Preparing for a GDS Service Assessment

The GDS (Government Digital Service) Service Standard sets out 14 criteria to ensure digital services meet user needs, accessibility, and security requirements. These principles focus on understanding user needs, agile working, accessibility, and scalable design, and promoting transparency and efficiency.

Not all public-sector services require formal assessments, but teams benefit from self-assessments to identify improvements and align with stakeholders. Self-assessments use a red/amber/green (RAG) scale to provide feedback and track progress. The goal is not to pass or fail but to document strengths, weaknesses, and priorities for improvement.

At the Home Office, I trained as a GDS Service Assessor and participated in assessments at various service stages. Later, at NHS Digital and NHS England, I helped teams conduct internal self-assessments using the Service Standard.

Given the scope of assessments, I involved team members across design, research, testing, security, data protection, and technical architecture

We started by reviewing each point of the Service Standard together as a team and assigned areas for deeper investigation. Once that had been done, we met again to agree on RAG ratings, provide commentary and supporting documentation for each rating, and identify steps for improving the amber/red areas. Finally, we shared the findings with stakeholders, agreed on priorities, and integrated the follow-up actions into the project workflows.

Doing the self-assessment helped both teams identify gaps in understanding and highlight areas that were progressing well, but needed clearer documentation. It provided a solid rationale for future improvements and helped the teams work better together.