https://digitalhealth.blog.gov.uk/become-a-dhsc-service-assessor/
Become a DHSC service assessor
The cross health standards assurance team is responsible for running service assessments for DHSC. These DHSC service assessments apply to national services across DHSC, NHS England, NHS Digital and the many arms length bodies and agencies in health and care.
The cross health standards assurance team regularly train and onboard new assessors. The following groups can apply to be DHSC service assessors:
- user researchers
- technical leads
- designers including content, service and interaction designers
- product leads, including business analysts
- performance analysts
Applicants from ethnic minority groups or other under-represented groups are particularly encouraged and welcomed.
Training
To become a DHSC service assessor, there are two aspects of training:
- a 5 hour training session
- shadowing one or two assessments
Experience
You should have a good, working level knowledge of government Service Standard and an understanding of how the standards apply across alpha, beta and live.
Please note that applications can only be accepted from Government, NHS or arms length bodies and agencies. If you are a contractor, you will need to be on a long term contract and have an email address that belongs to your host organisation rather than the supplier organisation.
Commitment
Once trained, there is an expectation for you to do a minimum of two assessments a year. Each assessment takes 4.5 hours (including a lunch break and afternoon break), plus some pre-reading and then a post-assessment discussion to agree the report. You then have one week to complete your sections of the assessment report.
Benefits
Assessors gain:
- deeper understanding of service standard, which helps you coach others
- in-depth understanding of the assessment process, helping you improve your services and prepare for future assessments
- stronger knowledge of best practice within government and health, gained from a vast range of projects
- new networks with experts across government
- training
- concrete evidence of your commitment to helping government improve, which helps at performance reviews and job interviews.
Get involved
If you are interested in becoming an assessor, please fill out our expression of interest form. Someone from the cross health standards assurance team will get back to you in due course. If you have any questions, you can email dhsc.digitaltechcontrols@nhs.net.
The cross health assurance team want to build a diverse assessor community which better reflects the users of our services. Applicants from ethnic minority groups and under-represented groups will be prioritised for training places. If this applies to you, please tick 'priority group' on your application if you wish. There’s no need to provide extra detail and you won’t be asked to provide any evidence. This information will remain confidential and will not be shared beyond the assessments team.
Please help us help teams to build great services for the public and professionals.