When it comes to improving our offering, looking at what people search for on GOV.UK is one of the best ways we can understand what you want from government information. The search box allows you to articulate what you want in your own words – and this data is easy to interpret, unlike a lot of the number-based metrics.

With our analytics package, we can quickly and easily look at what you’re searching for on each individual GOV.UK page. Our content pages are designed to appear high in external search engines like Google, so that you can click on a GOV.UK result that meets your need, find out what you want to know, then get out of GOV.UK quickly.

When people use internal search, it’s an indication that they haven’t found what they’re looking for first time. By analysing these results, we can make GOV.UK better for you.

For example, on the page ‘your contract and working hours’, we found that we’d left out information about taking rest breaks. By looking at search terms we discovered we’d left this information off the page, and lots of people were searching for it.

Our content team recently embarked on a mini-project to look at the top 100 searched-on pages, find out what information  was missing by analysing the search terms, and then include this information on the page. We didn’t want to get bogged down in big or complex changes to the site – we just wanted to help the most users we could in the shortest amount of time.

We ignored Departments and policy pages and first-level browse pages. We also left any major changes out of this round of tweaks. For example one of our findings was that on many of the passports pages, people were searching for ‘second passport’ – 735 searches across GOV.UK in November.

People can apply for a second passport if they travel a lot and need to apply for visas while traveling. We’ve identified this as a need that should be added to GOV.UK.

Searches for ‘second passport’ on GOV.UK in November:

In the end, we made changes to 41 pages in the top 100 list. The process was quick and effective – we scanned the search term report for each page and noted what we could add to content to meet that need. We then formed a crack team and made the changes in the space of an afternoon. The whole exercise took less than a day of 6 team leads’ time.

After waiting a month to see if the changes had had an effect (disregarding a cheeky check after a week to see that we hadn’t INCREASED the searches on any page!), we were ready to see what our quick-fire project had achieved …

… The results were good.

The pages we changed have had around 30,000 fewer searches in the  30 days following our changes. We can’t claim to have prevented all of these searches, as overall traffic to the site decreased by 9% in November. We’d expect searches to decrease proportionally, but searches on the 41 pages have decreased by an average of of 21%, so we’ve definitely improved the content. Searches only increased on two pages, and the highest increase was 6%.

We’d say that these results support our initial thinking that small tweaks = significant improvements for our users. A lot of the improvements connected different but related needs that were already on GOV.UK – we added links to content or browse pages and allowed people to navigate between them easily.

For example car tax is one of our most popular pages (the fourth most popular in November). After taking a good look at the search terms used on this page, it turned out that over 5,000 people were searching on this page for SORN, which allows you to surrender your tax disc so that you don’t have to pay vehicle insurance. But SORN information wasn’t housed on the car tax page.

We covered this need by putting a link to the SORN page in the related links on the car tax page. Searches for SORN went down by 95%, and searches on the page as a whole went down by 44%.

Browse pages featured highly in our top 100 searched-on pages. If browse pages are working properly, you should be able to follow descriptive link titles and summaries, and easily navigate through the site to get to the right content page. Sometimes we misjudge how people will interpret these link titles and text summaries – we are only human, after all!

For example, on the browse page Benefits Entitlement we provided a list of links to generic benefit pages like how and when your benefits are paid. As it turns out, people were searching for benefit-specific information such as ESA (Employment Support Allowance), on this page, so we included a few of the most searched-for benefits on this browse page.

The result? Searches on this page went down 29%, equal to nearly 1,800 searches.

We’re really pleased with the success of this little project, and it really shows how small changes can make a big difference to our users’ journeys.

Follow Lana on Twitter:  @Lana_Gibson

We’ve published a couple of big updates, both to the Digital Strategy and to the transformation programme. Between them, they’ll give you a picture of just how much we’ve achieved in the last twelve months.

Opening up services to more users

When we first published the digital strategy last year, we’d just launched GOV.UK and were finding out how valuable a user-centred, agile organisation at the heart of government could be. Many of the actions were designed to embed that way of working throughout the civil service.

We’re now adding two further actions to the strategy that will open that work up even further.

The first is about getting more people online. We welcomed the Digital Inclusion team into GDS this summer, and their strategy – to be published early in the new year – will show some of the work we’re doing across the public, private and voluntary sector to get more people online, alongside a set of digital inclusion principles.

The second new action is about opening up what we build. That means APIs and syndication tools for people to access our information and services in more ways. We’ll never be able to imagine all the uses people might have for government information in different contexts and different environments, but we can provide services that make it easier for other people to build those things.

Meanwhile, there are updates on all the work of the last few months, things regular readers of this blog will be familiar with. Lots more work on infrastructure and capability, major breakthroughs for the Identity Assurance team and the technology team, plus the Digital Services Store and the move of more websites over to GOV.UK.

Making progress on every exemplar

The transformation team have continued work with colleagues all over the country to complete discovery on every single exemplar. Congratulations to everyone involved in that because it really is a tremendous achievement.

This has given every team an understanding of what their users’ needs are, and the direction required to make alphas and betas a reality. In one case, it’s revealed that the service isn’t ready for transformation right now. We’ve identified a replacement though, and will share more updates on how that’s going in the new year.

We’ve also been helping our colleagues build and develop those alphas and betas. As mentioned by DWP last week, we completed work on a digital strategic solution of the Universal Credit service on October 3rd. That included a proof of concept – tested with real users – and an outline of the operating model and any dependent technology required. With that delivered, we’re supporting DWP while they develop the digital skills needed to build and operate the full service.

What’s next?

2014 will see more public betas, more live services, and huge leaps forward for teams here and across government. Identity, measurement and analytics, capability within the civil service, levelling the playing field for technology and digital suppliers of all shapes and sizes, not to mention support for those who need help getting online and using the services we’re building.

At the Code for America summit, I said that all this work isn’t about changing government websites, it’s about changing government. All of this work will make it simpler, clearer and faster for people to do the things they need to do with government. We’ve got a lot to do, but I think we can be proud of what we’ve achieved over the last twelve months.

Onwards!

Follow Mike on Twitter: @MTBracken

Today, we updated the Transactions Explorer, our tool for tracking performance

data for the government’s transactional services.

The Explorer covers 17 government departments, and now includes 766 services – an increase of 49 on September’s release.

