Creating a user-centred design process in the Inland Revenue

Between 1999 and 2003 we provided consultancy to the Inland Revenue and their IT partner EDS. The Inland Revenue provides data processing support for 60,000 staff in more than 600 local offices.

As part of this EU-funded project, Serco ExperienceLab was asked to identify opportunities for process improvement in user-centred design at the Inland Revenue. The main conclusions were as follows:

• User centred information existed, but not always at the right time or in the rightplace.
• Usability requirements are either not documented or were documented much too late.
• Building usability into the development process was not always managed or established.

A series of detailed improvement activities were recommended and subsequently agreed with the Inland Revenue. 12 months later, and having achieved many of the improvement objectives, the Inland Revenue estimated the impact of the improvements to their user-centred process:

• For a system with 20 functions the value of the total saving in staff time was estimated to be £231,000. The cost of using the user-centred methods recommended was estimated to be £88,500, giving a cost benefit ratio of about 1:3.
• The potential benefits of savings accrued with the system in use have not yet been estimated, but are likely to be substantial, with 30,000 users whose time costs over 80p/minute.

In 2002 the Inland Revenue gained Central Government Beacon status for their work in human centred design and usability. They also won the TNT Modernising Government Partnership Award in the same year. This case study will feature in the new edition of the book Cost Justifying Usability.