Covid Pass reassessment

The live reassessment report for the Department of Health and Social Care's Covid Pass service, on 30th September 2022.

From:
Central Digital and Data Office
Published
17 October 2022
Assessment date:
30 September 2022
Result:
Met
Stage:
Live reassessment

Service Standard reassessment report

Covid Pass

From: Central Digital & Data Office (CDDO)
Assessment date: 30/09/2022
Stage: Live
Result: Met
Service provider: Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC)

Previous report

Live assessment report

Service description

The NHS Covid Pass facilitates evidencing and checking of Covid-19 status, both in domestic and international settings.

Service users

Summary of user groups:

  • Vaccination status

  • Fully vaccinated
  • Negative test
  • Unvaccinated
  • Recovery

  • Not fully vaccinated

  • Vaccine recorded out-side England

  • DACDOT users
  • Vaccinated Overseas

  • MOD & FCDO

  • Inclusive Needs or Exempt

  • Clinical Trials (blinded and unblinded)
  • Inclusive
  • Medical Exemptions

  • Young People (under 12s)

  • Other Users

  • Asking on behalf of others
  • Verifiers

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:

  • there are multiple ways of getting and presenting a covid pass, which accounts for the technology users might have access to and makes the service accessible
  • the team designed for a wide range of access needs from the start - the wide range of formats and languages that the Covid pass letter was available in was particularly impressive
  • the team has tested with users with a range of access needs and made improvements in response
  • the service has had internal and external accessibility audits to check for issues, including an end-to-end test of the whole NHS app journey
  • the team has a plan to make sure the service fully meets the WCAG 2.1 AA standard by 30 September

What the team needs to explore

The team needs to:

  • make sure that accessibility statements include all legally required content whenever they are updated. For example, the Covid pass statement says the service is ‘partially compliant’ but then does not include a ‘Non-accessible content’ section which explains what the non-compliances are. This is required content, as explained in the sample statement published on GOV.UK, and not having it presents a legal risk to the service
  • improve the browser-based journey so it still works without JavaScript - services should be built using progressive enhancement

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 service team:

  • has good MI that is shareable outside of the team
  • has a plan for how to monitor the service for any issues when it’s in live
  • has a good variety of offline data including telephony and letters
  • has considered and used cost per transaction to show how iterations have reduced the cost of the service
  • has a plan for implementing user tracking
  • will publish the four mandatory KPIs and will consider future metrics
  • has a measurement plan that takes in account user needs and how they will measure they are meeting those needs with iteration
  • is using data for feedback to inform iterations, prioritisation and decision making
  • is implementing user tracking to meet the measurement needs

What the team needs to explore

The team needs to:

  • ensure the mandatory KPIs are published once minister sign off has been achieved

12. Make new source code open

Decision

The service met point 12 of the Standard.

What the team has done well

The panel was impressed that:

  • there is an open source repository for the verifier that the team blogged about
  • the team has committed in writing to making all source code open and reusable, and publishing it under appropriate licences via GitHub by 30th September
  • the team shared their roadmap for publishing the Covid Pass front end and back end, and the letter service front end and back end

What the team needs to explore

The team intends to:

  • publish repositories every two weeks for the remainder of the financial year, in line with service manual guidance on working with sensitive policy submissions
  • develop GitHub discussion forums to solicit user feedback, with any new identified issues added to Jira for prioritisation and resolution
Published 17 October 2022
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