The government’s Central Digital and Data Office has released a report on the alpha reassessment of the NHS Digital Staff Passport.
The purpose of the passport is to enable staff to carry a verified portfolio of their digital credentials for skills, training, abilities and employment checks, enabling them to move between organisations quickly and more efficiently.
They are intended to benefit individuals such as NHS staff, with postgraduate doctors in training as the initial focus for the product, along with NHS employers including corporate staff and medical staff. NHS England IT staff are also required to administer the service.
The service standards include understanding users and their needs; making the service simple to use; making sure that everyone can use the service; and iterating and improving frequently.
The evaluation explains areas in which the assessing panel is impressed with work, including how the team widened the range of end users in research and considered factors such as age, location, role and digital abilities; developed the user needs to be more user-centred and behaviour-based; added a progress checker to make the service more intuitive; worked with other organisations and ‘ambassadors’ from different parts of the NHS to design offline elements; conducted a digital inclusion survey to assess digital competence of participants in user research; made improvements based on feedback from people with accessibility needs; and used the previous service assessment to iterate and improve.
Prior to the next assessment, the team is expected to continue their research with a broad range of end users and include groups such as new starters, individuals who use assistive technology, individuals who do not have mobile phones and people with low digital confidence. In addition, they should create a prototype service that does not have the current breakpoints and discontinuity between app and browser-based elements, conduct a thorough accessibility audit, and consider the overall cost.
The service has met the standards for the alpha reassessment.
HTN previously covered the NHS Digital Staff Passport alpha assessment when it did not meet criteria earlier this year. Click here to read.
To read the evaluation in full, click here.
