Guidance
Preparing for a service assessment
What an assessment panel will ask, what evidence to bring, and the reasons teams are most often asked to return.
What happens on the day
An assessment is half a day. The team shows the service and talks about how it was made; the panel asks questions against the fourteen points of the Service Standard.
It is not a presentation. Panels learn far more from a team walking through the real service, including the parts that do not work yet, than from slides about it.
Who should attend
Bring the people who did the work. A panel needs to hear from whoever did the research, whoever designed the journey, and whoever built it.
The service owner must attend and must be able to make decisions. Assessments where nobody present can change the service tend not to go well.
Evidence to send in advance
Send your evidence at least ten working days before the panel so assessors arrive having read it.
- Research findings from every round, including the rounds that went badly
- The current prototype or a link to the working service
- Accessibility testing results and your accessibility statement
- Performance data, if the service is already live
- Your data protection impact assessment
- A short note on what you would change next and why
Why teams are asked to return
Of the 133 assessments completed in 2025 to 2026, 46 resulted in conditions and 5 were not met. The reasons are consistent year to year.
- No research with people who find the service difficult
- No assisted digital route, or one that had not been tested
- Accessibility tested only with automated tools
- The team could not change the service without a governance board
- No plan for how the service would be measured after launch
Related guidance
The Commonwealth Service Standard
The fourteen points every Commonwealth public service is assessed against before it launches, and every three years after that.
Meeting accessibility requirements
What a Commonwealth public service must do to be usable by disabled people, how it is tested, and what to publish when something is not yet fixed.
Services this guidance applies to
Book a service assessment
Book the independent panel review that every Commonwealth public service must pass before it launches to the public.