What was the plan?
We designed and built a new digital service that meets the core user needs we identified at the alpha stage. We then planned to launch it as a private test site for a small number of providers. We would then gradually release it to more providers with iterative testing and builds.
What changed?
The Department’s Chief Technology Officer commissioned a rapid review into the technology choices we were using to build the School Account platform. The review concluded that the technology choices were not the right fit for the Department’s longer-term vision for technical architecture and software choices. It identified that the related Manage Your Education and Skills Funding (MYESF) service already had much of the functionality and technology needed to deliver the school account vision in the short term.
As a result, the digital delivery team have been removed from the project, and an entire team working on the funding service and MYESF have pivoted their work to now deliver School Account.
Immediate benefits
The MYESF service is already able to provide:
- provider personalisation
- user account / role based personalisation
- user notifications
- tile-based navigation
The service is already used by:
- all academies (for grant payments)
- all providers with post-16 learners
As it is currently used as a ‘strategic platform’, using it for school account avoids the DfE having two similar competing platforms.
Challenges
Service name and brand
MYESF is recognised in the sector, but the full School Account experience goes beyond the ‘funding’ implicit in the MYESF title. We need to develop naming and terminology that allows the product to grow and scale in both content and user-base. This is likely to mean renaming MYESF, or positioning the MYESF brand within the wider School Account service language.
Need for more service design and user flow work
From the September 2023 MVP and beyond it is essential that we find a way to develop a service design that operates across the current funding service to bring in the School Account experience. This is likely to mean changing the journey for some existing users of MYESF. We’ll need to bring the MYESF team along with us for the changes that come.
Maintenance… and transformation
Our biggest dependancy and risk is the need to develop internal business processes that ensure School Account content is kept up-to-date. This requires us to understand and adapt business processes across the department.
We will need to develop an internal digital service to process content changes.
The change in delivery team is an opportunity to move resource towards this outcome. It is a significant transformation for the wider Department.