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 July 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 users, since our last update we’ve:
- improved the layout and messaging on the page displayed to users after a certified company successfully verifies their identity so it is clear how they can continue to the government service they intended to use
- improved our handling of the user’s choice of language (English or Welsh) so we can show the correct language version of each screen throughout the entire process, from selecting a government service through the GOV.UK Verify hub to certified companies
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:
- started work on an A/B testing framework which will allow us to determine whether one version of a screen or one wording of a sentence is clearer to users than another
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 GOV.UK Verify hub to explore the effect of company logos on the initial information pages:
- remove references to the old front-end code we used
- simplify the technical onboarding of new services by centralising the location of certain assets
- maintain and improve the service
- continue recruiting new members for the technical delivery team - we’re looking for web ops engineers, developers and more. If you’re interested in joining us at GDS, check out our current vacancies.
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