The number of services fluctuates over time as departments improve their reporting processes, and as new services are introduced and other close or merge. The increase this quarter is largely due to the Department of Health extending the number of services it reports from 48 to 95, making it the department with the largest number of services after the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).

What’s the cost and what are we doing with the data?

The latest data release covers the period from July 2012 to Jun 2013, and includes the cost per transaction for over 100 services. Cost per transaction ranges from less than a penny to over £1000 per transaction, with a median figure per service of about £4.

When we set up the Transactions Explorer, one of our aims was to encourage departments to make better use of data to improve their services. Intelligent use of data can indicate if people like your service, if they find it easy to use, how much it costs, and what the potential for savings is; but the availability of performance measures for government services has historically been poor.

A year later, and it’s satisfying to see data being taken more seriously across government. There’s a long way to go, but many organisations are clearly committed to reviewing and improving the way they collect and use data.

What are the challenges?

Unfortunately, these changes have made one of our other aims more challenging. We had hoped to be able to monitor improvements to services over time by now, but as people are still refining the way they collect data, useful quarter-on-quarter comparisons aren’t always possible.

In the coming months, we’ll be looking at how we can address this, and how we can take further steps to integrate the Explorer more closely with other performance dashboards which give a more detailed view of services.

Follow Government Digital Service on Twitter: @gdsteam

We love it that you are making GOV.UK work for you. We want the information you need to be easy to find, no matter how you choose to access our digital services.

So, you can imagine how pleased we were to discover that around 137,000 visits to GOV.UK this year were made through a PS3 – it seems that even the draw of the latest game release isn’t enough to keep you from finding the information you need!

However you choose to visit GOV.UK, our  team are here to help – join the conversation on Twitter @GDSteam.

What a great way to say goodbye to 2013 – we exceeded 500,000,000 views on GOV.UK recently – which tells us that you’re finding loads of ways to access our services. We’ll keep working tirelessly to make things better, and here’s to the next half a billion!

Join the conversation on Twitter: @GDSteam

We’ve published a couple of big updates, both to the Digital Strategy and to the transformation programme. Between them, they’ll give you a picture of just how much we’ve achieved in the last twelve months.

Opening up services to more users

When we first published the digital strategy last year, we’d just launched GOV.UK and were finding out how valuable a user-centred, agile organisation at the heart of government could be. Many of the actions were designed to embed that way of working throughout the civil service.

We’re now adding two further actions to the strategy that will open that work up even further.

The first is about getting more people online. We welcomed the Digital Inclusion team into GDS this summer, and their strategy – to be published early in the new year – will show some of the work we’re doing across the public, private and voluntary sector to get more people online, alongside a set of digital inclusion principles.

The second new action is about opening up what we build. That means APIs and syndication tools for people to access our information and services in more ways. We’ll never be able to imagine all the uses people might have for government information in different contexts and different environments, but we can provide services that make it easier for other people to build those things.

Meanwhile, there are updates on all the work of the last few months, things regular readers of this blog will be familiar with. Lots more work on infrastructure and capability, major breakthroughs for the Identity Assurance team and the technology team, plus the Digital Services Store and the move of more websites over to GOV.UK.

Making progress on every exemplar

The transformation team have continued work with colleagues all over the country to complete discovery on every single exemplar. Congratulations to everyone involved in that because it really is a tremendous achievement.

This has given every team an understanding of what their users’ needs are, and the direction required to make alphas and betas a reality. In one case, it’s revealed that the service isn’t ready for transformation right now. We’ve identified a replacement though, and will share more updates on how that’s going in the new year.

We’ve also been helping our colleagues build and develop those alphas and betas. As mentioned by DWP last week, we completed work on a digital strategic solution of the Universal Credit service on October 3rd. That included a proof of concept – tested with real users – and an outline of the operating model and any dependent technology required. With that delivered, we’re supporting DWP while they develop the digital skills needed to build and operate the full service.

What’s next?

2014 will see more public betas, more live services, and huge leaps forward for teams here and across government. Identity, measurement and analytics, capability within the civil service, levelling the playing field for technology and digital suppliers of all shapes and sizes, not to mention support for those who need help getting online and using the services we’re building.

At the Code for America summit, I said that all this work isn’t about changing government websites, it’s about changing government. All of this work will make it simpler, clearer and faster for people to do the things they need to do with government. We’ve got a lot to do, but I think we can be proud of what we’ve achieved over the last twelve months.

Onwards!

Follow Mike on Twitter: @MTBracken

Today, we updated the Transactions Explorer, our tool for tracking performance data for the government’s transactional services.

The Explorer covers 17 government departments, and now includes 766 services – an increase of 49 on September’s release.

The number of services fluctuates over time as departments improve their reporting processes, and as new services are introduced and other close or merge. The increase this quarter is largely due to the Department of Health extending the number of services it reports from 48 to 95, making it the department with the largest number of services after the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).

What’s the cost and what are we doing with the data?

The latest data release covers the period from July 2012 to Jun 2013, and includes the cost per transaction for over 100 services. Cost per transaction ranges from less than a penny to over £1000 per transaction, with a median figure per service of about £4.

When we set up the Transactions Explorer, one of our aims was to encourage departments to make better use of data to improve their services. Intelligent use of data can indicate if people like your service, if they find it easy to use, how much it costs, and what the potential for savings is; but the availability of performance measures for government services has historically been poor.

A year later, and it’s satisfying to see data being taken more seriously across government. There’s a long way to go, but many organisations are clearly committed to reviewing and improving the way they collect and use data.

What are the challenges?

Unfortunately, these changes have made one of our other aims more challenging. We had hoped to be able to monitor improvements to services over time by now, but as people are still refining the way they collect data, useful quarter-on-quarter comparisons aren’t always possible.

In the coming months, we’ll be looking at how we can address this, and how we can take further steps to integrate the Explorer more closely with other performance dashboards which give a more detailed view of services.

Follow Government Digital Service on Twitter: @gdsteam and sign up for email alerts here.

You may also be interested in:

Latest update to the Transaction Explorer

Government transaction costs – the story behind the data

How much? Publishing the cost of government transactions

We love it that you are making GOV.UK work for you. We want the information you need to be easy to find, no matter how you choose to access our digital services.

So, you can imagine how pleased we were to discover that around 137,000 visits to GOV.UK this year were made through a PS3 – it seems that even the draw of the latest game release isn’t enough to keep you from finding the information you need!

