Assure your service is an internal service in DfE. It will enable service teams to find out about, book and manage peer reviews and service assessments. It can also be used to check what type of assurance is most relevant to a service or project.
Problems we’re looking to solve
We’ve identified through research that the assessment and assurance process in DfE is inconsistent. We know this is because there are no clear standards for how the end-to-end process should happen. This is causing inconsistent experiences of assessments for both assessors and service teams.
In addition, we’ve seen repetitive, manual steps made by the assessment team, services not meeting the Service Standard consistently, teams not always demonstrating their work effectively and no accountability for risks raised in assessment reports. This results in an inadequate assurance process.
Background and what we’ve done so far
This work is part of the bigger standards piece of work we started as the Standards & Assurance team when we created Apply the Service Standard in DfE, it meets 1 of our objectives to create an efficient end to end solution to implement a robust delivery assurance framework.
We ran a discovery to dig into assurance and assessments in DfE. To understand service teams and service assessors experience of the service assessment process in DfE and whether there are any problems we can look to solve.
We spoke to service assessors, the assessment team, business partners, portfolio business managers, spend controls, and service teams. We mapped out the journeys for assessors and service teams and played back our findings to senior leadership. This resulted in a bunch of user needs and problem areas and support from people involved in the assessment process for us to explore designs looking to how we could make things better for both service teams and assessors, as well as improve the process and outcomes of assessments.
We reached out xgov and spoke to CDDO to understand the process for xgov panel assessments now coming ‘in house’ to DfE. Where the process will be managed by the department but with a xgov assessor panel. We spoke with several other government departments too – DWP, MoD, MoJ – who’re working with similar user needs and thinking about service assurance.
We ran a hypotheses workshop with stakeholders and subject-matter experts to identify the riskiest to least riskiest hypotheses to test measured against benefit to users and DfE. Along the way, we identified that there were many problems around discovery peer reviews, including inconsistent experiences, knowledge and information across DfE. Discovery peer reviews were considered one of the least riskiest areas we could start to explore our hypotheses.
Examples of overarching hypotheses
We've seen teams find it difficult to know what the different types of assessments there are,
So if we provide guidance on the different types of assessment, and their purposes,
We should see teams understanding what type of assessment is relevant for their service.
We've seen products, processes & services being measured against the service standard where it may not be appropriate to them,
So if we provide a toolkit, for example, a decision tree, to help teams find out what assurance is appropriate for them,
We should see these products, processes, and services being assured proportionally.
Examples of user needs for assurance and assessments
As a service team,
we need to know what to demonstrate at a discover peer reviews,
so that we show our work in the most appropriate way
As a service team,
we need to know what our work will be measured against,
so that we are best prepared
As a service team,
we need to know what different assessments there are,
so that we can choose which assessment is the most suitable for our team
As a peer reviewer,
I need to know how I will be assuring a service team's work,
so that I conduct consistent and fair peer reviews
What we’re doing now
Starting with discovery peer reviews, we’re moving into alpha with designs and prototypes to explore how we can help users find out about, book and manage a peer review.
