Progress with the MoneyHelper pensions dashboard

The MoneyHelper pensions dashboard, being developed by the Money and Pensions Service, and elements of the Pensions Dashboard Programme digital architecture, has recently undergone an alpha assessment as part of the GOV.UK Service Standard Assessment process. Here are more details on the outcome of this assessment and next steps.

About the Service Standard Assessment (SSA)

The SSA is a rigorous process designed to ensure that new government services are user-centred and operationally ready for development or deployment. All transactional services developed for central government must go through this process, which comprises several phases.

Service assessments take place at the end of alpha, private beta and public beta phases to check that the 14 points of the GOV.UK Service Standard are being met. If so, teams may move their service to the next stage. Services are given green, amber or red ratings against each of these points, services can still meet the standard and progress to the next stage if there are minor issues (amber ratings), or if there are issues with the user’s wider journey, as long as reasonable steps are being taken to improve things and fix the journey within an agreed period.

MoneyHelper pensions dashboard alpha assessment

The alpha assessment evaluates key areas such as user research, interoperability with internal systems and user needs, personas and accessibility needs. The assessment team reviews the service’s design, user research, technical feasibility and plans for the beta phase.

In July 2024, the MoneyHelper pensions dashboard, plus elements of the user journey delivered by PDP, underwent a cross-government alpha assessment. This assessment saw 13 of the 14 points rated green and a minor point rated amber, which has now been resolved. The report can be found on the GOV.UK website.

The positive outcome from the assessment means the MoneyHelper pensions dashboard has now moved to the next stage known as, ‘beta build’ which means we will soon progress to ‘private beta’. This is an important milestone for the programme, bringing us one step closer to dashboards becoming a reality and helping consumers manage their pensions effectively.

Next step: private beta stage

In this phase we will continue to undertake user research while also inviting a limited number of people to use the service. This will allow us to understand and resolve usability issues, join up the wider user journey and prove our support model meets our users’ needs.

We want to ensure the MoneyHelper pensions dashboard meets the diverse needs of dashboard users, including those with a range of access needs and digital skill levels. With that in mind, we are developing comprehensive plans to involve pension providers and schemes in end-to-end testing of the service and hope to be able to begin this process from spring 2025.

During both the private beta phase and the subsequent public beta phase, where the service will be more widely available, we will work to integrate user feedback, ensure compatibility with existing systems, and continuously refine the dashboard. This phased approach supports an iterative development process where user-centred adjustments are made, and security is strengthened, to assess the service’s overall readiness for scaling and supporting a live service for managing pensions information.