Background
Users need to access relevant guidance from funding allocation statements to understand the content and what to do if something does not look right. When we investigated the allocations guidance landscape, we found that it was complex, with inconsistencies in structure, but some consistency in the ‘key’ guidance valued by users. We also found that collection pages exist on GOV.UK contained this key guidance for at least 4 funding streams.
Our next step was to validate this key guidance with users, and to use the information that we had gathered to inform how we might enable access to guidance from a data-driven statement.
User survey
To validate our understanding of the guidance that users find most useful, we conducted a short, unmoderated survey with 10 participants from our wider research activities. They confirmed:
- access to relevant guidance is important for users to be able to do their job
- what key guidance documents they need to access
- the current challenges when referring to guidance
Ideation
Having validated our understanding of what users need to access, we took our findings to form the basis of an ideation workshop involving stakeholders from product, tech, and operational teams. Using a ‘bad ideas’ format, we asked participants to think of the worst ways of addressing the question: ‘how might we enable users to access relevant guidance from a data-driven statement?’
We then inverted these ‘bad ideas’ as the starting points for more detailed ideation. We produced a range of ideas, most of which fell within clear themes, including:
- linking to guidance directly from the statement
- working with collection pages on GOV.UK
- producing video guidance
- including guidance within the statement itself
- creating an AI guidance tool
We analysed and refined the options that came out of the session based on pros, cons, and what might be achievable in the next 3 month phase of work. We decided on a recommendation of a link to guidance in the statement, making use of GOV.UK collection pages.
Refining technical options
The next step was to work out how this might technically be achieved. We took our recommendation to a technical forum with engineering and product teams to understand options. From this we were able to make a recommendation of adding a link field to the Calculate Funding Service (CFS), pulled to the statement via API. We made this recommendation based on it being:
- a solution we had already used when working on easy to understand funding line names
- data-driven – with the advantages of pulling all data to the statement from one source
We discussed the recommendations with content owners from Funding Operations and Funding Communications to confirm operational feasibility, and presented them to SMT.
A design challenge
We discovered that because of product and development effort we had to look for an alternative solution that would not be reliant on CFS. We concentrated on technical options for getting users to the relevant guidance collection page from the data-driven statement. This is because we had been able to test the use of a link to a collection page with users, and it had been well-received.
We held a design challenge ‘kick-off’ to re-focus on our assumptions and aims. These were:
- lowering implementation effort
- removing long-term maintenance effort for operational and product teams
- scalability
Our developers came up with a range of options, from reverting to our MVP solution of a hardcoded link to GOV.UK, to developing a new stand-alone app. Our lead option became the idea of using a further collection page to create a ‘guidance index’.
We consulted with the Digital Communications Team (DCT) to make sure this was technically possible and a compliant solution that met both internal and external user needs. We then created process maps to enable us to consult with Funding Operations and Funding Communications to make sure it would work from an operational point of view. We presented to SMT, who confirmed that we could progress with this option.
A scalable, low-development effort solution
The ‘guidance index’ option uses a hard-coded link in the statement to a ‘collection page of collection pages’. This allows any updates to guidance links to be managed as content changes rather than requiring development or code changes to the statement, meaning reduced maintenance effort. It also requires low development and operational effort for implementation, whilst remaining scalable to all funding streams.
The next steps will be:
- producing guidance on new ways of working for internal users
- handing over the creation of the ‘guidance index’ page to content owners
- updating the URL on the data-driven pattern before the next funding streams are onboarded