However you choose to visit GOV.UK, our  team are here to help – join the conversation on Twitter @GDSteam, and sign up for email alerts here.

You may also be interested in:

Half a billion views on GOV.UK

Strategy and delivery, one year on

A checklist for digital inclusion – if we do these things, we’re doing digital inclusion

What a great way to say goodbye to 2013 – we exceeded 500,000,000 views on GOV.UK recently – which tells us that you’re finding loads of ways to access our services. We’ll keep working tirelessly to make things better, and here’s to the next half a billion.

Join the conversation on Twitter: @GDSteam and sign up for email alerts.

You may also be interested in:

Strategy and delivery, one year on

Interesting browser stats

Iterating our support for service managers

Yesterday the BBC published data showing more people accessing iPlayer via tablet than via computer. This prompted me to update some of the data I gathered for the government’s agreed approach to mobile last this time last year.

The objective of the UK government’s digital strategy is to make sure our digital services that are so straightforward and convenient that all those who can use them will choose to do so. But what our users consider to be ‘straightforward’ and ‘convenient’ is not static. We need government services to be able to adapt quickly to big changes in people’s behaviours and expectations.

For example, here’s a graph showing how the devices people use to visit GOV.UK have changed since its launch. (To be precise, the data is for visits, rather than users.)

Since 1 January 2014,  63% of visits to GOV.UK have come from a computer, 23% from a mobile and 14% from a tablet. In January 2012 it was 77% computer, 15% mobile and 9% tablet. If you visit the GOV.UK performance dashboard you’ll see that the sample sizes are non-trivial.

Compared with the general UK population, the graph above may be skewed by a minority (around  2%) of GOV.UK users who visit the site more than 100 times a month, often to research government activity as part of their job, typically from a work computer.

I’ve tried to get more representative UK data by looking at the visit data for the two weeks following Christmas Day, when such power users are probably not quite so busy.

The device breakdown for this period last year was 74% computer, 16% mobile and 10% tablet.

This year saw 61% using a computer, 24% mobile and 15% tablet.

On Christmas Day 2013, only 51% visited GOV.UK from a computer, compared with 66% on Christmas Day 2012. (Over 300k visits to GOV.UK this past Christmas Day; 34k were looking for a job; over 5k bought a tax disc.)

Shifts in the devices people use to access the internet should come as no surprise, but the pace of change might. And I do not expect this switch away from PCs towards more personal, portable, touchscreen devices to slow down anytime soon.

The UK government e-petitions service has seen incredible changes in how, when and where it is used. Pete Herlihy has product managed this service since it went live in summer 2011. As he revealed recently, only two years ago over 75% of visits came via computers. Now a mere 27% do so, with 56% from mobile, and 17% from tablet.

Not every service will end up with such proportions, but e-petitions demonstrates just how rapidly and radically user behaviour can change. Here’s current data for some of the transactional services on GOV.UK:

Book your practical driving test:

Computer - 67.4% (was 71.3% in March 2013)
Mobile - 21.4% (was 17.7% in March 2013)
Tablet - 11.2% (was 11% in March 2013)

Change date of practical driving test booking:

Computer - 56.9% (was 61.3% in March 2013)
Mobile - 32.4% (was 30.3% in March 2013)
Tablet - 8.7% (was 8.4% in March 2013)

Apply for a Student Finance:

Computer – 64.6%
Mobile – 26.6%
Tablet – 8.8%

Make a Lasting Power of Attorney:

Computer – 84.3%
Mobile – 12.4%
Tablet – 3.3%

Apply for Carer’s Allowance:

Computer – 67.1%
Mobile – 17.7%
Tablet – 15.2%

I hope this helps explain why the digital by default service standard requires that, from April 2014 onwards, all new or redesigned central government digital services must be designed with an appropriate range of devices in mind. As we say in the GDS Design Principles, our services must understand the context in which people will use them. And for many people, for many services, that context is swiftly becoming more mobile, more personal and more touch-controlled.

Designing for small screens can be a real challenge. Which is why for many of the 25 exemplar services we’re now designing the mobile version first, despite visits from computers still being in the majority. Why? Simply, it’s often easier to make a service also work for a computer monitor and keyboard if you’ve already made it work really well on a small touchscreen than it is to go the other way.

Moreover, as Andy Washington, MD of Expedia UK & Ireland, explained at a recent panel, designing within the constraints of a small touchscreen helps keep your underlying service as clear and as simple as it needs to be to serve all your users, including those who may be new to the internet, or find it a struggle.

Finally, to answer the question posed in the title to this post: When will more people visit GOV.UK using a mobile or tablet than a PC? On Christmas Day 2014, if not before.

NB I’ve seen no data over the past year to suggest the government’s approach to downloadable apps should change. We’re still not ‘appy about them, and central government departments and agencies must seek an exemption before they start developing any.

Sign up for email alerts and join the conversation on Twitter.

You may also be interested in:

The mobile question: Responsive Design

Mobile’s role in bridging the digital divide

Reaching all our users

Joshua Marshall is Head of Accessibility at GDS. Just before Christmas, we sat him down for a short chat about his work.

In Joshua’s opinion, the single most important thing GDS has done to improve accessibility across government is “change how we write.”

Improving the quality of all the written content on GOV.UK has made more of a difference than anything else, he says. “It’s changed the perception of how government talks to its citizens.”

There are other important lessons Joshua has learned, including:

• everything we build should be accessible by default – accessibility is never an afterthought
• scaling knowledge between members of growing product teams all over the country was a hard problem to solve
• we’ve put a lot of work into accessibility but there’s still more we can do, particularly for the deaf community

You can listen to the full interview (just under seven minutes) by clicking the play button in the embedded SoundCloud widget below. There’s also a full transcript just below that, if you’d prefer to read one.

An audio file for direct download is available from The Internet Archive.

(This audio interview is a new experiment for us – what do you think of it as a format for explaining what we do? As always, we’d love to hear your feedback.)

Follow Joshua on Twitter: @partiallyblind

Follow Giles on Twitter: @gilest

Transcript

Joshua Marshall: I’m Joshua Marshall; I am the Head of Accessibility for the Government Digital Service.

Interviewer: What does accessibility actually mean?

