The Rate IT Service
Rate IT provides a quick and easy mechanism for Customers/End Users to provide feedback on your online application/service, whether developed through the Digital Toolkit or otherwise.
This tool can be used to acquire valuable and actionable customer opinions about the services they received, which can further inform service enhancements to improve customer experience.
The business area can define the subject of the Rate IT, the definition of the 5 rating levels and location to send notifications that a rating has been provided.
Once a Rate IT is created the admin can generate a link to embed on a web page for the public to use. - going
Management Information (MI) is available to admin users including overviews, specific Rate IT scores and associated feedback comments.
At the end of an online application external customers can choose to rate their experience via a link.
They are presented with a webpage where they can rate their experience from 1 to 5, and include comments if this option has been enabled.
The Tell Us Service
Tell Us is a secure, managed communication tool that can be initiated by public users through a link or call to action button on a web page.
By clicking on a web link/call to action button public users can start a two-way conversation (including sharing files/attachments) with the business area admin.
Admin can respond to public queries by continuing the conversation (including additional file attachments) and can see the status of each conversation until the query is dealt with.
All communications within Tell Us are secure and audited.
Tip
You can see an overview of the Tell Us service by watching the video in the link below
The Notify Service
The Digital Toolkit Notify service allows users to create campaigns, message templates and send text messages to a stored set of contacts or a one of list of contacts. Users can also view reports on the status of all messages sent.
The service can be called directly via an API from other services or from within the Digital Toolkit online platform itself.
The Digital Toolkit Notify service by default uses Gov.UK Notify, but supports the use of other SMS providers if required.
Examples of where this service is being used is the Strangford Ferry SMS service, advising subscribers when the Ferry Service isn’t sailing due to adverse weather conditions, and in the Southern Health Trust to issue appointment reminders. There are many potential use-cases, such as appointment reminders, marketing, and business continuity.
Tip
You can see an overview of the Notify service by watching the video in the link below
The Payment Gateway Service
The Payment Gateway is a tool that provides a secure online payment channel for Government services using a payment engine, such as Worldpay. The tool can be used by a 3rd party or in-house developers to enable online payments or with other tools in the Toolkit, such as transactional forms.
The benefit of using the Toolkit is that once configured and integrated with an online application if the business needs to change their payment provider in future this will be done in the Toolkit and no additional integration work needs to be done.
In addition, it is estimated that the time taken to integrate the solution to an online application is reduced from approximately four weeks to two-three days, which significantly reduces costs.
The Secure Messaging Service
This service allows citizens and business service administrators to securely exchange files and information. This service is a highly secure point to point transmission and is used by NICS business ares that manage some of the most sensitive information transmissions within NICS.
Features include
Admin users can configure
- message authentication options (2FA by SMS, 2FA by Email, Authenticate Now, Authenticate Later, Organisation Wide only)
- create messages and attach document(s)
- view replies to messages sent
- reply to messages received (with further documentation if required)
Recipients can
- create messages and attach documents (if configured for recipient)
- view replies to messages sent
- reply to messages received (with further documentation if required)
Tip
You can see an overview of the Secure Messaging service by watching the video in the link below
The Identity Service
Authentication is the process of verifying a user or device before allowing access to a system or resources. In other words, authentication means confirming that a user is who they say they are. This ensures only those with authorized credentials gain access to secure systems.
When we think about the security of online services, we consider it for
- Citizen services – how do we securely authenticate citizens to access Online Services? Some NICS Online services already use the NIDA service to authenticate users onto online services.
- NICS Administration services – how do NICS staff authenticate themselves to manage transactions arising from Online services? Traditionally services built and used in one business area have not always been accessible to users in other business areas as staff users are accessing from different networks.
We have developed a common gateway that allowed NICS users to access shared services by managing the authentication of the user against the business area security repository in a way that is transparent to the user.
The Digital Toolkit Identity service is a security gateway that allows users to login using a number of different authentication mechanisms. For example, NIDA, NICS Staff across multiple networks, Google, Microsoft etc.
Service owners can request the level of authentication they want for their citizen users (e.g., NIDA LOA2 or Email/Password with 2 Factor Authentication (2FA)), and also their staff for administration services (e.g. NICS Staff, InvestNI, Education Authority, Health & Social Care networks).
The identity gateway will manage this authentication transparently for NICS staff users by automatically picking up the users logged in credentials.
Like all Digital Toolkit services, the service can be used in conjunction with other toolkit services, or individually to manage the authentication for other services.