Civil servants have been urged to not just rely on Google Analytics for performance analysis.
Writing in a blog for Home Office Digital, Jenny Huynh said that departments shouldn’t “just use your performance analyst as a Google Analytics (GA) puppet”.
Huynh added: “GA reports are quick to set up but can only measure web goals, so use the analyst to help you develop metrics across the whole service that can’t be tracked on GA.”
In the blog, Huynh went on to add that the “four digital service standard measures aren’t the only important ones”.
“Teams often end up relying on the four performance measures listed in the service manual,” she said. “They should be coming up with more, particularly in areas that GA cannot capture.
“For example, does the business unit have internal performance measures or service level agreements that the digital service can make an improvement on? If they do, try to put in processes to measure these before the service goes live.”
Huynh went on to say that performance measurement should be seen as an opportunity to test hypotheses about user behaviour or service improvements, and this will help shape future iterations of the product.
The blog also suggested that it’s important to involve performance analysts from the start of a project and run performance framework workshops early in the process.
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