Joshua: It means making sure that we’re not excluding anyone who might have to use our services.

Interviewer: Go into a bit more detail about that. What do you mean by excluding anyone? How could we exclude people?

Joshua: You can do things like not build your website in a particularly good fashion, so you might lock them out by not caring enough about colour contrast for someone who’s visually impaired. You might make it really difficult for someone who has to navigate just with a keyboard to be able to use the site. You might make the site not work particularly well with screen readers, for example, if you’re a blind user. We have to take all of those things into consideration while we’re designing the services that we’re building.

Interviewer: How do we do that, then? What’s the process that we go through?

Joshua: Mostly, we do that by making sure it’s part of the process, right from the very beginning. We work in an agile way, so we work with small development teams. We take the work that we do and break it up into quite logical sections of work, so if we’re building a new feature, for example, we’ll start from the beginning and ask what the user need is that we’re trying to solve. From the very start of that process, as we work out what we might need to build or what we might need to design, we’ll do it with the knowledge that this has to work for everyone, so we can’t cut corners, say that, “We’re just not going to bother supporting screen-reader users, we’re not going to bother supporting visually impaired users”, you know? They’re all tax payers too, so they don’t have a choice in interacting with these services, the same way that the rest of us don’t, so we have to make sure that what we’re building works for everyone.

Interviewer: In reality, does that mean that your job involves a fair bit of knocking heads together and making people think about things that they might not otherwise be thinking about?

Joshua: To a certain extent. It used to a lot more than it does now. We’re already two years into the process of making GOV.UK a viable product, so at this point we’ve already worked quite extensively with all the different development teams, and it’s an accepted thing that the products that we build will be accessible. It may be that if you’re working on something where you wouldn’t traditionally have considered it that much, you might have to have a little bit more of a pointer as to what we expect, but the implication for all of the things that we build from the Government Digital Service is they should all be accessible by default.

Interviewer: What’s the most difficult thing that you’ve had to face so far?

Joshua: Scaling up how much knowledge is required for different product teams, and different teams based in different departments around the country. We have a team based here with us in GDS who can test the products that we’re building; we can give guidance, but we’re in one location in London. We have teams in Liverpool, and in Warrington and in Glasgow, like all over the country, and scaling that, and making sure that all of the external, perhaps non-GDS teams; that they all try and build  their things the way that we want them to, rather than the way that they have in the past.

Interviewer: What’s the most difficult thing about getting the message across? Accessibility is taken very seriously by some people on the internet, but by no means everybody. It seems that there’s still a lot of hammering home of the message to get across to a lot of people, so how do you deal with that?

Joshua: In the accessibility community in general, I think there’s always been a lot of feeling like you’re preaching to the choir, in some respects. I think for us, the best thing we can do is to put our money where our mouth is, really. We’re telling people that this is the way that it should be, based on us doing this work for two years with GOV.UK, and proving that you can work in an agile way and still make accessible products. It shouldn’t be a thing you try and bolt on at the end. It shouldn’t be optional. It should just be a part of the process of making something good in 2013.

Interviewer: What’s the thing that you’re most proud of achieving in those last two years?

Joshua: I would say… We won a D&AD award, which is a design and advertising award. It’s a very prestigious thing, and we won a Yellow Pencil and a Black Pencil for the quality of the writing on GOV.UK. Without a doubt, I would say that the biggest thing we’ve done to improve accessibility across the government with GOV.UK is change how we write. Like, just that one thing has made more of a difference to people, like being able to actually understand what we’re trying to communicate. Everything else that we’ve done is great on top of that, but we couldn’t have done it without having a fantastic content team, like, changed the perception of how government talks to its citizens.

Interviewer: In contrast to that, then, what would you like to achieve in the next two years?

Joshua: I would like to ensure that our deaf users get as much out of the platform as any of the other user groups that we’ve chosen to focus on to this point. I’m currently trying to work out the scope of how we meet the needs of our deaf users better than we have been so far. We currently don’t have much in the way of British Sign Language content on the site. We don’t have video relay tools or anything that the deaf community typically uses to communicate. We’re in the process of investigating what those things are, and I’m really hoping it won’t take two years to get those things live and get them tested; see what the user need is.

Interviewer: Brilliant. Thank you very much.

Joshua: You’re welcome.

Sign up for email alerts and join the conversation on Twitter.

You may also be interested in:

Talking accessibility at ustwo

GOV.UK accessibility: beyond box-ticking

User testing accessibility

Just before Christmas we released dates for the next four cohorts on GDS’s Service Manager Induction and Development Programme.

During 2013, we took the programme through discovery, alpha, beta, and into live. We reached 30 service managers from 11 departments, who between them cover 15 of the exemplar transformations.

As Paul Slade blogged back in October, each group spent up to 8 days with us at Aviation House, taking part in sessions on putting users first, being agile, and building the team; as well as more specialist topics such as assisted digital and identity assurance.

We’re really grateful for all the participants’ feedback which is helping us continue to improve the programme.

In the follow-up survey to the alpha and beta, service managers told us the programme made a big difference to their network, confidence and knowledge as service managers. They appreciated hearing from experts who have real-life experience of running digital services in government. And they enjoyed the practical exercises and case studies.

Among their comments:

• “[The programme] gave me the evidence and the confidence to challenge ‘short cuts’… to encourage more focus on regular user testing and change throughout.”

• “Improved my knowledge and confidence in the agile delivery process… I am now mentoring other delivery teams and facilitating workshops.”

• “I feel confident articulating the service manager role to others.”

We’ll continue running inductions in small cohorts of up to 10 service managers who can get to know each other and tackle issues as a team. We’ve also invited programme alumni back in to network and share their experiences with each cohort.

For all new service managers on exemplars and 100,000+ transaction services to take part in the programme, we estimate up to 150 participants by Q2 2015.

To make the programme more flexible and open to a wider range of participants, we’ve divided modules between two formats:

• Induction programme – 4 days to equip newly appointed service managers with the basic knowledge, network and confidence to take the lead in transforming digital services.

• Open programme – 3 days of more specialist modules to help you succeed and improve in particular areas of the Digital by Default Service Standard.

All newly appointed service managers should book to attend both the induction programme and all 3 days of the open programme. More experienced service managers or others in specialist roles in government may choose to book onto any or all of the open programme modules.

See the Service Manual for more information about the programme in 2014, including a link to request your place.

