Results of croydon.digital beta service assessment
Better late than never, here's the verdict on whether the Croydon Digital blog team managed to pass the high standards they set themselves.
As part of the council’s Local Digital Declaration pledge, we assess all new digital services against the Government Digital Service Standard to ensure they’re of a high quality, then publish the results openly here on this blog.
We carried out our alpha service assessment on the Croydon Digital blog itself back in March this year. In June, we iterated the blog from alpha to beta and we’re way overdue updating you on the outcome of the beta service assessment.
I’m pleased to say that the team passed, and the blog’s beta release met the standard. Read the beta service assessment report for details.
As users of Croydon Digital, you’ll be well aware of some of the changes, which included:
- a redesigned homepage
- better search features
- tagging and clearer category navigation
- new events functionality with maps
- improved jobs listings
- light mode and dark mode display options
Behind the scenes, the process of becoming a contributor has also been greatly simplified.
The team that worked on the beta release presented an amazing show and tell after the service assessment to the wider team. Everyone was blown away by how many improvements had been made in only 4 x 2-week sprints. You only need to compare the current blog that you’re reading this post on now, with this screen-grab of the alpha site below, to see how the hard work really paid off! The full list of improvements is available in the assessment report.
We’ll continue to iterate the site on an ongoing basis, so feel free to share your thoughts at any time on what can be improved.
Plus we’ll be sharing more service assessment outcomes soon, including for the alpha version of a new and improved croydon.gov.uk website for residents, which is well underway!