Digital Service Standard & User Testing

Digital Transformation Office

The Digital Transformation Office (DTO) was set-up in 2015 and is part of the Prime Minister’s portfolio. The role of the DTO is to ‘work closely with government agencies, users and private sector partners to create public services that are simpler, clearer and faster’.

Digital Service Standard

The bedrock of achieving that goal is the creation of the Digital Service Standard (the DSS or the ‘Standard’).

The Standard is now live and any newly designed or redesigned website services will be assessed from May 2016.

The Standard sets out a list of 13 criteria that Government agencies are expect to met.

Focus on the User

The Standard covers the full spectrum of a project design life cycle, however, the overarching theme is the focus on making services user centric - for all users. Designing a service that meets and exceeds the user's expectations regardless of ability or age related impairments.

Garnering users (including users with a disability and older users) input from the initial concept and requirements gathering stage of a project, through to performing user testing on the beta version, and finally gathering feedback on the live site is an integral part of the Standards.

Australian Human Rights Commission

Furthermore, the HRC, similar to the DTO, strongly advocate the involvement of users with a disability when designing and developing a website (e.g. user testing and evaluation that includes people with a disability).

As highlighted in the Disability Discrimination Act Advisory Notes:

"Testing for accessibility should also be incorporated into all user testing regimes, and should never be seen as an isolated event that can occur after other user testing has taken place. Designing for accessibility is thus as much a strategic issue as a purely technical one."

"However, there is no complete substitute for user testing, and designers should, wherever possible, involve users of assistive technology in the testing and evaluation of the accessibility of their websites and web content."