Criterion 5. Engage with delivery partners

Criterion 5 – Engage with delivery partners

Engage with delivery partners to establish a successful, collaborative and trusted partnership.

Your responsibilities

To successfully meet this criterion, agencies need to:

seek out government delivery partners early
establish open communication lines.

When to apply

Apply Criterion 5 during the Discovery, Alpha, Beta and Live phases to include key delivery partners early.

Questions for consideration

What is the scope of services the delivery partner offers?
What are the onboarding and other requirements to join up with existing capabilities and platforms?
Can the delivery partner meet the delivery timeframes?

How to apply criterion 5

Engage early: Do research to identify key stakeholders both internally and across the Australian Public Service. Engage delivery partners from the beginning and often to foster a trusted, transparent and collaborative partnership. Include delivery partners in every phase of the Service design and delivery process, involving them in the decision-making, design and testing of your digital service solution.
Understand your part: Engage with delivery partners to determine what requirements the service needs to meet to join up with the capabilities and platforms on offer. Ensure that responsibilities are clearly defined up front.
Include your delivery partners: Set up combined agile ceremonies, user experience activities and other team events as one team so everyone remains across requirements. Make sure they’re also accountable for the delivery of your digital service by establishing obligations and commitments through agreed governance mechanisms.
Build to support future connection: Where immediate connection or partnership may not be possible, work with delivery partners to understand how to build within the requirements for potential future connections. Maintain a continuous communication channel to support ongoing engagement.

Guidance to engage with delivery partners

Identify your potential delivery partners by reviewing the Australian Government Architecture (AGA) and the digital landscape of government services.
Delivery partners are other agencies or entities that provide relevant:
- existing platforms
- capabilities
- policies.
Contact your delivery partners as early as possible to establish a collaborative relationship and understand the scope of services, onboarding requirements and delivery timeframes.
Involve them in discovery activities, such as:
- user research
- journey mapping
- problem definition.
Communicate with your delivery partners regularly throughout the Alpha and Beta phases.
- consider including them in your agile ceremonies, user testing, and feedback loops
- define the roles and responsibilities of each party to ensure that you have clear and agreed governance mechanisms, do this through a memorandum of understanding, service level agreement or contracts.
Work with your delivery partners to integrate your new service with their existing platforms and capabilities.
- make sure you meet any applicable technical, security, accessibility, or data standards
- test and validate the end-to-end user experience and service performance with your delivery partners and users.
Document your findings and recommendations on how to apply criterion 5, to do this:
- provide evidence to support your decisions and show how you have engaged delivery partners in your proposal or business case
- explain how engaging with your delivery partners has helped you to reuse existing access points, avoid duplication, reduce costs, and improve user satisfaction
- use the Digital Investment Overview (DIO) Data Collection form to report on how you have met the criterion
- use the Digital Capability Assessment Process (DCAP) template to report on how you have met the criterion.

Digital Access Standard

Criterion 5 – Engage with delivery partners

Your responsibilities

When to apply

Questions for consideration

How to apply criterion 5

Guidance to engage with delivery partners

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