Recommendation 18

In terms of things it could have done better, the Department said that, if it were to do the same thing again, it would try to find a way to do more user testing before the scheme started. The Department said that a lack of user-testing before the scheme was launched accounted for much of what led to the delays and difficulties that schools and parents experienced. It explained that it had been unable to complete as much testing as would normally have been done, ahead of the scheme opening. It told us that it would have carried out months of proper testing in normal times, but had only 18 days to get the scheme up and running. The Department said that it had considered what it could have done differently, even in the short time available, and felt that it could have carried out some sort of “guerrilla user testing” earlier, such as getting all departmental staff to try using the system for two hours to see how well it worked.32