My Defence
MOD'S My Defence alpha service assessment report
Service standard report
MyDefence
| Assessment date | 28/01/2026 |
| Assessment stage | Alpha |
| Assessment type | Assessment |
| Service provider | Ministry of Defence |
| Result | Amber |
Service description
MyDefence is the MOD’s single access point for people services, replacing fragmented journeys with a personalised, secure experience across pay, leave, allowances, wellbeing, career, and healthcare accessible on MOD or personal devices.
It will link to existing services rather than duplicate them.
The value is a cross-government aligned service that meets the Service Standard, reuses platforms, reduces logins, surfaces timely notifications, and scales to all users.
The MVP focuses on core journeys and research to prove value, reduce risk and inform sustainable delivery.
Strategically, MyDefence aims to increase personnel retention and provide opportunities for data-driven innovation.
Service users
This MVP is for
● Regular Armed Forces personnel
● Active Reservist Armed Forces personnel
In the future, the service will be expanded to include
● Veterans
● Civilian employees of the Ministry of Defence
● Families of service personnel
Things the service team has done well:
Optional. Max one line per assessor.
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The team have taken on a big project that is much bigger than MyDefence on its own – it represents a big cultural shift within MoD.
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The team have secured three years of funding for continuous development.
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The team have a keen sense of UCD and why user needs are of the utmost importance when building digital services within government.
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Their approach to their technology choices is based on sound principles in line with government standards.
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The team set up is good and will work well when the team moves into the beta phase.
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The team has good awareness of working in a user-centric and agile way, in an historically complex area. They have the right professions involved and are clearly committed and passionate about creating a great service for their users.
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The team demonstrated a good understanding of the current users of the service, and the pain points and challenges encountered which their service aimed to address. The use of arch types to demonstrate understanding of users was well considered and rationalised, and the prioritisation of arch types based on the understanding of the pain points with the as-is user experience demonstrated a good approach to how research had fed into the direction of the service delivery.
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Strong multidisciplinary technology team (noting a follow-on contract is due in Jul 26) and governance arrangements. Consideration should be given to further building out the intelligent customer function, perhaps with the addition of Civil Servants into the team.
1. Understand users and their needs
Decision
The service was rated green for point 1 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
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Ensure user needs are documented to clearly articulate what the high level, core user needs of the service are, and what low level, user stories are to ensure that the service iteration continues to be user centred, not feature centred.
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Continue to document and evidence UCD ways of working to demonstrate how decisions and actions are evidence based and user centred.
2. Solve a whole problem for users
Decision
The service was rated amber for point 2 of the Standard.
This is amber because:
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There is a lack of end-to-end journey consideration at this point. The services being accessed from MyDefence are being viewed as handoffs, rather than end-to-end journeys.
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We didn’t see a thorough understanding of how other teams impact the services assessed. For example, to provide the best possible service for a user to understand their payslip, there has to be close working with the teams producing that payslip (HR in this case). If HR were to radically change the payslip without the team’s knowledge or influence, it would have a huge knock-on effect on the service provided to users.
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We didn’t see enough evidence of wider service thinking. The team appears to be thinking of the MyDefence app as a service, when it would make more sense to think of the app as a key part of several services. With too much focus on the digital part of the services, the panel felt the whole problem wasn’t addressed as well as it could be.
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We didn’t see enough evidence of consistently good relationships with other teams involved in the delivery of services for MyDefence. Some of these relationships seem closer than others, but overall, it was felt that the whole problem could not be adequately solved for users without better relationships with other teams involved in delivering the services.
3. Provide a joined-up experience across all channels
Decision
The service was rated amber for point 3 of the Standard.
This is amber because:
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We didn’t see any consideration of how someone might switch channels mid-journey.
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We didn’t see enough evidence of understanding the non-digital parts of the services. Many of the solutions to problems that people might have within services were also digital. This included the main problem resolution feature, which was part of a feedback feature which raised tickets. It was stated by the team that a helpdesk feature had not come out of research as a need and therefore was not considered at this stage.
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We didn’t see enough evidence of metrics that measure the full offline and online services. Metrics were almost exclusively digital in nature, rather than, for example, reducing calls for support, tickets raised and how quickly resolved.
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We didn’t see enough evidence of understanding professional users, who impact the services from the back end.
4. Make the service simple to use
Decision
The service was rated green for point 4 of the Standard.
5. Make sure everyone can use the service
Decision
The service was rated amber for point 5 of the Standard.
This is amber because:
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The team did not demonstrate sufficiently how they have considered how the service would meet the needs of all users, particularly those users with low digital literacy and access needs in the neurocognitive and visual space.
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The team did not demonstrate sufficiently how the service has been designed to be accessible and inclusive of a broader range of users, so that the service is future proofed for users who may have more support needs than their current users, such as family members, veterans and new starters to the MoD.
6. Understand users and their needs
Decision
The service was rated green for point 1 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
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Ensure user needs are documented to clearly articulate what the high level, core user needs of the service are, and what low level, user stories are to ensure that the service iteration continues to be user centred, not feature centred.
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Continue to document and evidence UCD ways of working to demonstrate how decisions and actions are evidence based and user centred.
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Noting that further strengthening of the team should be considered, including:
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A f/t DTSL
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CS resource to strengthen the intelligent customer function
7. Use agile ways of working
Decision
The service was rated green for point 7 of the Standard.
8. Iterate and improve frequently
Decision
The service was rated amber for point 8 of the Standard.
This amber because:
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We didn’t see enough evidence of iterations during the assessment from the material presented.
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We didn’t see a lot of evidence of different prototypes being tested in order to prove or disprove hypotheses.
9. Create a secure service which protects users’ privacy
Assessed by: Tech assessor with performance analyst input when relevant
Decision
The service was rated green for point 9 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
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Enabled by Defence Gateway, MOD’s platform as a service, that enables the secure delivery of digital services to authorised Defence users on any device.
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It was noted that a Case Officer hasn’t been assigned.
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A p/t DTSL has been assigned and pursuit for more f/t support should be initiated.
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For Beta (moving beyond MVP) an outline of the risk methodology, D2S and progress through SbD should be further explained.
10. Define what success looks like and publish performance data
Decision
The service was rated amber for point 10 of the Standard.
This is amber because:
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The framework appeared quite limited, which is a concern for a service aiming to go into Beta.
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The framework didn’t take the linked services into account, leading to performance metrics focused solely on MyDefence, rather than MyDefence being the starting point of an end-to-end journey for MoD employees.
11. Choose the right tools and technology
Assessed by: Tech assessor
Decision
The service was rated green for point 11 of the Standard.
12. Make new source code open
Assessed by: Tech assessor
If possible, link to GitHub or other open repositories
Decision
The service was rated green for point 12 of the Standard.
13. Use and contribute to open standards, common components and patterns
Assessed by: Tech assessor for open standards, components and design assessor for design system
Decision
The service was rated green for point 13 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
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It was noted that the People Digital Forum is a great initiative to bring services together in the People space.
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Further it was noted that planned engagement with the Office for Veterans Affairs and the Cadet digital services will commence shortly. Outcome of these conversations at Beta is requested.
14. Operate a reliable service
Assessed by: Technology with input from lead and design assessors.
Decision
The service was rated green for point 14 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
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A governance board is in place and part of this remit is to review delivery and risks.
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It is noted that reuse of MOD capabilities is being pursued e.g. Identity Solution and further discussions are planned with AFPP to integrate the 2 x services as well as future discussions planned with MyDMS. This can be explored at Beta.
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Service management approach, technology risks and Tech WG TOR should be brought forward as part of Beta to be discussed.