National parking platform
The report for DfT's National parking platform alpha assessment on the 26 October 2021
Service Standard assessment report
National Parking Platform
| From: | Central Digital & Data Office (CDDO) |
| Assessment date: | 26/10/2021 |
| Stage: | Alpha |
| Result: | Not Met |
| Service provider: | DfT |
Service description
The National Parking Platform is a service that enables the exchange of standardised, reliable, up to date national parking data through a data platform. It is not a public facing service, but citizens will benefit from improved service provision: real time availability, access to more reliable and detailed parking information, and multi-vendor payment options.
The data enables interoperability with connected vehicles and other transport services, and better sustainability and traffic management decisions through strategic data reporting.
The wider service enables multiple service providers to operate in participating parking areas, opens competition leading to better services for motorists and reduces cost of procurement.
Service users
Primary users
- local authority parking operators
- private parking operators
- parking payment service providers
- parking data aggregators
- parking enforcement providers
Indirect users/beneficiaries
- motorists
- EV motorists
- disabled motorists
- motorists with low digital skills
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 had conducted interviews with a wide range of potential users and indirect users who would be impacted by the service
- the team had considered how access needs and low digital confidence could impact experiences of the service
- the team showed a good understanding of the as-is parking journey for public and private sector users, and end users like motorists
- the team identified high-risk areas like unwillingness or lack of capability to adopt their service from research
- the team identified their most important user need in discovery
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- show how insights from research are impacting the iteration and improvement of their plans and prototypes
- show how they have prioritised user needs to focus their work on the most important problem
- show how they explored various different ways of meeting their most important user needs
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 have mapped the end to end journey of users and considered how the parking journey works
- the team have thought about how this service will help create simpler journeys for users
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- consider this service not just in terms of parking journeys, but in the wider view of mobility and movement in our environment
- demonstrate that they have measured and weighted the various user needs and pain points identified, prioritised them using an appropriate method and evaluated the impact of addressing each pain point. Make it clear which problem, or which part of the problem this service is solving
- demonstrate that they have measured the impact of various approaches to addressing the user needs and pain points, and weighted them against, for example: money made by local authorities, costs saved by local authorities, reduced pain points for users, increased access, inclusion or equity for users, impact on the transition to zero emissions
- show that they are able to challenge or critically engage with both the strategy driving this project, and the brief they have been given, by engaging with DfT and cross-government stakeholders, if they find that there is a better way of providing value for government other than the solution they have pursued (a data platform)
- consider the potential and likely unintended consequences of this work
- consider how this work could impact on all 9 principles from the Future of mobility: urban strategy, including, for example: does this innovation available equally to segments of society who don’t drive, or who don’t have a phone? does this project support walking, cycling and alternative travel as the best option for short journeys? does this project support the transition to zero emissions? does this operate as part of an integrated transport system?
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 have explored the use of different channels with different user groups
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team should consider these points:
- the service standard states that “Users should not be excluded or have an inferior experience because they lack access to technology or the skills to use it”. The team needs to show a deeper exploration of the implications of the data platform on this statement
- the service standard states that “the service team [should be] empowered to find the best way of solving the problem” - we need to see evidence of exploring different ways of solving the problem and being empowered to choose the best one
- explore what impact the data platform is likely to have on the capacity and capability of local authorities
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 team:
- have conducted thorough research into the parking landscape, with end users, local authorities, and private sector providers, understanding pain points, journeys and appetites for change
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- prototype and test an end user’s experience of the new platform, to explore what this might look like and to understand the benefits, disadvantages and implications of the work, as well as furthering our understanding of the likely adoption of the service
- evaluate alternative approaches to solving the problem. For example, the government could develop and deliver a fully functional parking service (rather than just a data platform). The team should be able to demonstrate multiple alternative approaches to the problem, how they have been tested, what has been learnt, what has been changed and what ideas have been thrown away. If the team is not able to do this, it suggests that they lack the empowerment to really investigate which solutions will offer the best value to the government
- build confidence that if the DfT choses to continue to invest in this work, it will have the uptake and adoption needed to provide value. There does not seem to be adequate evidence of the likely adoption of the service that is planned
- much of the language used by the team was centred around ‘validating’ the solution that has already been decided on. We would like to see the team do genuine evaluation, testing of alternative ideas, and the ability to challenge and feed back findings which do not simply ‘validate’ existing assumptions
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 has defined the scope and reach of the service such that the data solution planned will be accessible to most of the private sector providers they are targeting
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- consider how this service will impact users who don’t have cars or have limited access to the services which the private sector is likely to provide on the foundation of this data platform
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 delivery team has actively engaged across the roles in delivery teams against the problem space and undertaken significant user research
- the team are engaging both across DfT with other service teams, but also interacting with policy/SME colleagues throughout to ensure they are part of the team
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- consider the balance of delivery team, demonstrating how they are committed to training and passing on knowledge from the supplier
- ensure and share plans for the future development of the service to be sustainable with blended teams i.e. how DfT can manage this in the future
