All transactional services need to have a service assessment. Getting assessed is a condition of your Cabinet Office spend approval.

Some non-transactional, or information services, may also need to be assessed.

Service assessments happen at the end of alpha, private beta and public beta phases. If you are in the discovery phase, you should have a peer review.

Read the guidance for what counts as a transactional service.

A service may be assessed by a panel of people from across government or within DfE.

Cross-government panel service assessment

You need a cross-government panel assessment if your service or product is:

  • a transactional service with over 100,000 transactions, or
  • users are from more than one public sector organisation

The service assessment plus team will work with CDDO (Central Digital and Data Office) to arrange the panel from the cross-government assessor pool.

Book your cross-government service assessment using the Service assessment service.

DfE panel service assessment

You need a DfE panel assessment if your service or product is transactional and will have less than 100,000 transactions per year.

The panel will be made up of people from across professions in DfE.

Book your DfE panel service assessment using the Service assessment service.

Peer reviews

You need a peer review if your service or product is:

  • in the discovery phase
  • a non-transactional service, for example a guidance or information service

The outcome of a peer review will be a report sharing what the team has done well and what they need to improve.

However, you can choose to have a DfE panel service assessment if you think your service will benefit from being assessed more formally against the Service Standard.

You can book a peer review using the Service assessment service.