From: DHSCAssessment date: 27/02/2025 Stage: Alpha Assessment Result: Green Service provider: UKHSA
Service descriptionThis service aims to solve the problem of helping users easily find and access the resources and support they need, so that we improve accessibility, usability, and scalability for new services and emerging public health priorities.
Service users
The service is owned by UKHSA but supports a number of primary users across the civil service, as the service began in 2018 by Public Health England:
UKHSA staff (UKHSA) Local Authority Public Health staff (LAPH) Office for Health Improvement and Disparities staff (OHID) NHS England staff (NHSE)Secondary users:
The website is administered by KLS staff. They will update content and handle queries submitted through the enquiries portal.Tertiary users:
UKHSA senior management represent tertiary users because whilst they don't use the service directly, they are the people responsible for its commissioning and for setting its scope, and therefore they have a significant influence over its function. Furthermore, they are tangentially affected by the service as it influences the quality and efficiency of some UKHSA staff output. UK Citizens (members of the public) may be viewed as tertiary users because they are affected by the quality of service provided by UKHSA, LAPH, OHID, and NHSE, and the quality of service is, in part, influenced by the KLS service offering. Report contents: Understand users and their needs Solve a whole problem for users Provide a joined-up experience across all channels Make the service simple to use Make sure everyone can use the service Have a multidisciplinary team Use agile ways of working Iterate and improve frequently Create a secure service which protects users’ privacy Define what success looks like and publish performance data Choose the right tools and technology Make new source code open Use and contribute to open standards, common components and patterns Operate a reliable service 1. Understand users and their needsDecision
The service was rated green for point 1 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
ensure that beta includes a strong focus on internal users to evidence the service is meeting the needs of an inclusive range of users within the user groups, including those with accessibility needs in their working context ensure user needs are written as solution agnostic to keep the team focused on meeting needs in designs without potentially unnecessary constraints 2. Solve a whole problem for usersDecision
The service was rated green for point 2 of the Standard.
During the assessment, we didn’t see evidence of the following, however, were address offline:
the service need: Issue: The assessment did not demonstrate why the KLS service is necessary. The benefits to the user were unclear. Recommendation: Clearly articulate the value of the KLS service. For example, explain why it is important for users to know about the site's existence. What specific benefits does it provide? Measurement: Conduct user surveys and interviews to gather qualitative data on user awareness and perceived value of the service. clear service objectives: Issue: The purpose of the service work was not well-defined. Is it to: Increase awareness among potential users? If so, how many users are targeted, and how will their work improve? Make the service accessible for statutory/legal reasons or to serve excluded user groups? What do we know about these users? Enhance the quality of the librarian service for the existing 1,200 users? Recommendation: Define clear objectives for the service work. Specify target user groups, expected outcomes, and reasons for accessibility improvements. Measurement: Track metrics such as user engagement rates, accessibility compliance, and user satisfaction scores. benefits statements based on user research: Issue: Benefits statements were not well-supported by user research. Recommendation: Improve benefits statements by conducting thorough research with current and potential users. Document this research to ensure it informs feature and function testing. Measurement: Use user feedback and research findings to create detailed benefits statements. Measure the impact of these statements through user acceptance testing and feedback loops. 3. Provide a joined-up experience across all channelsDecision
The service was rated green for point 3 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service
continue the work already begun in understanding how people become aware of the service, prepare for it, drop-out points, and triggers for return 4. Make the service simple to useDecision
The service was rated green for point 4 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service
continue striving to simplify more. The team have identified that multiple logins are a problem and worked to simplify the access points. continue monitoring how well the solution is working and reassess the approach if necessary. 5. Make sure everyone can use the serviceDecision
The service was rated green for point 5 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service
continue building the relationship with suppliers such as OpenAthens, to ensure that accessibility improvements are made in their services too 6. Have a multidisciplinary teamDecision
The service was rated green for point 6 of the Standard .
7. Use agile ways of workingDecision
The service was rated green for point 7 of the Standard.
8. Iterate and improve frequentlyDecision
The service was rated green for point 8 of the Standard.
9. Create a secure service which protects users’ privacyDecision
The service was rated green for point 9 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service
the service team in next phase, will need to explore in detail the security risks associated with third party solutions as investigated in the Alpha stage to include – My Athens, Request Tracker and Whitehall Publisher CMS. The risk assessment must include threat modelling and security risk assessment for each component there should be further investigations on the trade-off between the lack of login to the service, thereby providing better access for users and the risk posed by threat actors where scripts are developed and used for the service, industry best practices must be observed to ensure this does not lend itself to vulnerabilities, code smells, bugs etc for static and runtime codebase 10. Define what success looks like and publish performance dataDecision
The service was rated green for point 10 of the Standard.
11. Choose the right tools and technologyDecision
The service was rated green for point 11 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service
the team presented a detailed review of the CMS tooling. This was reviewed against the requirements and its current posture as it is currently used by other public services. A similar rigour should be provided for the choice of the search mechanism (My Athens) and the Request Tracker solution a detailed Low-Level Design (LLD) of the Technology enablers/Architecture should be provided in the next phase to understand and assess the implications, dependencies and risks of the technology choices 12. Make new source code openDecision
The service was rated green for point 12 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service
ensure that developed codes are produced and managed in a central repository that provisions a complete development environment with continuous integration and continuous deployment (CICD) links to the repository must be provided in the next phase for assessor review and check for code development best practices the repository is accessible to other public projects, with keys, tokens, certificates and sensitive information kept in secret management services, for example Secrets Manager to ensure the solution does not expose the service to risks 13. Use and contribute to open standards, common components and patternsDecision
The service was rated green for point 13 of the Standard.
14. Operate a reliable serviceDecision
The service was rated green for point 14 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service
the team has leveraged on the capabilities of third-party solutions and the use of trusted government patterns however, to ensure the service is reliable, there must be a holistic service wrapper for KLS the service should provision a protective monitoring system that informs service owners of the state of the service and the support mechanism. This can include regular reporting with cadence and dashboarding solutionsseen at 14:50, 11 March in Digital health and social care.