Identity assurance for organisations and authority management is an important new area of scope for the programme that will help to address user needs such as:
"As a director of a limited company I want to authorise an employee to file the company VAT return online so that I pay the right amount of tax."
"As an individual caring for a relative, I want to be able to act on their behalf online so that I can help them get the benefits they are entitled to."
Meeting user needs
We've known for a while that these kinds of needs - where people act on behalf of a company or another person - exist, but we've prioritised the simplest case: A user acting on their own behalf.
As the exemplar services have progressed through discovery and alpha phases, it's become clear that their users have many of these needs. To support them, we need to investigate what common service we could provide.
The first step
A couple of weeks ago we formed a team in Aviation House to carry out a discovery on the proposition of a common authority management and delegation service which would meet a broad range of user needs. In order to get the right input and focus we have representation on the team from HMRC and DWP, whose users provide a wide cross-section of the kinds of interactions with government that are in scope.
We started by running workshops with a number of HMRC teams, as they have a services which represent many of the users which we expect to be involved. That's uncovered a lot of useful information.
Casting the net wide
Though we’re starting with teams from HMRC and DWP, we’re casting a much wider net, with invitations out to teams from a variety of departments and agencies who have expressed a need for online representation of businesses, or delegation of authority between people or organisations.
This week we're following up with some of the HMRC teams, expanding our view with workshops with teams from Companies House and DWP. We’re also planning user research sessions in the coming weeks.
If you have any questions or want to find out more, please respond to this post.
3 comments
Comment by Stuart Barker posted on
User management, identity assurance and authority management are important and complex topics. Did you find a common service as per the goal of the workshop and what was the useful information that was uncovered ( broad based )?
Comment by Steve Wreyford posted on
Thanks Stuart, and sorry for being a bit slow in replying. We're posting a blog shortly on our progress which should answer your question.
Steve
Comment by Sam Brierley posted on
We spoke to Andy about this earlier this month.
Charities often want to delegate responsibility for submitting financial returns to their financial or legal advisers.
Professional advisers can already use Charity Commission non-authenticated forms and it'd speed things up if we know that a form's been completed by a trusted third party.
Are there likely to be any open workshops in the near future?
Thanks
Sam