“Removing the Beta banner” on a new public service
Working for the Department for Transport (DfT) to deliver its new public-facing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reporting service, the Triad team successfully created a portal that reached Live having passed all three GDS phase assessments first time, every time.
By “removing the Beta banner”, following a successful live assessment, Triad helped the DfT and UK Government fulfil its commitment to reducing CO2 emissions across the UK. The new service is now used by all fuel and energy firms to track in the region of 2.7 billion litres of renewable fuel and facilitate the award of nearly 8 billion GHG credits.
About the client
The DfT is a key Government department responsible for the UK’s transport networks, including the maintenance of 400,000 kms of roads. The DfT also has a critical role in ensuring that the UK Government achieves its legally required reductions in CO2 emissions.
Legislation, designed to reduce these emissions, meant that the DfT needed to build a new GHG reporting system that enabled all fuel and energy providers across the UK to report on energy and fuel supplied and used in road transport. The system also needed to make it easy for these companies to claim and trade GHG credits under the GHG reporting regulations.
The challenge
Whether it’s the ubiquitous Government Gateway, “Tax your vehicle”, or “Apply for job seeker’s allowance” services, many Government services retain an ‘In Beta’ classification due to the stringent GDS assessments that public facing services need to obtain, in order to be fully launched.
Triad didn’t have the luxury of open-ended Alpha/Beta phases to re-visit failed service standard points due to a legislative deadline. This meant that passing Alpha assessment first time was required to allow obligated suppliers into the system to report their figures by a specific deadline. A first time pass was also needed at Beta assessment to open the system up to non-obligated suppliers and traders who would contribute the CO2 reductions critical to the mechanism’s overall success.
“Triad has expertly navigated all GDS phase assessments to secure a first time pass at each stage which is a fantastic result. Moving from Beta to Live not only provides users with a service that they can rely on it also provides the DfT with a stable platform for the unit’s future business transformation.”
Richard Lynn | Project Sponsor & Head of Compliance, Department for Transport
The solution
Triad rapidly assimilated the legislative detail to become subject matter experts. Armed with this deep understanding, they were able to confidently conduct user research sessions with fuel suppliers and energy providers that had minimal understanding of the legislative impact at the outset.
Being able to speak the same language was critical to success, but also enabled Triad to enroll stakeholders into the project. As a result, from the first sprint review to the last, suppliers were in attendance, engaged as part of the project, contributing to priority decisions and product development ideas.
Having completed the groundwork for collaborative stakeholder leadership, the GOV.UK Prototype kit was used to rapidly produce a GDS compliant prototype that users could interact with. This was achieved by retaining before and after snapshots of the user journeys as the system evolved, and combining these with user research evidence and proof points in a knowledge base, enabled the team to track the service standard. This targeted approach to GDS Service Standard alignment enabled the production of comprehensive reports for each phase assessment, which also clearly sign-posted to GDS how each service point was met.
The result
The new Greenhouse Gas reporting system passed Alpha, Beta and Live assessments first time, every time and was permitted to remove its Beta banner in 2020, having completed Public Beta without notable issue.
The service delivered against all of its critical success factors; being simple for end-users and intuitive enough to avoid lengthy go-to-market training, providing a modern strategic platform on which to build in future years, and aligned to DfT’s Architectural principles and the GDS service standard.
The partnership between stakeholders and the Triad team created a design that met user needs, coupled with a comprehensive automation suite that enabled working code to be deployed at the end of every sprint. This resulted in a frictionless transition through each phase to its Live operation.
In summary, Triad prepared and delivered a new GHG credits system such that it met the 18-point GDS Service standard and passed every assessment stage first time. This enabled it to go Live meeting its legislative deadline.
Read more about how Triad has helped the public sector transform and deliver digital services here.