Follow Matt on Twitter: @mattedgar, and sign up for email alerts here.

You may also be interested in:

A checklist for digital inclusion – if we do these things, we’re doing digital inclusion

How we do user research in agile teams

Iterating the trade tariff tool with HMRC

As with most of our work at the Government Digital Service, we release things early for review and comment. The digital inclusion team, set up last year, would like to share and get your feedback on an alpha version of a checklist for digital inclusion.

We first mentioned a set of principles (we’re now calling it a checklist) when we published action 15 of the Government Digital Strategy. Over the last three months, this checklist has been developed in collaboration with partners from across government, private, voluntary and public sectors.

The intention is for the checklist to act as a guide for any organisation involved in helping people go online. In other words, if you do these things, you’re doing digital inclusion. Alongside each of the six checklist items, we have included an illustrative example of what works and a potential action that could be included in the upcoming digital inclusion strategy.

Checklist Overview

1.  Start with user needs – not our own
2.  Improve access – stop making things difficult
3.  Motivate people – find something they care about
4.  Keep it safe – build trust
5.  Work with others – don’t do it alone
6.  Focus on wider outcomes – measure performance

We want to hear from you

We are looking for feedback on the checklist from organisations and individuals who are involved in helping people, small businesses and small charities go online. We are keen to hear other examples from you  that illustrate great digital inclusion in action. We also want to know what actions we should be taking. Like those we have identified from the examples here, please let us know what you would do.

Your comments

Feedback is great and we want to hear everyone’s thoughts and advice as we develop the digital inclusion strategy. As well as the feedback we’ve asked you for on the checklist above, we have 4 other specific questions that we would really appreciate your help with:

1.  There a number of different roles that government could play. From your experience of digital exclusion, how should the government help tackle this issue?

2.  Getting funding to the those who can help people take the first steps to go online is really difficult and complex. How can we make it easier for support and funding to reach organisations who can offer the best support to people offline?

3.  We need new ways of inspiring and helping people go online – not just laptops and slideshows. How can we foster and promote innovation within digital inclusion?

4.  Everyone we have spoken to says that we all need to work together better to tackle digital exclusion. What is stopping this? How to we support greater collaboration, partnerships and joint working?

We are really keen to hear any and all of your feedback via comments below or you can email them to the team at digital-inclusion@digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk. If we could ask for your comments, feedback and ideas by the end of January that would be great*.

Your feedback and advice will help to shape a digital inclusion strategy to be published in early Spring and set out how we can all collectively tackle digital exclusion.

We can’t wait to hear from you.

Join the conversation on Twitter: @GDSTeam

*Of course, if you want to get involved, work with us or simply pass on an idea we are always willing to talk. So get in touch!

Checklist

1.  Start with user needs – not our own

Tailor support around the unique barriers that stop people going online, and adapt to people’s needs which change over time

Throwing money at the problem and offering generic support does not help people go online for the long-term. People need tailored support to help them overcome their own particular barriers; whether that’s around access, cost, confidence or skills. Services need to be built for the user, not for government or business – putting their changing needs first.

Example of what works:

Lambeth Digital Buddies will support 50,000 Lambeth Council residents go online. Many residents are without access to the internet or lack the skills to confidently complete online transactions, and at the same time are heavily reliant on essential services that are migrating to online-only provision.

Digital Buddies are volunteers in the local community that will give their time to help people learn basic online skills, based around a mix of things that interest them, as well as using online government services. As many of those learning digital skills do not have regular access to the internet they can also receive text alerts advising them of important emails (for example from the Department for Work and Pensions) so they can log in knowing that there is something for them to attend to. The scheme also provides tangible benefits to buddies; for example, voluntary work experience helps improve job prospects by building experience and providing references for job applications.

Building on this example, a potential action could be to:

• Empower local digital buddy networks within a national community of volunteers

2.  Improve access – stop making things difficult

Provide simple, low cost options for those who are socially and economically excluded to get online

Going online can be confusing, difficult and costly. It isn’t just about buying a laptop or smartphone; subscription fees, connection charges, setting up online accounts and installing firewalls can all make for a challenging experience.

Some people in the UK do not yet have access to broadband where they live even if they want to go online. The most digitally excluded are often the most socially and economically excluded, and could benefit the most from going online. Making the practical steps of going online easy and affordable makes a huge difference to people who are new to the internet.

Example of what works:

The Glasgow Housing Association (GHA), Scottish Government and BT have joined together to provide affordable broadband to a tower block in central Glasgow. With only 37% of those people living in social housing being online, support through housing providers is hugely important.

At £5 per month, not only does the service provide residents with simple and affordable connectivity and hardware, but the additional ongoing training and support they receive allows them to feel confident to use it.

By working together, all partners benefit from the scheme: reducing costs for GHA through online rent payments, fault reporting and communications with tenants; residents are now able to take advantage of the financial and social benefits that the internet can offer; for BT, increased market share and a new customer base; and, the scheme supports the government’s priorities by preparing for changes to universal credit.

Building on this example, potential actions could be to:

• Establish a national model to provide housing association residents with connectivity, hardware and training

• Define common standards across service providers, not just government, for basic online transactions e.g. paying rent online

3.  Motivate people – find something they care about

Bring digital into people’s lives in a way that benefits them; helping them do things they care about and can only do online

Pushing people to do something that doesn’t interest them doesn’t work. Let’s face it, doing government transactions online is not the most inspirational digital activity and is unlikely to be the motivator that gets someone to go online. In contrast, keeping in touch with your grandchildren who live abroad might be. Nobody wants to learn digital skills for the sake of it, and having an internet connection is useless unless you have a reason to want to use it.

Example of what works:

The E-mentoring initiative for the Rehabilitation of Prolific and Priority Offenders gives ex-offenders access to support, advice and guidance across a range of issues. When integrating back into society, priorities for ex-offenders include getting a job, finding secure accommodation and easily keeping in contact with their probation officers.

Through a ‘Virtual Home’, members can store vital personal information such as proof of ID, qualifications, CV and employment history which are not easy to maintain due to the transient and uncertain lifestyle that many are faced with.

By making ex-offenders’ lives better and focusing on the things that they care about, digital becomes part of their everyday lives. This innovative project was led in Leicestershire and Rutland with the support of the Brightside Trust.

