| layout | title | subtitle | audience | theme | category | status | breadcrumbs | exclude_from_search | ||||||||||||||
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standard-support |
Awarding the standard |
How teams will prove they have met the standard |
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getting-started |
dbd |
draft |
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true |
All services within the scope of the standard will be assessed against the criteria of the standard. This includes the 25 exemplar services.
The department or agency that owns the service must make sure it meets and maintains the standard, whether or not it is designed, built and operated by teams which are in-house, external or mixed.
For services that process (or are likely to process) over 100,000 transactions a year, you will demonstrate the service and answer questions from a GDS panel. Services should be assessed at least three times before going live:
- during alpha development
- during beta development (which grants access to the GOV.UK domain)
- just before live release
You must show that the service and team have met the standard. The panel will apply common sense and a degree of flexibility to their assessments, giving teams feedback and help on how to improve a service when it looks like it won’t meet the standard.
For services that process (or are likely to process) fewer than 100,000 transactions a year, the you must arrange an assessment through the department’s digital leader. A GDS-trained assessor will lead the assessment.
An assessor or panel from the department will review the service with you and report back to the responsible digital leader who will certify the service.
Publishing good, frequent information about how services are being built is really important. It not only demonstrates commitment to meeting the standard, but also:
- contributes to a government-wide repository of best practise
- provides advice for other teams redesigning or building services
- is an easy way to share ideas within and across departments
Use a public blog to collect and publish progress. Publishing means that people from inside and outside government can follow the development of a service, allowing teams to quickly get advice and test their assumptions with a wider community.
It also means that there is a published audit trail of progress to support the decisions of the panel.
Redesigning or transforming a service should take 18 to 24 months, though there are no fixed deadlines for meeting the standard. As a result, having feedback throughout the process is really important, reducing the risk of lengthy projects going off track.
To do this, and support agile design, progress against the standard will be monitored as part of spending control processes.
Departments currently need Cabinet Office approval for digital spending. To simplify this, a dedicated account manager will work with each department to help prioritise their projects.
When a department makes a submission to their account manager for spending approval on services within the scope of the standard, GDS will assess whether the work completed so far meets the standard.
If the service redesign or build is at an early stage, GDS will make meeting the standard a condition of approval.
If the service redesign or build is at an advanced stage, GDS will make recommendations for additional spending to meet the standard. GDS will state when the team should return for further approval.
A team will go through this process to unlock spending approval at each phase of a service. The public blog will be used to record progress, which will help GDS to give departments support and feedback on whether they are on track to meet the standard well ahead of an assessment.