The Government has restated its commitment to delivering pensions dashboards in a written statement.
Technical connection: Operational acceptance testing (OAT) and transition into live
Overview
Purpose of this step
Once you are ready for OAT, you need to inform the Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP) of this. After testing has successfully completed, your vouching scheme will go live on the date we’ve already agreed with you.
Who completes this step?
service manager
Read the full list of roles and responsibilities.
Before you begin
Before you can request OAT you need to:
- deploy your live cryptographic material to your endpoints
- be ready for your vouching scheme to go live on the date agreed in service acceptance
What you need to do in this step
- Complete form to request operational acceptance testing.
- PDP test your connection to the live environment.
1. Complete form to request operational acceptance testing
On the connection portal, you need to answer 3 questions before you can request OAT:
- Has your crypto material been deployed?
- Is your connection ready to be tested?
- Is your organisation ready to transition into the live environment?
You must answer yes to all 3 questions to progress.
You will then be asked to enter your connection date (CoCo 3.1.13). This must be at least 7 calendar days in the future.
This is the date when you require your vouching pension provider or scheme to be connected to the live environment. In some instances, this date may need to be changed. For example, if the infrastructure is being updated.
You must take into account how long it will take to complete operational acceptance testing when choosing a connection date. Your vouching scheme connection date must be after the date you complete the technical connection journey. If you are unsure of the expected timelines you can raise a query.
Back to top2. PDP tests your connection to the live environment
PDP will arrange for a connectivity test to be run against your connection to the live environment.
This will involve a synthetic find request being sent to your find endpoint. It will be a valid find request (for example, containing a correctly formatted and signed user token), but will contain synthetic data. We expect that you will process the find request, acknowledge it with a 202 response, and then perform your matching process.
The find request should not be matched against an actual pension record, as it contains synthetic data.
We will monitor for your 202 acknowledgement. If this is received, we know the find request has been received and accepted by you.
Back to topNext steps
If OAT is successful, we will email you to confirm this and confirm the date that your vouching scheme will go live.
If OAT is unsuccessful, you will be notified by an email from Jira. If you need more details on why the test failed, we will arrange a support session with you. Once you have resolved the issues we identified, we will run the test again.
If you are adding additional pension providers and schemes, you can start doing this once you have successfully completed OAT.
Back to topSupport
Find answers to common queries about pensions dashboards, give feedback or get technical support.
Changelog
Last updated:16/10/2025
16 October 2025
16 October 2025
- Updated '1. Complete form to request operational acceptance testing'. The process has changed so that the connection date is provided during operational acceptance testing instead of during service acceptance.