The Data Standards Directory - development update 27th October 2022

Dear all, please find a link to the latest development weekly update highlighting the work we have delivered in the last week and what we intend to do next week.

This week we launched our first blog ;’Discovering data standards together’ at the NHS Digital website – please do take a look and share with colleagues who want to learn more.

 You may remember we did a URL naming survey before launch to agree on the web address the directory would launch with. We got many responses with data-standards.nhs.uk the winning option. Some stakeholders and rightly so, questioned why we decided to go with data.standards.nhs.uk.

 When looking at data. We felt it describes that the site primarily contains data standards, and data around standards As a url that communicates what we are offering right now we felt it was correct.

At the time of the survey, we were not fully aware of the positive and negative implications of future proofing a web address and technical debt that could occur in regards to Search engine ranking and maintenance. The originally intended url standards.nhs.uk, while still having value, confused some of our users expecting our scope to be wider than it was,

Hence by going with data.standards.nhs.uk, we provided a branch of our offering, focused more on data. This way we keep the brand of standards.nhs.uk and can introduce new and useful branches in the future. Much in the same way if Tesco launched as Tesco food, there would be some confusion if the majority of items being sold there were not food.

Being a subdomain, using a full stop this allows us to introduce new branches in future, personalising the experience and content, yet still using the same parent brand of standards.nhs.uk.

And so we completed this week an update where the directory is for now, referred to as the NHS Data Standards Directory!

We look forward in the future to branching out so users can focus on the types of standards they need as we add more variety to the site. And eventually providing a wider more holistic view and introduction to standards at standards.nhs.uk.

Our main priority this week was exploring all the research done on the editing experience to make it as easy as possible. We have a good list of ideas to investigate on how to achieve this. And we have prepared user research questions on how standards could be applicable to you and looking in the next few weeks to recruit participants. Do get in touch if interested.

Next week we are looking into how we could develop a Standards Directory design system, a way of publishing the visual look and feel so we can recreate a new branch of the Standards Directory when needed, and to consistently reuse visual elements in our development. We will be continuing more work to review metadata from other standards sites and catalogues to consider how we expand the metadata we hold around standards and signpost better.

Please do continue to test out data.standards.nhs.uk and let us know any feedback we can use to plan further improvements or if you are interested in participating in research with us.

 Many thanks,

 Bharat ‘buh-rut’ Sharma (he/him)

Senior Product Manager of data.standards.nhs.uk - the ‘Standards Directory’

Standards and Interoperability Team england.interop.standards@nhs.net

Chief Technology Office 

NHS Transformation Directorate | NHS England