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GOV.UK Verify

https://identityassurance.blog.gov.uk/2016/06/07/gov-uk-verify-technical-delivery-update-7-june-2016/

GOV.UK Verify: Technical delivery update, 7 June 2016

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: Delivery, Technical

This blog post is for anyone interested in the technical development of GOV.UK Verify.

In our first technical delivery update we explained that there are 3 parts to GOV.UK Verify and the delivery team is responsible for building and maintaining 2 of them: the GOV.UK Verify hub and Document Checking Service.

Currently, we’re working on 2 technical delivery priorities: increasing adoption (by departments) of GOV.UK Verify; and improving and maintaining GOV.UK Verify.

The team has been hard at work and successfully took GOV.UK Verify from beta to live last month. Here’s a summary of what we’ve been working on since our last update back in April and what we plan to do next.

Increasing adoption of GOV.UK Verify

We want departments across government to increasingly adopt GOV.UK Verify because it’s secure, straightforward and meets the needs of their users. To improve GOV.UK Verify and make it better for end users, since our last update we’ve:

  • Passed the Digital by Default Service Standard assessment and have transitioned the service from public beta to live
  • Made some changes to the way certified companies are recommended to users in the hub

Improving and maintaining GOV.UK Verify

We want to continue to improve the way we run the GOV.UK Verify federation and run the live service effectively. To continue to keep GOV.UK Verify available and secure we’ve:

  • Continued work to enhance our disaster recovery capabilities through a secondary hosting provider
  • Improved our ability to detect and report malicious transactions within the service

Over the last 2 weeks we’ve:

  • Continued the rollout of our new frontend, which is being built in the open, in the form of pages available in Welsh
  • Added additional information to our analytics so that we can make better decisions about what parts of GOV.UK Verify need the most immediate improvement
  • Updated the user journey to address minor issues identified during user testing and feedback from users, such as informing users what documents are needed to complete verification in certain circumstances in clearer terms and providing better information regarding errors
  • Incorporated accessibility updates in the hub identified during accessibility user testing and accessibility review
  • Upgraded some of our backend libraries to the latest version to benefit from new features and security updates

Things we plan to do next

In the coming 2 to 3 weeks we expect to:

  • Release functionality to allow certified companies to better tailor their user journeys based on information provided by the user
  • Run A/B tests on the hub to explore the effect of company logos on the initial hub information pages, integrated with the new frontend
  • Enhance the certified company picker to ensure the user only sees companies who are most likely to verify them based on the information they have to hand
  • Maintain and improve the service

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2 comments

  1. Comment by Nick Blaney posted on

    I work in local government and at present we have a plethora of identity assurance solutions whether they be proprietary vendor authentication or, via 3rd party solutions with associated API's to the systems solution vendors. Given there are 400+ local authorities in a similar situation should we not have a body such as Crown Commercial Services act on our behalf to 'encourage' the major system providers such as Capita, Northgate, IDOX, Firmstep etc to consider adopting gov.uk verify? Dealing individually with the organisations would not be a good use of public money. Thoughts?

    • Replies to Nick Blaney>

      Comment by Rebecca Hales posted on

      Hi Nick

      GOV.UK Verify went live in May. In the run up to live, our priority was central government services. Now we're looking at making it available for local authorities to use in the future and we have team dedicated to this. That team will be working with local authorities and engaging with those suppliers soon. Right now they're looking to identify possible pilot projects. You can get involved in this process by submitting your ideas for pilots and questions through this survey (https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/PXWBXPG) by 28 June, or by taking part on one of our discovery events (http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=e4cad6019b26e6ef449cd9b19&id=4bda042075). Councils attending these events can nominate suppliers who support their services to join in.