First trailed in 2021, an app allowing citizens to access a broad range of services and manage their interactions with departments is now less than 12 months away, PublicTechnology understands
The incoming GOV.UK App will serve nine “core functions” and is set for a wide-scale public release about a year from now, PublicTechnology can reveal.
Plans for the app – which will offer citizens the ability to access hundreds of departmental services from a single mobile program – were first announced in October 2021. The software was originally due to be launched by the end of 2022.
After some delays to this original timeline, a GDS team is has now completed the app’s discovery phase and the technology is “currently in Alpha development and available to a small number of internal users” while also undergoing “technical proof of concept” exercises, according to procurement specification documents recently released by the unit.
By November, the plan is to recruit between 5,000 and 10,000 people to take part in private beta testing of the software. A broader public beta phase will commence from March 2025, ahead of “scaled UK public GOV.UK App release from July” of next year. After which, GDS expects that the “mobile app will scale up to users in the millions over time”.
The commercial documents outline that the technology will incorporate nine core elements of functionality:
- Identity – including the ability for users to log in, then manage an account and their personal preferences
- Store – covering the provision of a digital wallet for credentials and certifications
- Read – a mailbox for messages and other communications
- Ask – incorporating search, chat and navigation services
- Apply – allowing users to make digital applications, renewals and registrations
- Book – for booking appointments, and providing calendar services and reminders
- Approve – enabling citizens to provide consent, sign documents, and verify information
- Notify – covering reminders, alerts, and other proactively provided information
- Pay – including one-off payments, as well as regular or automated payments
According to GDS, these nine areas of functionality are intended to embody three overarching principles: ease-of-use; utility; and personalisation.
To deliver an easy-to-use experience, the app should be “intuitive… and secure” and “users who download the app should feel they need to keep it on their device because of the value it provides”, the commercial specification says.
To demonstrate its utility, the app should serve as “a central ‘hub’ for all your government needs which reduces burden on users and allows them to perform tasks on the go”.
To deliver personalisation, meanwhile, “the app needs to feel like a product which is ‘for you’ and not the same experience for everyone [which] could allow us to change the way we interact with our users and proactively reach them without the need to always come to us”, according to GDS.
The overall aim is “to create an ongoing, personal relationship between our users and our services by meeting the users where they are and making it easier to do the things they need to do with government”.
Apps and uptake
In its early years in operation, GDS was unequivocal in its stance that government bodies should eschew the use of apps and, instead, focus on delivering online services optimised for PC and mobile access.
This stance has shifted significantly in recent years, and departments – including HM Revenue and Customs, which operates its own dedicated app used by millions of people – have begun to develop and deploy mobile apps. As has GDS itself, via the creation of the GOV.UK ID Check app, which allows users to prove their identity in order to register for a One Login account.
However, the plan is that the new wider “GOV.UK App will supersede the ID check app” in time.
As GDS moves ever-further into the world of apps, “our strategy aims to build on the success and learnings of [the ID Check] app by implementing the principles and core functions above into a new mobile application”.
“We are targeting a one-app operating model and with some exceptions for new apps being made,” the procurement outline said.
“The app needs to feel like a product which is ‘for you’ and not the same experience for everyone. This could allow us to change the way we interact with our users and proactively reach them without the need to always come to us.”
GDS commercial documents
The documents referenced in this story relate to the need for the app to implement a push notification system. This technology will provide proactive reminders about upcoming deadlines, appointments, or payments due, as well as messages to “notify citizens about services which they could find useful or support which they may be eligible for”.
The procurement specification does not set firm targets or projections for how many users will sign up for the app, but does provide context for its potential uptake with figures for adoption of the NHS App, as well as details of traffic on GOV.UK.
The health service app “took five years to get to 33.6 million users,” the document notes, and “currently has 16.8 million logins per month [with] 3.2 million repeat prescriptions ordered per month”.
The government website, meanwhile, clocks 1.1 billion sessions per year, encompassing 2.6 billion discrete page views. The daily average is 3.2 million sessions and 7.3 million page views, the GDS figures reveal.
The proportion of users accessing GOV.UK via a mobile device has risen over the years and now stands at almost 60% compared with around 38.7% for desktop, and just 1.5% for tablet.
In response to enquiries from PublicTechnology, a government spokesperson said: “When it is developed, the GOV.UK App will help people access government services more easily, cutting down the time they need to spend on admin for essential tasks. The GOV.UK App is currently a prototype and we are preparing for further user testing as development work continues.”
