Check if you need to meet the Service Standard or get an assessment
What has to be assessed
If youâre developing a transactional service for central government, you must get it assessed. This applies even if your service is internal and will only be used by civil servants.
A service is transactional if it allows users to either:
- exchange information, money, permission, goods or services
- submit personal information that results in a change to a government record
Scope of the assessment
The Service Standard requires you to think about the userâs wider journey. But that doesnât mean the entire journey will be assessed.
The things that get assessed are:
- the transaction youâve been working on
- your understanding of the userâs wider journey - and the work youâve done to make sure the transaction youâre building joins up with that wider journey
The service could still meet the standard if there are problems with the userâs wider journey, as long as youâre taking reasonable steps to make things better and fix the journey in increments.
Exception if youâre using an assured form building platform
You wonât need an assessment if youâre:
- using an assured form building platform to create a form, and
- expecting to get fewer than 10,000 transactions per year
This reflects the fact that forms created using an assured form building platform have government standards âbuilt inâ. And it allows organisations to make cost savings and accessibility improvements by delivering digital versions of document-based forms quickly.
Even if youâre using an assured form building platform, you may find that your department has an assurance process for forms with a higher degree of reputational or financial risk. This will be a lighter touch process than a service assessment - for example, it might be an expert review carried out by a design or content professional. Contact your departmentâs assessment team if youâre not sure.
Who will assess your service
Your service will be assessed by a cross-government panel if either:
- your service is likely to handle more than 100,000 transactions per year
- civil servants in more than one organisation will use your service
Otherwise, your service will be assessed by a panel from your department. If your department doesnât have an assessment team, you can ask for help in the .
You can check when and how to book an assessment.
Services which do not meet the criteria for being assessed
Even if your service doesnât need an assessment, you can arrange one to check youâre building it in a way that meets the Service Standard. Contact your departmentâs assessment team to ask about a voluntary assessment.
If getting an assessment is a condition of your spend control approval, you must get the service assessed - even if it does not meet the usual criteria.
Assessments in local government
If youâre working in local government you can to ask for a peer review of your work.
Adapting the Service Standard
You can adapt the Service Standard to suit different contexts.
For example, you might be building something thatâs non-transactional, like a website or calculator. You wonât need to publish data on the mandatory KPIs, but you should still know what your users are trying to do and collect data that helps you work out whether theyâre able to do that or not.
Or if youâre creating a service for people who work in government you could take a more relaxed view of things like uptime, as the service is unlikely to be needed 24 hours a day. But make sure to schedule any downtime outside office hours.
If youâre creating a service thatâs not for ÒÁÈËֱȄ, you can still use the patterns in the . But it wonât be appropriate to make your service look like ÒÁÈËֱȄ.
Related guides
You may find the following guides useful:
Updates to this page
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Updated information on how using a form-building platform affects assurance - you wonât usually need an assessment if youâre using an assured form building platform and expecting a lower number of transactions.
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Page updated to align with policy around assessment responsibilities and contact details for voluntary assessments.
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Added information about when online forms made using form building tools do not need to have a service assessment.
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Guidance first published