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Creating a new NHS England: Health Education England, NHS Digital and NHS England have merged. More about the merger.

Non-functional attributes

Guidance on the non-functional attributes you should consider when designing or remediating Digital Services to be available over the public internet.

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There are 9 key non-functional attributes that should be considered for any Digital Service.  Each organisation’s requirements will be different, and suppliers should work with consumers to decide what is needed. 

  1. Performance - speed of processing transactions
  2. Security - security levels for protection of data (see Cyber, information governance and data security guidance)
  3. Access - permissions, who has access to which service and functionality, and how they access it (see user accessibility and authentication guidance)
  4. Backup and recovery - protection against data loss
  5. Archiving and retention - duration, methods and eventual deletion
  6. Robustness - reliability, data integrity and user error
  7. Availability - timeframe for availability of functionality
  8. Usability - ease of learning and ease of use
  9. Capacity - volumes of data, transactions and users (see network sizing and capacity guidance)

Non-functional attributes resources

ARTICLE

Service management for live services

This NHS Digital resource details how suppliers will have access to the NHS Digital National Service Desk (NSD), through which issues with NHS Digital services can be raised and resolved. It will help suppliers to understand the service management regime for reporting service incidents and understanding performance.
ARTICLE

IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)

ITIL® is the most widely adopted ITSM (IT service management) framework in the world. This UK government resource will help consumers and suppliers to understand best practice in service management.

Last edited: 12 October 2020 10:59 am