Before Christmas we published our departmental Digital Strategy. In it, we set out how we’re going to deliver high-quality digital services that people will want to use, and how we’ll support our customers to use them. We’re starting with three “exemplar” services – Universal Credit, Personal Independence Payment, and Carer’s Allowance - and a whole range of other actions aimed at transforming DWP.
What have we been doing since then?
We’ve been working hard to deliver our exemplar services. These are responsible for most of DWP’s transactions and take us a large part of the way towards becoming a digital department. But “digital by default” is about more than the services we provide: we’ve also been focusing on the wider business transformation we committed to in the strategy. This means building capability - recruiting people with the right skills and making sure our staff are confident helping claimants use online services. It also means organising ourselves to deliver digital services in a more flexible, cost-effective way.
We’re also developing our approach to ‘assisted digital’, to provide support for those who need help to use our online services. We took part in a market engagement event with Government Digital Services (GDS) to help us make contact with suppliers and voluntary sector organisations working in this area. We also launched a challenge fund supporting local housing associations who want to help their tenants go online.
The digital strategy also sets out how we’ll work in a more open way. As part of this commitment, we’ll use this blog to publish updates on the development of new digital services. We’ll start with posts from the Carer’s Allowance project team. We believe that publishing updates on our blog will help share best practice across government, allowing readers to follow the project’s progress and provide feedback to the team. "