The Data Standards Directory - development update 9th December 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.

Spring cleaning in December.. As that winter feeling comes in, the coloured socks and woolly jumpers come out of the cupboard. We are bringing our warm clothing out in the form of knowledge and tidying up our documentation as we continue to document how the site works and functions to prepare for what 2023 may bring.

We looked at collating all our user needs together, from all the different and vast research done to discover what the Standards Directory needs to be. I hope to present user needs quotes and share with you all regularly what our users are thinking, like last week's update that looked at the findings around research done on finding standards conversations.

While we want to pack everything away in the form of knowledge documentation, a few pieces of work in our backlog ('to do list') I felt needed to be done as soon as possible rather than wait till later.

It is not good practice to want to have your Christmas present early, but sometimes you have to let others know what you want now, rather than just wishing for it!

And so next week we are looking to do a quick technical 'spike', an investigation into how we can easily maintain the care settings and topics in the Data Standards Directory. This will allow to us to expand a little quicker, particularly if the research on relevant standards for care providers we are doing next week, shows that our suggestion of using service types and regulated activities from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the right approach.

This week to prepare for this research we looked at examples of Information Standards Notices (ISNs). I would describe them as an official method announcing a standard that must be followed in healthcare. The NHS Digital website hosts ISNs here, and it is good to use these to validate our research approach as to what standards will apply to who. Most ISNs contain high level information about who they apply to and their scope. Information we would like to make visible and searchable in future, mixed with a wider variety of standards.

Next week we will continue to focus on design and development handover and start to carry out our last research sessions of 2022.

Please do continue to test out data.standards.nhs.uk and let us know any feedback we can use to plan further improvements.

Do you want to attend our 2 weekly show and tells? Let me know and I can get you on our distribution list in 2023.

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