- ensure that the team has the appropriate challenge and empowerment in place with the senior team to consider different options, ideas and hypotheses to the problem, using the governance they have established
- review whether a full time user researcher is needed, and ensure that they have access to appropriate roles in beta e.g. performance analyst, technical writer
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:
- there is a clear engagement with the Service Owner to inform decisions and that the Service Owner represented the team at assessment
- the team are using a good balance of agile techniques and tools with an appropriate cadence of delivery
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- consider how the team can use agile techniques to de-risk the problem space and ensure they inspect, learn and adapt from findings
- define a clear MVP scope and plan for private beta of what the team would like to test / learn
8. Iterate and improve frequently
Decision
The service did not meet point 8 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team had spoken with a range of users to understand how what they have built might work for them, considering some of the constraints and risks with onboarding
- from a technology point of view, the team are adapting the learning from the pilot into their work
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- focus on risky assumptions and hypothesis led thinking to iterate, or dispose of ideas to learn and de-risk
- demonstrate how the team are using insight to improve and change their development
- ensure that service providers have the opportunity to test further the work created, and how this relates to the overall adoption strategy
- develop a clear plan for private beta which allows the team to articulate what they would like to learn from having the service used by their users
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 service team plans to conduct a range of security auditing, data impact assessments and threat modelling
- authentication and authorisation has been carefully considered and designed using standard practices, and native cloud services. Processes have been designed with vulnerability and threat mitigation built in
- alerting and monitoring will be built into the platform which will enable full forensic analysis if required
- principles of least privilege are being adopted
- the team has chosen not to support payment processing within the platform (lowering the security risks) and are holding minimal personally identifiable information. A Security architect was part of the Alpha phase and on the assessment
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- the team needs to ensure that ‘inferred’ or ‘derived’ data from connected data points such as combination of vehicle registration mark, geolocation, and temporal data is suitably secured. Not considering this could and should fail a beta assessment
- any analytic and enforcement data access is suitably controlled with role based access
- when code is adopted from the pilot project, further due diligence takes place to ensure the code is free from vulnerabilities and incorporates suitable security controls. Any required refactoring of that code should be done using security best practices
10. Define what success looks like and publish performance data
Decision
The service did not meet point 10 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team has considered a range of metrics to evaluate the performance of the service at each stage of the journey
- the team appreciates the importance of using performance data
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- consider the overall performance framework and the most appropriate metrics to demonstrate value for money, or how the idea being tested meets the overarching user needs identified
- ensure that wider stakeholders across the organisation and within the delivery team can access performance data, with tools or a process in place
- understand how to obtain the metrics from the providers they are working with, and define what success looks like
- develop a plan to use performance data to iterate and improve the service
11. Choose the right tools and technology
Decision
The service met point 11 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the high level architecture proposed uses public cloud and cloud native technology, other solutions have been explored (as part of the pilot and as options). The chosen architecture to take this to beta in the proposed MVP configuration is appropriate and carefully considered. The platform is designed for resilience and autoscaling using modern standards, languages and tooling that are widely adopted by many
- the team are aware of the challenges to onboarding the API and are using a solution for the developer portal to resolve some of these challenges
- the team have adhered to DfT architecture standards and policies
- the team have done cost benefit analysis
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- the team needs to ensure the developer portal provided can be customised to adhere to the Government Design system principles and maintains accessibility
- if there were to be any integrations that sent out messages, e.g. the developer portal or the reporting, the team should adopt GOV Notify for this purpose
12. Make new source code open
Decision
The service did not meet point 12 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team had recognised the need for open sourcing of the solution but had yet to develop any components
- the team understood the value open source brings
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- the team needs to move the location of the open source repositories to a DfT organisation, not a supplier organisation, and licencing and contributing guidelines should be clear
13. Use and contribute to open standards, common components and patterns
Decision
The service met point 13 of the Standard.
What the team has done well
The panel was impressed that:
- the team is working closely with the parking standard APDS which is to be adopted as ISO (ISO TS 5206-1) standard and implementing all aspects of the standard
- Oauth2 is used for authentication
- Pub Sub is used
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- the team need to consider the role openapi has to play in the project
- be following guidance from GDS API standards https://www.gov.uk/guidance/gds-api-technical-and-data-standards
- consider publishing the API in the government API catalogue
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 considered auto-scaling and other methods appropriate to ensure the architecture is suitably robust to handle the demand and maintain reliability
- the team are considering the staggered rollout of the platform and a MVP in beta
- suitable monitoring and alerting has been designed
What the team needs to explore
Before their next assessment, the team needs to:
- the team needs to ensure as they progressively roll out the platform they monitor and act on insights to ensure the reliability of the platform is maintained as more users adopt it
Next Steps
Reassessment
In order for the service to continue to the next phase of development, it must meet the Standard and get GDS spend approvals. The service must be re-assessed against the points of the Standard that are not met at this assessment.
The panel recommends the team sits their next assessment when ready but no longer than 6-12 months. Speak to your Digital Engagement Manager to arrange it as soon as possible.
This report will be published on GOV.UK
If there is a factual inaccuracy in the report, contact the assessments team immediately. If the assessments team do not hear from you within 5 working days of sending this report out, it will be published on gov.uk/service-standard-reports as is.
Published 6 December 2021