Claim Money Back from Access to Work
DWP's Claim Money Back from Access to Work alpha assessment report
Claim Money Back from Access to Work
| From: | Central Digital & Data Office (CDDO) |
| Assessment date: | 12/10/2021 |
| Stage: | Alpha |
| Result: | Met |
| Service provider: | Department for Work and Pensions |
Service description
Access to Work (AtW) aims to solve the problem of providing practical and financial support for people who have a disability or long term physical or mental health condition.
Support can be provided where someone needs help or adaptations beyond the reasonable adjustment an employer is required to make. Support covers three main areas: equipment and adaptations, support workers and travel for work
Once users have been awarded an AtW grant and procured support, they submit a claim for reimbursement, this assessment’s focus.
Improving the service is a key part of the ministerial ambition to reduce the disability employment gap.
Service users
Any citizen living with a disability, health condition or mental health condition who needs support to get into or stay in work is eligible for the Access to Work grant.
Our users are:
- Citizens living with disabilities, health conditions & mental health conditions
- A large proportion of our users have access needs
We also have secondary users who interact with the service but are not recipients of the grant
- Employers (support and /or countersign citizens claims)
- Suppliers
- Charities (often have a dual role of supporting and sometimes as an employer)
- DWP agents
1. Understand users and their needs
Decision
The service met point 1 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team have developed an understanding of primary users’ lives from discovery and wider research, including changes since COVID-19
- the team have developed a clear view of research that has been done, and research questions for each sprint, including testing the wider user journey including a GOV.UK landing page
- the team is testing with users who have a wide range of access needs, using a range of assistive technologies, as well as users who had not claimed Access to Work through a range of recruitment methods
- personas are being updated based on user research with an additional persona, user with low digital confidence added
- the whole team is proactive and involved in user research
- the team has a clear plan for user research in private beta, covering users who need support, users who claim multiple types of support. With plans to continue use of different methods such as in-depth contextual interviews alongside usability testing
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- continue pushing back on known constraints to lessen the administrative burden for users. The team mentioned several constraints they are challenging, including the requirement for users to provide travel receipts, such as taxi receipts and ‘add date’ because some users will need to claim for every working day, this will help ensure the service meets users’ needs
- continue with their plans for research with workplace contacts and ensure they recruit an appropriate range of employers
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 clearly understood and could articulate how their part of the service fits within the broader context of the end-to-end service
- the team has successfully challenged and removed the requirement for wet signatures
- the team are well connected with other teams delivering other transactions within the service
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- focus on the main goals of the user. The team talked about many user needs, but it wasn’t clear how the design of this ‘claim’ part of the service (and the whole service) addressed the broader user goals (like getting the monies owed quickly) much beyond delivering an online version of the form
- at beta assessment ensure a clear demonstration of the connection between user research insights, user needs & pain points, and how those have influenced design decisions at both a service and interaction level
- at beta assessment demonstrate the existing paper process and user journey, including the existing pain points
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:
- the team has considered support for users who have problems with the digital service and will keep the paper channel running in parallel, with paper copies issued on grant approval, signposting on gov.uk and within the service itself
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- must continue exploring how online and offline parts of the service link up. Ensure learnings and pain points from the paper form continue to inform the digital offering, and the user research on the digital offering are taken back and inform the paper form
- must conduct a mini-discovery on the non-digital parts of the service. Parts such as: users using a paper copy of the form issued on grant approval.
- must continue to ensure learning from call agents is fully considered in the user centred design process
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 prototype has gone through a series of rounds of testing with users, many of them with access needs
- the prototype makes use of GOV.UK Design system and the Ministry of Justice pattern library
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- must demonstrate alternative service designs have been considered during private beta and the chosen design meets user needs
- must be able to demonstrate how designs were iterated based on user feedback, and how challenges have informed and simplified the design during private beta.
