Staff Alerts - Proposal

• Recent updates
• Background
• Goals
• Objectives
• Benefits
• Timeline
• Team
  • Subject Matter Experts

Recent updates

• Week 0 - beginning 7 September
• Week 1 - beginning 14 September
• Week 2 - beginning 21 September
• Week 3 - beginning 28 September
• Week 4 - beginning 5 October
• Week 5 - beginning 12 October
• Week 6 - beginning 19 October
• Week 7 - beginning 26 October

Background

The Staff Alerts service will provide a centralised facility which can rapidly inform Environment Agency (EA) staff of notifiable events via text message, the Staff Information website and Helpline. Clear communications are vital to business delivery, so a consistent and rapid method of creating, approving and sending messages is critical.

The intention is for this service to potentially replace the existing EA Text Alerts service which is hard to maintain and manage. The currently in progress "Defra Single Group Text Alert Service" project does not intend to replace the existing EA Text Alerts service.

Goals

• To build a service to notify staff about incidents affecting EA sites and 16 operational areas
• To create a quick, user-friendly and low-cost service
• To allow staff to “self-manage” their details
• To design a service that can be re-used by others

Objectives

1. Identify and implement a way to securely obtain, maintain and store the necessary staff data across the organisation - following GDPR requirements

2. Identify and implement a way to allow staff to securely register, maintain and remove their own data from the service - following GDPR requirements

3. Create an accessible and intuitive internal interface that:

   1. has a secure user login mechanism
   2. allows for the selection of a group to send a message to
   3. allows for "approval" of messages before sending
   4. allows for the issuing of messages

4. Identify and implement a way to send text messages to relevant staff using GOV.UK Notify

5. Fully document the approach, design, implementation and next steps for full service implementation

6. Handover for future management and delivery to Internal Digital Services

Benefits

• Provides a better service for users with lower overheads
• We can better meet the user needs we have seen and have had through feedback
• Substantially reduces the maintenance overhead from the External Digital Services team
• Lower cost (current contract ~ around £40k - does not include staff time and overheads)
• Ability to re-use components from XWS (NeXt Warning System) development
• Ability to open source our work for re-use by Defra or others without restriction
• Provide a seamless transition to Internal Digital Services for future management

Timeline

• 14 Sep - 25 Sep: Disco/Planning/UR/Backlog refinement - 2 weeks
• 28 Sep - 09 Oct: Alpha build - 2 weeks
• 12 Oct - 16 Oct: Iteration and user testing - 1 week
• 19 Oct - 23 Oct: Iteration and user testing - 1 week
• 26 Oct - 30 Oct: Contingency week
• November: Initial release

Team

See here

Subject Matter Experts

• Internal Digital Services - Sharon Sawyer
• Incident Communication Service - Steph Turner, Lisa Matthews
• Business Continuity Incident Management – Chris Strong, Catherine Braun and Mel Cox