DesignOps in DfE weeknotes

Sprint 5 - 8 January to 19 January 2024

A new sprint and refocus on our service assessment work. Including a xgov crit looking at the new CDDO RAG rating and refining the step by step guidance to service assurance.

Plus, we welcomed Jake, our new accessibility specialist to the team.

Screenshot of content crit with xgov assessors: critting guidance for assessors to help them to understand what happens during an assessment and how to write the report

What we did

• Ran a content crit with xgov assessors from Defra and HMRC to learn how they’ve been interpreting the new RAG rating guidance from CDDO. We want to understand if our guidance for completing assessment reports makes practical sense
• Said hello to Jake, a senior accessibility specialist, who will be leading on, and supporting teams across DfE to understand problems, improve awareness and understanding of accessible design and delivery
• Jake joins us from HMRC where he led a team of 11 specialists running accessibility audits, testing and supporting project and delivery teams
• The devs explored a tech spike into authentication for users to access the booking a service assessment service
• Took part in a cross DfE senior and lead content designer meet up in Sheffield to connect across our portfolios, talk about topics we want to focus on and develop the content profession further

What we learned

• The assessor guidance for service assessments in the step by step guide could work for cross-gov assessments, as well as internal DfE assessments
• X-gov assessors are using the practical tips by phase in Apply the Service Standard in DfE as pointers during assessments and are finding them useful
• Notify emails we created in alpha could also work in private beta as we bring in service assessments into the service. We’ll add new parameters (components of data), for example, ‘service assessment’ and ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’, as well as ‘discovery’ ‘peer review’. We can do this because the user journey through the assessment service is the same for discovery peer reviews as it is for service assessments

What’s next

• Sharing our work xgov with meet-ups with Defra, HMRC and DWP to look at the service assessment service and design manual
• We’ll be working on scoping some ideas for integrating survey feedback and how we can better understand user’s experience of using the service when taking part in an assessment
• Run a workshop to design a first iteration of a Check what type of assurance you need for your service tool