: Claim for Redundancy Claims and Monies Owed - Service Assessment
This assessment covers the “Claim for Redundancy Claims and Monies Owed” (RP1) component of the Redundancy Payments service. RP1 is the primary Redundancy Payments service, allowing users to claim their initial entitlements of redundancy, arrears of and holiday pay owed.
Department / Agency:
BIS / IS
Date of Assessment:
5/3/2015
Assessment stage:
Beta
Result of Assessment:
Pass
Lead Assessor:
N. Williams
Service Manager:
G. Ecart
Digital Leader:
T. Knighton
Assessment Report
The Claim for Redundancy Claims and Monies Owed (the first stage of the two-stage Redundancy Payments service) is seeking permission to launch on a service.gov.uk domain as a Beta service.
Outcome of service assessment
After consideration the assessment panel have concluded the Claim for Redundancy Claims and Monies Owed service has shown sufficient progress and evidence of meeting the Digital by Default Service Standard criteria and should proceed to launch as a Beta service on a service.gov.uk domain.
Reasons
User needs, research and design
The service is meeting well-understood needs, and being developed iteratively in accordance with the service manual by a high-functioning, multidisciplinary team.
The assessment panel were particularly impressed by the degree to which the team has done the hard work to replace a long, complex form with a much simpler digital service. The team has challenged every question and are only asking for information which is needed. The team has iterated the service well, incorporating learnings from user research, to make each step of the form intuitive. The panel were pleased to see the extent to which user research has been embedded into normal working processes, covering the full range of the service’s users, and that plans are in place to continue on this basis. The paper checklist that has been created to help users gather the information they need beforehand is also well thought through.
Assisted Digital
On Assisted Digital (AD), the team has done a thorough job of speaking to users of the service with all levels of digital ability, building a good understanding of their support needs. Testing plans are in place for all channels during the Public Beta, including with non-government agencies delivering face-to-face support.
The service's AD support includes signposting to other government services related to the user’s situation, in line with the on-screen service - the panel were pleased to see AD users getting the same consideration as users who complete the digital service independently. The AD support also includes digital inclusion approaches through scripting and signposting. Needs assessment is in place within the phone support, for the issuing of face-to-face support.
The service team knew the cost of phone support, and are budgeting a comfortable contingency for provision of face by face support, the final cost of which will be confirmed during the Public Beta.
Technical design and security
The team has had sensible conversations, and the service manager understands, the security and fraud risks relating to running the service. The team will be increasing the length of time sensitive data is stored for Beta (save and return) and the panel believed the team are executing this in a sensible manner.
It is good that the team has pulled out ‘form-monkey’, a library for creating forms, from the core code base with plans to open source it. The panel hopes to see this gain further documentation so that it could be shared with the wider government.
The team appeared empowered to make and own technical decisions, and it was impressive to see how content changes and code deploys had been decoupled, enabling the team's content editors to be more responsive to change.
Recommendations
At the next assessment, the panel will need to see convincing evidence that the service manager and product manager will have access to permanently-funded, dedicated developers with the skills and knowledge to operate and improve the service. The service will not pass live assessment without this dedicated resource in place and a clearly defined support model.
The team showed that you have volumetrics data, but this is yet to be submitted to the performance platform. It is important to get this to the performance platform team as soon as possible to help the service track and share improvements.
The team must also confirm that face-to-face AD support has the capacity to cope with varying demand, both geographically and over time.
Digital by Default Service Standard criteria
| Criteria | Passed | Criteria | Passed |
| 1 | Yes | 2 | Yes |
| 3 | Yes | 4 | Yes |
| 5 | Yes | 6 | Yes |
| 7 | Yes | 8 | Yes |
| 9 | Yes | 10 | Yes |
| 11 | Yes | 12 | Yes |
| 13 | Yes | 14 | Yes |
| 15 | Yes | 16 | Yes |
| 17 | Yes | 18 | Yes |
| 19 | Yes | 20 | Yes |
| 21 | Yes | 22 | Yes |
| 23 | Yes | 24 | Yes |
| 25 | Yes | 26 | Yes |
