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Weeknote #4: w/c 2023-09-04

This section is not part of the standard

The content in this section is only included to help explain the standard, provide examples or make recommendations about use.

It does not contain requirements for complying with the standard and is not governed by the formal standards process.

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Welcome to another data standards week note where we update you on our journey towards an officially recognised UK tariff data standard. It’s Simon Worthington here again with another update on what we’ve been doing this week.

We’ve been gaining momentum on the documentation task this week. Through another pair writing session with Patrick, we’ve updated the front page that users will see on first landing on the documentation site to better explain what the standard is and who it is for. For the first time we’ve also written down publicly what our relationship is with the EU tariff data standard which we adopted at the end of the transition period and what changes we’ve made to it to better fit the UK.

The new front page is designed to serve the needs of users discovering the data standard for the first time. But who are those users and what are their needs?

Who our users are

Broadly, our users are people who want to build systems that contribute or consume tariff data. On the consume side, this includes other government departments in the international trade domain like HMRC, Border Force and DEFRA. It also includes non-governmental public bodies such as the customs offices of Jersey and Guernsey. In the private sector, we know logistics companies, supermarkets and other governments all consume our tariff data for operations and decision-making.

Notice also that I mentioned people who want to “contribute” tariff data. Whilst the Department for Business and Trade does the lion’s share of data management for the UK Tariff, we work with over 30 different policy teams from 11 departments who are actually setting the trade policy. HMRC also contributes quota volumes and VAT/excide rates to the final dataset. In the future, we expect more of those departments to want to hold and contribute data about their policy directly. Part of our mission with setting out this standard is to make it easier for those teams to understand how to contribute.

A data standard is not just for use by technical staff. Whilst we know technical architects and engineers will need to consult the standard to learn about its data structures, we also think there are plenty of non-technical users who need information from the standard too.

They are:

  • User-centred designers and business analysts who will need to understand what each part of the tariff data means and how it changes to integrate the data into their services and processes
  • Project managers who will want to know about upcoming changes so that they can plan work effectively
  • Perhaps most importantly, policy owners themselves who need to design policy that is easy to operationalise – experience tells us that the simpler a policy is, the more easily it can be explained to traders and enforced at the border.

What our users need to know

Users have different information needs at different times. We segment our users according to where they are on their “data usage journey”. The further along the journey they are, the more knowledge they will have amassed and the more precise and detailed their questions become.

The journey as we model it is:

  1. Discover: users are trying to find data that is potentially relevant. They need a very high-level description of what is in the standard to make a quick assessment about whether it is likely to be useful to them. They may not know anything about the domain or major actors and we assume very little knowledge of trade.
  2. Evaluate: users are doing an in-depth evaluation to decide if the data will meet their needs. They need to understand what meaning the data contains and what they can use it for. They are starting to understand whether the licensing, quality and reliability are appropriate for them. At this point we assume they are operating in and have some knowledge of the trade domain.
  3. Integrate: users have decided to build the data into their process or service. They need to know how to extract the meaning they need, including precise definitions of technical formats. They are thinking about their own SLAs and how to work with quality or access issues with the data. They are starting to take in interest in the standard itself and how it is changing.
  4. Maintain: users are running a live service that relies on the data. They are interested in long-term stability of their service, and so want to plan for any major changes in the data. They may also be encountering quality issues with the data and are incentivised to feed back to have them corrected. Now that they have a vested interest in the standard, they are likely to want to keep up with changes or be part of the working group.

We’re using this model to work out what needs to be in our documentation. Our new front page is designed to cater to users in the “discover” stage. It now answers a broad set of questions at a high-level and provides links off to further reading that starts to answer questions at the “evaluate” level.

I hope this has been a useful insight into how we’re getting ready for standardisation. Next week we’ll be back with more updates on our progress and more insight into our approach.