We've been talking to service teams and content designers, getting their feedback on the Government Service Design Manual's assisted digital guidance. We want to make it as helpful as possible for service teams putting appropriate assisted digital support in place. They need to do this to meet point 10 of the Digital By Default Service Standard.
Service teams that have gone Live (such as Visit someone in prison) told us that the sooner service teams start to think about developing assisted digital support the better. They asked us to simplify the guidance and publish the requirements at each of the service development phases.
So we’ve made changes, refining, rewording, grouping and reordering the prompts making them more consistent across the phases, and more in line with the other 25 points of the standard.
We've made sure that what remains is essential, actionable and relevant. The prompts are now clearer for services to understand what they need to do, and better for starting a useful conversation in an assessment.
We’ve added all this into the assisted digital action plan.
Some requirements have moved from the Alpha review into the Beta assessment, and some have gone altogether. For example, we removed the prompt about meeting legal requirements, because services must do this anyway, irrespective of the service standard. This means it is now a bigger jump from Alpha to Beta.
For the Live assessment we have added in some prompts which departments have told us are important. For example, the prompts around staff security clearance and privacy.
We’ve also reworked the assisted digital information template in the assisted digital action plan, to match the updates.
The guidance now includes new information and definitions around assisted digital provision, as agreed through our cross-government work. For example, the guidance now explains;
- when services don’t need to offer assisted digital support
- responsibilities and liabilities for costs and information accuracy
- procuring from the Front Office Counter Services framework
- providing assisted digital support during GOV.UK Verify
We have also made the guidance on how to properly research assisted digital users much clearer, including advice on;
- finding assisted digital users
- creating assisted digital user personas
- testing assisted digital support
We will continue to work with service managers to review and refine the prompts and guidance as required. For the assisted digital prompts and requirements at each phase of the Digital By Default Service Standard, see the assisted digital action plan.
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