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 3 technical delivery priorities: increasing adoption (by departments) of GOV.UK Verify; improving the completion rate for GOV.UK Verify users; and improving and maintaining GOV.UK Verify.
Now that GOV.UK Verify is live, our work to maintain and improve the service continues at pace. Here’s a summary of what we’ve been working on since our last update back in June 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:
- Made improvements to the hub journey based on feedback generated by face-to-face sessions with users, including clarity around the acceptance of provisional driving licences and better messaging around the use of apps within the certified companies’ services
- Changed how we test alpha/beta government services with connected certified companies to ensure that the user journey remains stable while service designs are iterated
Improving the completion rate
To improve the proportion of visits that result in the creation or reuse of a verified account with a certified company, we’ve:
- Released functionality to allow certified companies to better tailor their user journeys based on information provided by the user
- Enhanced the certified company picker to ensure the user only sees companies most likely to verify them based on the information they have to hand
Improving and maintaining GOV.UK Verify
We want to continue to improve the way we run the GOV.UK Verify federation and operate the live service effectively. To continue to keep GOV.UK Verify available and secure we’ve:
- Continued work to enhance our disaster recovery capabilities
- Improved our ability to detect and report malicious transactions within the service
Things we plan to do next
In the coming 2 to 3 weeks we expect to:
- 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
- Complete the transition to the new, open-source front-end and remove the old front-end
- Improve the reports we create for the performance analysis team
- Maintain and improve the service
- Continue recruiting new members for the technical delivery team - we’re looking for web ops engineers, developers and more
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