Introducing Apply the Service Standard in the Department for Education

We’ve seen service teams struggle to understand the Service Standard and how to apply it in the Department for Education (DfE).

Service assessments are the primary method of assurance for service teams. Evidence from assessment outcomes shows that teams are not always meeting points 1 to 5 of the Standard.

So we are building a service to help teams to understand and apply the Service Standard throughout the product lifecycle.

The Service Standard

How the 14 point Service Standard is applied in DfE and in context to DfE users internally and externally.

Standards and principles

Standards and principles owned by professions which are implemented to meet the Service Standard.

Professions

How teams self-assure and maintain their working standards, processes and procedures

Service assessments and assurance process

An end-to-end process for assuring the application of the Service Standard, standards and team ways of working.

Problems we’re looking to solve

1. It can be difficult for service teams to see how standards are helpful. This results in standards not being consistently understood or applied by service teams.
2. No accountability for standards compliance. This results in a lack of clarity over who is responsible for standards performance.
3. Some communities don’t know how to go about establishing and maintaining working standards. This results in professions that aren’t consistently applying the standards applicable to them and their work.

Why these problems are a priority

• Services are being launched that do not meet the Service Standard
• Services have accessibility issues which are exposing the department to risk of regulatory action
• Time (£) is being spent on repetitive tasks
• There are inconsistencies in DfE assessments and reporting
• Service teams find it almost impossible to learn from previous assessments
• There isn’t a complete view of the compliance of DfE services
• Services are not complying with core CDDO service performance reporting

Examples of user needs

These user needs are summaries that group several individual needs together.

Service teams need to know how to apply standards to their work So that they are confident they’re doing the right thing in their profession

Service teams need to know how standards apply at each phase, So that they know what to focus on

Service teams need to easily find the information on standards So that they know how to be compliant

What we want to deliver for the Service Standard

We are building a guidance service so that service teams can understand what the Standard point is, why it is important and practical examples in DfE for teams to apply the Standard in their service build.

Each of the 14 Standard points will follow the same content pattern:

• what the standard point is
• why it is important
• when to apply the standard point at each delivery phase

Screenshot of the homepage for the manual.

Screenshot of Standard 1. An example of how we are designing content.