Building on this example, a potential action could be to:

• Make digital skills a central component of all rehabilitation

4.  Keep it safe – build trust

Make it easier to stay safe online by providing simple and straightforward advice and tools

Going online can be a daunting experience for many as they open themselves up to new risks. To keep people online in the long term it’s vital that they can rely on trusted sources to get the help, support and assurance they need to build their confidence in a digital world. The internet will never be 100% secure and staying safe online needs to be a basic digital literacy skill. Not enough people know how to look after themselves and others securely and not enough people trust the internet in the first place.

Example of what works:

Go ON UK  are developing a single place called digitalskills.com for those helping individuals, small businesses and small charities learn to be proficient, confident and safe online.

digitalskills.com is a repository of local resources and opportunities for accessing, learning and sharing digital skills. Still in its beta phase, the website has been created with a group of highly regarded and reputable national brands and will, over time, be developed to assure the quality of the resources and advice that is made available.

As well as links to useful information and services, there are maps to direct people to where local physical resources and advice are located. Go ON UK’s ambition and intent is to to create a single, trusted, and evolving source for online services that will help instill confidence and trust amongst new users and those supporting them.

Building on this example, a potential action could be to:

• Build and promote digitalskills.com to be a UK wide trusted source of tools, advice and opportunities

5.  Work with others – don’t do it alone

Work together to maximise expertise, experience and resources to better meet user needs

Services to help people go online are not joined up enough. Efforts are duplicated across providers, funding is sporadic and does not always align with users’ needs. Better links and coordination are needed between the public, private and voluntary sector, so that their efforts add up to more than the sum of their parts.

Example of what works:

Liverpool’s Race Online 2012 (Go ON it’s Liverpool) brought together some 5,000 digital champions to help people go online by promoting a wide range of activities across the city – for example, encouraging people to ‘Give an hour’ to help those off-line to go online. This was a highly successful campaign brought about by a collaborative model involving everyone from; politicians, to community groups, the police, local businesses and volunteers to help the people of Liverpool go online.

This multi-faceted partnership and high profile initiative helped 104,000 people in Liverpool who had never been online (July 2011) and reduced those digitally excluded by 58,000 over the year. The success of the Liverpool Race has led to this model being replicated in the first of Go ON UK’s regional programmes in the North East.

Building on this example, a potential action could be to:

• Partners in the public, private and voluntary sectors to work together to roll-out Go ON UK’s regional partnership programme nationally

6.  Focus on wider outcomes – measure performance

Identify wider outcomes that can be delivered by helping people become independently confident online and use data to understand what works

Reducing digital exclusion is not about the number of people who simply log-on once; how we measure digital inclusion needs to become far better. Equally, being able to go online is not an end in itself, but it does offer one way to help improve wider social and economic outcomes like improved health, employment or reduced re-offending and loneliness.

Identifying and prioritising against wider outcomes, agreeing common measures, evaluating and testing what works, as well as iterating and making things better, is critical to realising the benefits of going digital and achieving maximum impact for minimum resources.

Example of what works:

There are very few longitudinal surveys which track the long term efficacy of help and support provided to those digitally excluded; meaning that what works and what doesn’t is hard to understand.

Citizens Online and BT have been running a series of training sessions as part of their Get IT Together initiative. Learners receive 4 sessions of training and are then contacted after 3, 6, 12, and 24 months. Understanding ongoing user-confidence, types of devices owned and services being used, as well as the reasons for being online and offline allows Citizens Online and BT to iterate and make changes to their approaches when delivering training, support and developing new services.

Building on this example, a potential action could be to:

• Establish a common measure of digital inclusion across national, local, public and private surveys

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Getting started on assisted digital

The Digital by Default Service Standard has been running as a beta for almost a year now, but formally comes into force in April. Now that we’ve run over 40 assessments, we thought it was time to summarise what we’ve learned so far.

The Service Standard is what we believe ‘good’ looks like for government digital services. The standard consists of 26 criteria that cover a range of areas essential for building new or redesigning existing digital services. The purpose is to improve the quality of government digital services and support the Cabinet Office spending controls.

Government committed in the Government Digital Strategy that by April 2014 all new or redesigned digital services will meet the Service Standard before they can go live. From April 2014, services going through an assessment will be assessed against all 26 points of the standard.

Getting ready …

In preparation for April, we’ve been assessing services against the standard at the end of their alpha and beta phases, before they launch in public or move to the next phase. In the year before the standard formally comes into effect, rather than expecting them to meet all 26 criteria, we’ve primarily focussed on whether services meet user needs, can be rapidly improved, and are safe and secure. The reason for this has been to give the teams building services time to get up to speed with working in a new way. But, by April this year, we’ll expect services seeking to move from beta to live to meet all 26 criteria.

We’ve been really impressed with the great work that is going on across government to improve digital services, and we hope that the process has been as helpful for departments as it has been for us. By running assessments against the standard before it comes into full force in April 2014, we’ve been able to learn and improve the process. I want to explain a little bit about what we’ve learnt so far and how we’ve changed the process in response.

Who is involved?

Last year, assessments were led by an experienced product owner with support from a technical architect and an analyst from GDS. This worked well because the people in these roles have a good understanding of government services and the Service Standard – after all they are already building or running digital services to meet the service standard in their day jobs. They were sometimes joined by an analyst and/or a designer on a service by service basis. Since then, we’ve realised just how valuable the support of a designer is to ensure we cover all elements of each service in sufficient detail.

What we’ve learned

We’ve found that it’s really difficult to know beforehand how long an assessment is going to take. This isn’t surprising since we know that services across government can be very different, some are more complex than others. So, we’ve extended the length of the assessments from 2 hours to 3 hours – this works much better because the services that don’t need all 3 hours finish early but the others don’t overrun.

We’ve learnt that the assessment meetings run much more smoothly when the assessors understand a bit more about the service before the assessment meeting. That’s why we now ask for a description of the service before each assessment including who its users are, what user needs the service is aiming to meet, and a working link to the service.

For services themselves, we’ve found that that there is a real benefit to sharing learning from one service to the next. For example, this might be by sharing code and design from a service that has passed an assessment or by avoiding common pitfalls from services that haven’t passed. To help this learning across different services, we are going to start publishing assessment reports soon.

There may be a few more improvements that we’ll make ahead of April. If you have suggestions, please do comment below.

