https://dataingovernment.blog.gov.uk/all-service-assessments-and-self-certification/hmrc/register-for-marriage-allowance-alpha/
Register for Marriage Allowance - Alpha Assessment
The Register for Marriage Allowance service will allow users to register their interest in applying to transfer £1,060 of their personal tax allowance to their spouse or civil partner.
Users will register their name and email and HMRC will send them an invite to apply. The service will also provide information to help users determine whether they are eligible and likely to benefit.
Department / Agency:
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC)
Date of Assessment:
12 January 2015
Assessment stage:
Alpha Review
Result of Assessment:
Pass
Lead Assessor:
H. Garrett
Service Manager:
M. Etherington
Digital Leader:
M. Dearnley
Assessment Report
The Marriage Allowance (Registration) service has been reviewed against the 26 points of the Service Standard at the end of the Alpha development.
Outcome of service assessment
After consideration we have concluded the service is on track to meet the Digital by Default Service Standard at this early stage of development.
Reasons
- The team have carried out a significant amount of research, more than proportionate to the scope of the service and stage of development. This research, however, will also be valuable for the development of the transactional service itself, which is closely related to the registration service and will be developed by the same team.
- The appropriate safety and security measures are in place.
- The team have iterated the alpha service based on findings from user research, for example, changing the eligibility content to make it clearer.
Recommendations
- Contact the GOV.UK content team to discuss the start page content, so that future research can be done using a prototype more representative of how it will look on GOV.UK.
- Research. Look at expanding the research to include research with individuals as well as couples. Look at alternative recruitment methods so as not to bias the sample, and get a representative spread of age. Test understanding of users into what they expect from signing up, and test email copy as part of that. Volume of users is less important than getting a good spread of all users.
- Design. A small sample of users have used the prototype and it was shown the service is simple enough to use first time. But there are a few misuses of GOV.UK design patterns and other items which should be addressed as soon as possible. We will send over more detailed design feedback separately to this report.
Digital by Default Service Standard criteria
| Criteria | Passed | Criteria | Passed |
| 1 | Yes | 2 | Yes |
| 3 | Yes | 4 | Yes |
| 5 | Yes | 6 | Yes |
| 7 | N/A* | 8 | Yes |
| 9 | Yes | 10 | Yes |
| 11 | N/A* | 12 | N/A* |
| 13 | Yes | 14 | Yes |
| 15 | N/A* | 16 | N/A* |
| 17 | Yes | 18 | Yes |
| 19 | Yes | 20 | Yes |
| 21 | N/A* | 22 | N/A* |
| 23 | N/A* | 24 | N/A* |
| 25 | N/A* | 26 | N/A* |
| Details of criteria that are not applicable to this service |
| *Not applicable due to the relatively small scope of the registration service and because the registration service will only be available on GOV.UK until the main transactional service is publicly available on GOV.UK. |