- must do a mini-discovery on simplifying the service such as removing the requirement for uploading receipts for taxi journey and users manually entering multiple claims
- must continue to test the service on small screen devices with users
- continue to work with the DWP accessibility lead in early-beta, ahead of the full audit required before beta assessment
- should conduct a question protocol to ensure the user is being asked for the minimum of input to use the service
5. Make sure everyone can use the service
Decision
The service met point 5 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team have considered alternative routes to meet access and digital support needs
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- must ensure they think about users who get support from support workers or family and friends, to claim and the touchpoints between those users
- must monitor digital take up and support. The option to claim offline by post is still available for “the citizen who doesn’t have access to the internet or doesn’t feel comfortable”. The panel notes that many of the pain points the team have identified for the digital service could be barriers for the offline service - low reading comprehension, or neurodiversity makes it hard to understand and complete the form, and often the citizen is not the one who completes the form. The team should also use their learning to inform improvements to the offline offering
- must conduct a content review to ensure consistency of language and terminology
6. Have a multidisciplinary team
Decision
The service did not meet point 6 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the service is being developed by a multidisciplinary team with an appropriate range of DDaT roles
- there appears to be good coordination between the product owners of each of the 3 Access To Work services, and the chief product owner who oversees all 3 elements
- senior stakeholders are sighted on the team’s work and the head of Access To Work attends sessions with the team
- through good relationships with senior stakeholders, the team are able to share lessons they have learned with relevant policy teams and advocate for changes to policy
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- not rely solely on outside providers for delivery roles in this service - the panel has major concerns about the reliance on outsourcing of this part of the overall Access To Work service journey
- formalise arrangements for who will be responsible for developing the service in future, in the event that a dedicated service team cannot continue
7. Use agile ways of working
Decision
The service met point 7 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team participate in scrum-at-scale to manage service development across the Access to Work programme
- the Access to Work digital teams hold cross-team sprint reviews and work from a combined backlog under the direction of the chief product owner
- the team is making good use of a range of tools for managing and prioritising their work
- the team is using methods like pair programming, mob programming and test driven development
- every member of the team has attended user research sessions
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- replicate the good practices shown at Alpha with a more sustainable mix of permanent employees and contracted expertise
8. Iterate and improve frequently
Decision
The service met point 8 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has tried different design approaches to the service, particularly around the presentation of the account features in the ‘portal’
- the team has been reporting research findings on the portal tiles pattern back to HMRC
- the team have set up a cross-DWP group to look at improving address selector patterns
- the team works in 2 week sprints using common agile tools and methods, including release burndown charts to measure progress
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- conduct a mini-discovery on the non-digital parts of the service, to ensure it is not missing an opportunity for a more radical transformation and improvement of the existing paper-based process
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 team has ensured the service will be aligned with the organisation reference architecture
- the team have considered ways in which the users’ privacy can be maintained or improved
- DPIA was integrated into the Technical Design Authority process
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- ensure they are fully confident in the security or privacy of internal dependencies
- continue to explore ways in which users’ privacy can be improved
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 an extensive performance framework that was built collaboratively in a workshop setting
- the team are making good use of tools and methods for measuring success against the four mandatory KPIs
- the team are being pragmatic about the lack of analytics about the current paper-based process, and are making plans to remedy this
- there is a plan for regular check-ins and collaboration with user researchers in private beta
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- identify other potential KPIs that demonstrate how the service is reducing the burden on other parts of DWP’s operations
- ensure access to and knowledge of the analytics tools and platforms (especially Google Data Studio) are shared with permanent DWP staff
- investigate whether there is a more effective way of sharing performance reports across the organisation than by emailing PDFs
11. Choose the right tools and technology
The team has been aided by the existence of the Application Reference Architecture, which ensures common tooling and technology choices across teams and services.
Decision
The service met point 11 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has aligned its technical choices with other teams and services in the same area
- intend to make use of alerts for when submissions do not meet the required standards to keep quality high
- the team has managed to satisfy its needs with mostly internal services.
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- consider sharing more widely details of the reference architecture as it is sure to have value for other organisations
12. Make new source code open
There is no source code to make open in the Alpha, as the prototype kit was used to build the prototypes.
Decision
The service met point 12 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has started an internal discussion about the release of source code
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- ensure that source is released under an open source licence, or
- ensure that there is a strong, valid reason for not doing so should code not be released
13. Use and contribute to open standards, common components and patterns
The team has plans to make use of common platforms and open standards, but has not yet identified areas where they can reasonably contribute to those standards.
Decision
The service met point 13 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team had chosen to benefit from using common platforms such as GOV.UK Notify rather than plan to rebuild their own notification system
- authentication/Authorisation were performed using open standards (OAuth2/OIDC)
14. Operate a reliable service
Decision
The service met point 14 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has already considered the observability and manageability of the service
- the team are aware of the risks attached to centralised legacy components and have plans to address and mitigate it
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- plan how to increase and accelerate integration of Civil Servants into the service team
- work with service design for the broader full end-to-end service, so that the team can articulate and demonstrate how the full service, and this part of the service will operate for users. Including digital, non-digital and operations