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This morning we moved the GDS blog over to the GOV.UK blogging platform. You might notice a few changes to the way the site looks and works, including a new URL.

The move is an important one for us, as it give us more control over the design and functionality of the blog, and makes things like searching by topic and author much easier for you.

The move does also mean some changes that we wanted to make you aware of.

Unfortunately most of the comments made during the last couple of weeks on the old platform will not be moved over, so they won’t show up on the new blog.

Also, if you subscribe to email updates to this blog, you’ll notice that the emails will change.

As with everything here at GDS, we really value your feedback. Please let us know what you think of the new platform, and how we could improve on it. You can comment below, send us a tweet or find our contact ethos and email information here.

However you want to get in touch, we are keen to hear from you.

Identity assurance is a new service that will give people a secure and convenient way to sign in to government services.

Why we need identity assurance

The 25 exemplar services (the government services that make up the digital transformation programme) will make it possible to do a range of things you can’t easily do online now; like register to vote, view your driving record or tax details, apply for an apprenticeship and manage your student loan.

When you use these services, you want to be confident that someone else can’t sign in pretending to be you, see your sensitive personal records or use your identity to make fraudulent claims. You want to be confident that your data and services are secure and your privacy protected.

The government departments providing these services need to verify your identity to make sure the right people are accessing the right information. That’s why we’re building the identity assurance service.

How we will provide user choice, control and privacy

When you’re using digital services you want to be sure that your privacy is being protected and your data is secure.

We’ve been working for the last three years with our Privacy and Consumer Advisory Group to help make sure we’re designing a service based on user choice, control and privacy.

Last summer the group published a draft set of identity assurance principles to make sure the service is designed and operates in a way that is transparent, protects your privacy and gives you control over how your data is used. We will  be publishing a document in the next few weeks explaining in detail how we’ve designed the service to reflect the principles.

Who will verify your identity

When one of these digital services needs to verify your identity, you’ll be directed to a page on GOV.UK where you’ll be asked to register with an identity provider. If you’ve already registered, you can just sign in.

Identity providers are organisations paid by the government to verify people’s identity so they can sign in securely to government services. Identity providers will have to meet industry security standards and identity assurance standards published by the Cabinet Office and CESG (the UK’s national technical authority).

There are currently 5 identity providers – Digidentity, Experian, Mydex, the Post Office and Verizon – eventually there will be more. You can choose to register with more than one of them, and you can stop using an identity provider at any time.

Why we’re using identity providers

There are 5 main reasons why we’re using identity providers rather than doing this work within government:

1. user choice – you will be able to choose your identity provider(s) and stop using a provider if you want

2. no centralised identity database – instead, to protect users’ privacy, each identity provider will be responsible for securely and separately holding data about the users that have registered with them. Each government department service will only have access to the data it needs.

3. security – using several identity providers is more secure and less vulnerable; there is no single point of failure and no single service that holds all the data in one place

4. developing a market – we’re giving identity providers freedom to design services to meet the standards. This will allow them to develop services that can be used by the wider public and private sector, which will help to reduce costs.

5. making the most of available technology – the technology and methods for identity verification are constantly evolving; specialist private sector organisations are better placed than government to keep up with these developments

Identity providers will have to operate according to strict security and operations standards, to protect users’ security and privacy and to make sure the required standards are met.

How the identity assurance process works

Your chosen identity provider will ask you for some information that helps establish that you are who you say you are. No single piece of information is sufficient to achieve the required standards; they will need to ask you for a range of information.

Identity providers will check to make sure information you’ve provided is valid and genuine. Your chosen provider will be able to send your passport and driving licence details to the government agency that issued them to ask if they match a valid record. Identity providers will also be able to check databases of known fraudulent documents, including police databases. They won’t have access to confidential information held about you by other government services. They can check other records they have access to from within the private sector, like information from credit reference agencies.

One of the benefits of the new service is that most people will be able to complete the registration process online, without having to wait for documents or instructions to be sent in the post as happens with existing services like Government Gateway.

We’re working with the identity providers to make sure that people who don’t have specific official documents like a passport or driving licence will still be able to achieve the required level of assurance through other means.

Once the identity provider has verified your identity, you will be given a secure means of signing in.

Different levels of assurance for different services

Some services don’t need to know who their users are. If you want to order a document, the service provider only needs to know where to send it. Other services will need to be more confident that you are who you say you are; for example, if you’re going to be able to see sensitive personal details, or make a claim for payment.

Each service will assess risks by considering things like whether sensitive data can be seen and whether money transactions take place, in order to decide what level of identity assurance they need.

The guidance on how to assess risks to online services is published on GOV.UK.

Identity assurance will initially be available for services that need to be confident that a user is who they say they are to ‘level of assurance 2’ according to the published guidance. This is a moderate level of security, more than just a basic check, and enough to be able to access quite a big range of services.

What’s next

By March 2014, we will be in private beta and the first users will be able to use identity assurance to sign in to a government service. The private beta is the first version of the service, available to a small number of selected users so we can test and develop it further.

The private beta will initially include two exemplar government digital services – HMRC’s PAYE and DVLA’s view driving record service. These services will use identity assurance to allow about 2,000 users to sign in securely. We’ll use the private beta to learn from our first users’ experiences and continue to develop the service. From April onwards, we’ll start adding more services and more users.

We’ve been blogging about our work on the GDS blog and more recently on our own identity assurance programme blog. We’ll be producing a lot more posts over the coming weeks and months; looking at different aspects of the service, sharing what we learn from the private beta, reporting on our ongoing user research and hearing your feedback.

We have a range of topics we’re planning to post about, and we’re keen to answer questions like the ones Paul Clarke posed in his recent post. If you have any issues you want us to cover please let us know.

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Identity Assurance: First delivery contracts signed

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GDS this week looks at how technology trials with mobile solutions like iPads and Android tablets are helping people in the Cabinet Office share knowledge, and work faster and smarter. We also look at the increase in digital take-up of two key GOV.UK online services during the Christmas and New Year holiday period.

Follow Tom Read and Matt Harrington on Twitter:

Tom Read (Head of Technology Transformation): @thommeread
Matt Harrington (Digital Performance Analyst): @iMattHarrington

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Transcript

Tom Read (Head of Technology Transformation): We’re running a transformation programme to replace the Cabinet Office’s IT (information technology) from computers to the server side. We’re trying to demonstrate the new way of doing IT and we’re hoping other departments take this model and we get better IT across government. We gave 50 users across the Cabinet Office a range of equipment and applications and asked them to try things out. Document collaboration platforms are probably where we’ve seen the biggest take-up. People have found that being able to collaborate in real time with their colleagues in other buildings and when they’re working from home has just made them more efficient and saved them an awful lot of time. People loved having access to mobile solutions, so iPads and Android equivalents have really opened up the way people can work. The key difference in our approach is we’re starting with user needs. Traditionally IT projects are procurement driven. We’re starting with what the users want; we’re trying to understand what will make their lives better so that the technology can then get out of the way.

Matt Harrington (Digital Performance Analyst): On the performance platform over Christmas we saw an increase in the digital uptake in a couple of the transactions we monitor: the Lasting Power of Attorney, where we saw an increase in digital take-up to 20%; and Carers Allowance, where we saw an increase up to 60%, which is much higher than we’ve seen previously. We think that was due to the fact that online services are available 24/7 365 days a year, so during the Christmas period and the holiday period obviously that’s great for users to be able to access them when they want them, which is different from perhaps contact centres or other methods which may not have been available at that time.

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The mobile question: responsive design

Playing around with data

On Wednesday 29 January 2014, Sprint 14 will be taking place in London. We’ve invited Minsters, civil servants, suppliers and the media along to the event which will showcase some major new digital public services for the first time.

At Sprint 13 last January, we talked about “400 days to transform government“; at Sprint 14 we’ll be looking at what has been accomplished in the last 200 days, alongside the work still to come in the next 200.

We’ll be showing how government services will be built from now on – making it easier for people to do things like register to vote, book driving tests, complete tax returns, or apply for a visa to visit the UK. These services will change life for people up and down the country, and even around the world.

To keep up to date with all the goings on, make sure you’re following @gdsteam on Twitter, and the #Sprint14 hashtag.

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What about people who aren’t online

(Image courtesy of  Guy Moorhouse)

Earlier this month I dug into the analytics data to better understand what devices people are using when visiting GOV.UK.  I thought I’d also quickly share headline data on what browsers, operating systems and screen resolutions we’ve seen over the past month across the whole site. I hope it’s useful.

We’ll publish more detailed browser version breakdown data soon, though I can’t resist sharing that Microsoft IE6 usage seems to have halved to 0.4% from 0.8% over the past 12 months. Note: this browser data combines both desktop and mobile versions.

No real surprises here, with Android and iOS mobile operating systems eating into Windows desktop share.

Again, the story here is the rapid rise of “portrait” smartphone screen resolutions such as 768×1024 at the expense of traditional “landscape” desktop resolutions. Further evidence of the rapid shift to a wider variety of screen sizes as mobile device use takes off.

(Data sourced from Google Analytics for all visits to GOV.UK for the month up until January 20th. Sample size Jan 2014: 36.4m visits. Jan 2013: 28.4m visits.)

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Playing around with data

Last December we asked for your help in selecting the standard formats for documents produced by the government. We published two challenges on the Standards Hub – challenges are problems that open standards might help to solve.

Publishing these on the Standards Hub means that we can be transparent about how we select standards and be open to ideas from the broader standards community, implementers, suppliers and users.

Thanks to you, we have received some great feedback on standard formats for documents.

As well as hearing from you through the Standards Hub, we’ve also been conducting a parallel discovery project involving internal government staff, citizens and businesses. This has helped us to learn more about how people use digital information. So, here’s an update of what we’ve learned from them so far and what will happen next as we work towards reaching a conclusion on the document format challenges.

As part of our parallel discovery project we have:

• analysed feedback on using government documents that we received through GOV.UK customer support and transformation projects
• interviewed people in government to understand what they use electronic documents for, how they work, and who they share with
• carried out a survey of 650 citizens and businesses, to ask them about their experience when using documents produced by the government

What we learnt from people inside government

Our interviews showed us that some of the things we expected to find about users’ behaviour were correct, but also added insight about things we hadn’t considered. So far, we’ve spoken to people in 10 different departments, including staff who work in IT, statistics, finance, legal and human resources teams. We learnt about some very specific user needs relating to the type of information people work with, and have been using this to help develop proposals about which standards we should use.

For example, people working on policies, guidance documents, and publications in general, tend to work with multiple documents at a time; often needing to be able to exchange documents internally and to collate feedback from different sources.

Staff working on government statistics may need to release data to the public and export the data they manipulate within specialised software into more common formats that can be used by any audience.

When it comes to accessing, collating and sharing information, unfortunately these tasks don’t always go smoothly. Occasionally people can’t open files created by colleagues or by people outside government. Sometimes the content gets corrupted and can’t be read properly. Government users are telling us that when they do encounter these problems, they are mostly due to a lack of consistency in the formats used to save or export documents. This means people have to find alternative routes to read these documents or to get the correct formatting; a cause of delays and frustration.

What we learnt from people outside government

The feedback we received from people outside government showed similar results. We received 650 responses to a survey of users who viewed, downloaded or edited government documents available online, including professional users such as business owners, lawyers and accountants.

We asked about problems with viewing, downloading, opening, reading, editing or submitting government documents. In about a third of these cases, respondents said that they had issues sometimes or often.

Where users have problems, they often cite issues with internet connectivity or not being able to read documents properly. For example, sometimes documents won’t open, or some of the text is missing or overlapping. Some of these problems are due to format incompatibility and occasionally users have had to call, email or visit government offices in order to obtain the documents they need in a format they can access.

Access to government information is made easier by an ever-growing amount being made available on web pages rather than in downloadable documents. However, some users currently need downloadable information. We need to provide formats that users can work with.

What happens next

Based on this research and the feedback we received through the Standards Hub, Stephen Kelly, who is leading this work, has now published proposals about which document format standards are being considered for use in government:

Sharing or collaborating with government documents – proposal
Viewing government document – proposal

If you want to know more about what happens next, you can read about how we select open standards. In the meantime, if you have a view on the proposals, you can give us your feedback through the Standards Hub until 26 February.

Continue the conversation with @GDSteam on Twitter and sign up for email alerts. Need more than 140 characters? Find out how to contact us.

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Setting open standards for government documents

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